Last week, I analyzed 3-letter (3L) .ORG domain name sales. In this article, I use the same methodology with 3L .NET domain names.
I used data from the past 5 years only, and considered separately retail and wholesale sales, although the dividing line is not always clear. Sales data came from NameBio.
I followed up the retail sales to see the percentage of the names that are now in meaningful use.
I also look at 3L .NET asking prices for priced names listed at Sedo and Dan.
.NET Retail Sales From Last Five Years
To produce a list that was mainly retail sales, I restricted the NameBio search to sales from last 5 years with a price of at least $1000 with the venue Sedo, Afternic, BuyDomains, NameMarket or a Private sale. The resulting list of sales was mainly from Sedo, with a few private sales. I excluded 5 sales at NamesCon, and two at Flippa, even though they came through the filters, I guess as part of Private.
At the time I did the research, a few weeks ago, over the 5 years there were only 67 retail sales of 3L .NET names listed at NameBio according to my selection criteria. That is somewhat fewer retail sales than I found for 3L .ORG over the same time period.
The average retail price in the 3L .NET retail dataset was $7708, very similar to what we found for 3L .ORG, with the median price $5000. The distribution by price for the predominantly retails sales is shown below.
The highest-value sale was
Which Letters Are Popular in 3L .NET?
As I did for .ORG in last week’s article, I looked at the popularity of different letters, obtaining the histogram below.
Somewhat surprisingly, the most frequent letters in the retail sales were A and P. The least common letters were J and Z.
Vowel Consonant Combinations
At NameBio it is possible to search for combinations of consonants and vowels by entering C and V in the Pattern. Remember to use capitalization. For example, the word dog has a CVC pattern. I checked how many of the 3L .NET retail sales had a CVC pattern, and there were only 4 out of the 67 total. I also investigated VCC combinations, for example arc, and the VCC pattern was present in 14 of the 67 retail 3L .NET sales.
Chinese Premium Names
Chinese Premium domain names, abbreviated CHIPs, are short names that do not contain the vowels a, e, i, o, u, nor the letter v.
NameBio make it easy to search by names that meet the Chinese Premium[/b] rule, by entering PPP, instead of LLL, in the Pattern. 28 of the 67 sales retail 3L .NET met the Chinese Premium rules.
As mentioned last week, @Michael published in the NameBio blog a clear article on doing various types of pattern searches: Pattern Search: Chinese Premiums and More.
Western Premium Names
Western Premium names do not include the letters J, K, Q, U, V, W, X, Y or Z. It is simple to search on NameBio for names that follow Western Premium rules, just enter WWW for the pattern.
27 of the 67 retail 3L .NET sales are Western Premium names. The average price, about $10,600, was higher than for the entire retail LLL .NET sales set.
Current Status of Retail 3L .NET Sales
For each of the 67 retail sales, I tried to visit the associated website. It turns out that 26 of the names were developed, with another 7 used for redirection to a developed site.
I found that 11 of the 97 names were clearly for sale again, with another 3 using a parking service, and possibly for sale. For 20 of the names there was no operational site or lander. This is not much different than I found for .ORG 3L retail sales last week.
Sedo and Dan Pricing 3L .NET
I used Sedo Advanced Search to look at 3L .NET names that are listed with a buy-it-now price.
I also used Dan to create the following histogram. Note that for higher prices I discovered that the search box sometimes did not record the correct entered price ranges, at least with Chrome, so be careful to check if you do your own research.
Wholesale Prices
I used NameBio to look at sales of 3L .NET sales from the last 5 years that were probably wholesale transactions. For the wholesale dataset, I included all sales at GoDaddy auctions, DropCatch, SnapNames, NameJet and Sav. I included sales $100 and up, with no upper price cutoff. There were 952 names in the wholesale 3L .NET dataset, with an average price of about $800.
While there is considerable variability, most 3L .NET names sell in wholesale markets in the range from $250 to $2500.
The highest sale in the wholesale set was
Letter Distribution for Wholesale Set
I computed the number of names in the wholesale with different letters, obtaining the histogram shown below.
The distribution is at first glance surprising, with V the most popular letter, and S the least popular in the wholesale set, although the differences are not great. As pointed out last week, these are names that sold in most cases at wholesale auctions, and letter distribution may indicate names that are actually less desired.
Premium Letters in Wholesale Set
In the wholesale set there were 310 of the 952 names that met the Chinese Premium criteria, and those names had only a slightly higher average sales price of $984, compared to the entire set.
I found that 218 of the 952 wholesale transactions met Western premium rules, with a significantly higher average price of $1330. Note that there can be overlap, with some names meeting both CHIP and Western Premium requirements.
Please feel free to share your views and experiences with 3L .NET domain names in the comment section below. In particular, your thoughts on whether the value of these rare names is continuing to rise.
Update: Aug 27, 2023
I corrected the word .ORG which should have said .NET in the section on current use. Thanks to an alert reader for pointing this out.
Sincere thanks to NameBio for the data used in this analysis. Their pattern search feature provides an easy to use, and powerful, way to examine the data.
I used data from the past 5 years only, and considered separately retail and wholesale sales, although the dividing line is not always clear. Sales data came from NameBio.
I followed up the retail sales to see the percentage of the names that are now in meaningful use.
I also look at 3L .NET asking prices for priced names listed at Sedo and Dan.
.NET Retail Sales From Last Five Years
To produce a list that was mainly retail sales, I restricted the NameBio search to sales from last 5 years with a price of at least $1000 with the venue Sedo, Afternic, BuyDomains, NameMarket or a Private sale. The resulting list of sales was mainly from Sedo, with a few private sales. I excluded 5 sales at NamesCon, and two at Flippa, even though they came through the filters, I guess as part of Private.
At the time I did the research, a few weeks ago, over the 5 years there were only 67 retail sales of 3L .NET names listed at NameBio according to my selection criteria. That is somewhat fewer retail sales than I found for 3L .ORG over the same time period.
The average retail price in the 3L .NET retail dataset was $7708, very similar to what we found for 3L .ORG, with the median price $5000. The distribution by price for the predominantly retails sales is shown below.
The highest-value sale was
arc.net, sold by Morgan Linton for $80,000 in 2020.Which Letters Are Popular in 3L .NET?
As I did for .ORG in last week’s article, I looked at the popularity of different letters, obtaining the histogram below.
Somewhat surprisingly, the most frequent letters in the retail sales were A and P. The least common letters were J and Z.
Vowel Consonant Combinations
At NameBio it is possible to search for combinations of consonants and vowels by entering C and V in the Pattern. Remember to use capitalization. For example, the word dog has a CVC pattern. I checked how many of the 3L .NET retail sales had a CVC pattern, and there were only 4 out of the 67 total. I also investigated VCC combinations, for example arc, and the VCC pattern was present in 14 of the 67 retail 3L .NET sales.
Chinese Premium Names
Chinese Premium domain names, abbreviated CHIPs, are short names that do not contain the vowels a, e, i, o, u, nor the letter v.
NameBio make it easy to search by names that meet the Chinese Premium[/b] rule, by entering PPP, instead of LLL, in the Pattern. 28 of the 67 sales retail 3L .NET met the Chinese Premium rules.
As mentioned last week, @Michael published in the NameBio blog a clear article on doing various types of pattern searches: Pattern Search: Chinese Premiums and More.
Western Premium Names
Western Premium names do not include the letters J, K, Q, U, V, W, X, Y or Z. It is simple to search on NameBio for names that follow Western Premium rules, just enter WWW for the pattern.
27 of the 67 retail 3L .NET sales are Western Premium names. The average price, about $10,600, was higher than for the entire retail LLL .NET sales set.
Current Status of Retail 3L .NET Sales
For each of the 67 retail sales, I tried to visit the associated website. It turns out that 26 of the names were developed, with another 7 used for redirection to a developed site.
I found that 11 of the 97 names were clearly for sale again, with another 3 using a parking service, and possibly for sale. For 20 of the names there was no operational site or lander. This is not much different than I found for .ORG 3L retail sales last week.
Sedo and Dan Pricing 3L .NET
I used Sedo Advanced Search to look at 3L .NET names that are listed with a buy-it-now price.
I also used Dan to create the following histogram. Note that for higher prices I discovered that the search box sometimes did not record the correct entered price ranges, at least with Chrome, so be careful to check if you do your own research.
Wholesale Prices
I used NameBio to look at sales of 3L .NET sales from the last 5 years that were probably wholesale transactions. For the wholesale dataset, I included all sales at GoDaddy auctions, DropCatch, SnapNames, NameJet and Sav. I included sales $100 and up, with no upper price cutoff. There were 952 names in the wholesale 3L .NET dataset, with an average price of about $800.
While there is considerable variability, most 3L .NET names sell in wholesale markets in the range from $250 to $2500.
The highest sale in the wholesale set was
tau.net that sold for $55,000 at GoDaddy in 2021. There were two other 3L .NET in the wholesale group that topped $10,000.Letter Distribution for Wholesale Set
I computed the number of names in the wholesale with different letters, obtaining the histogram shown below.
The distribution is at first glance surprising, with V the most popular letter, and S the least popular in the wholesale set, although the differences are not great. As pointed out last week, these are names that sold in most cases at wholesale auctions, and letter distribution may indicate names that are actually less desired.
Premium Letters in Wholesale Set
In the wholesale set there were 310 of the 952 names that met the Chinese Premium criteria, and those names had only a slightly higher average sales price of $984, compared to the entire set.
I found that 218 of the 952 wholesale transactions met Western premium rules, with a significantly higher average price of $1330. Note that there can be overlap, with some names meeting both CHIP and Western Premium requirements.
Please feel free to share your views and experiences with 3L .NET domain names in the comment section below. In particular, your thoughts on whether the value of these rare names is continuing to rise.
Update: Aug 27, 2023
I corrected the word .ORG which should have said .NET in the section on current use. Thanks to an alert reader for pointing this out.
Sincere thanks to NameBio for the data used in this analysis. Their pattern search feature provides an easy to use, and powerful, way to examine the data.
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