NamePros Blog

Bob Hawkes · Dec 8, 2025

While it is instructive to look at domain name sales volume data, that, by itself, does not show whether the volume is made up of a large number of modest sales, or a smaller number of high-value sales.

Each month Afternic provides filtered and unfiltered lists of the top selling keywords. Most...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 10, 2025

Are there more companies with the term ‘capital’ in their name or ‘finance’?

One of the ways to create a composite name is to make the second word descriptive of what the business does, while the first term makes the combination unique. In some cases the first term suggests how the service is...

DomainIncite · Oct 6, 2025

How many domains in your portfolio contain numbers? If you’re a savvy domain investor, targeting end-user sales, chances are you don’t have many. So what if I told you that there are large gTLDs where the majority of domains have at least one number in them, and there's at least one namespace...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 7, 2025

What are the most common English words, and which would make effective brands? This article will look at that question, and introduce a well-established list of the most common words. That resource will tell you, for example, how frequently a word appears.

A made-up name is distinctive...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 23, 2025

There is no doubt that most domain name sales are .com – that holds true whether we are talking number of sales, or total dollar volume.

But it is also true that by far the largest number of domain names that are listed for sale are also .com. If we scaled the sales dollar...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 2, 2025

The first six months of 2025 produced 93,100 NameBio-listed domain sales, with a total reported dollar volume of just over $122 million. This represents an increase of 42.7% in dollar volume compared to the same six months of 2024. It is the strongest showing from the...

NameGroove · Mar 28, 2025

Many members in the Atom thread are discussing their dashboard stats that have yet to be shown by Atom to correlate to a higher sell-through rate ("STR"). Thus, I thought it helpful to compile the data shared by Atom that does correlate to STR. This adds to a helpful article...

Bob Hawkes · Mar 27, 2025

There are standard prefixes for units in the SI international system of units. Some of these, such as micro, nano or giga are relatively common in everyday language, whereas others are only known to scientists and engineers. I wondered how frequently the different prefixes...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 27, 2025

Once one ventures outside of .com, the type of name that sells varies with the extension. While the best way to see what sells is to perform a detailed sales analysis over the past few years, a look at the top sales in the last year can provide a fast and useful indication.

Three...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 30, 2025

A few months ago I introduced two indices to spot extensions trending up or down: Top Ten Index as Measure of Domain Extension Strength.

While the article presented early results, 2024 sales were incomplete at that time. This article reports data through the end of 2024.

Note that two...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 9, 2025

Each year I look at trends in dollar volume for sales reported in NameBio. This report is based on about 144,700 domain name sales recorded for 2024 at NameBio, with a total dollar volume of just over $185 million USD.

The domain name market, at least as reflected in the...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 2, 2025

The traditional .com dominance in the top 100 sales of the year was shaken somewhat in 2024, with just over half of the top sales for the year in .com.

While much of the change was due to the continuing surge in high-value .ai sales, .io and .net both had better than normal...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 5, 2024

The Domain Buyer Requests section has been a feature of NamePros for many years. That section of the site provides an opportunity for investors looking to increase their holdings in a certain niche to see what is available from other NamePros members, or to try to find inventory for a...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 21, 2024

When considering investing in a new niche or sector, or a new extension, it is important to look at sales, adoptions, the type and length of domain names that typically sell, etc. The NamePros Blog has a wealth of articles that can help, but even with advanced search, it can be difficult to find...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 14, 2024

The .io extension remains one of the most popular after .com, particularly for technology-oriented startups.

In January 2020 I wrote a two-part series on the .io extension for the NamePros Blog, Why is the .IO Extension So Popular?, and Types of .IO Domain Names That Sell and Where...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 24, 2024

Which domain name extensions are growing stronger, and which are waning in popularity? We often use measures such as total sales dollar volume to help answer that question.

Sometimes that can be deceptive, though. It is possible to have an uptick in sales numbers and dollar volume because...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 17, 2024

A couple of weeks ago HackerNoon published an analysis of the extension choice by about 30,000 startups: Dot COM Remain Top Domain for Startups, But Usage Declines. The study showed that .com had declined from 66.5% (2021 data) to 57.3% (2023 data).

The most surprising finding...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 2, 2024

Generally when we add a suffix to a term, the value of the domain name goes down - e.g. Example.com would be worth more than Exampled.com or Exampler.com for most terms’. But is that always true?

This article looks in particular at words with the suffix ‘ing’. Do some...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 26, 2024

A key question is: what are the critical steps for a domain name to be discovered and ultimately purchased?

Last week Nikul Sanghvi of Hypernames posted data from his own portfolio that helps to answer questions such as the percentage of sales at Afternic, and, of those, how many...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 5, 2024

When I looked at domain name sales dollar volume, at least as reported in NameBio, for the first six months of 2024, compared to the same period of the previous year, there was a 29.6% increase. See Domain Name Sales First Six Months of 2024.

While I presented how...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 8, 2024

When we look at early-stage startups there is quite a bit of variety in domain extension choices and type of name – see for example the NamePros Blog article Startup Names Through a Y-Combinator Filter.

It would be expected that if one focuses on established tech companies, more will have...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 4, 2024

The first six months of 2024 resulted in just over 69,600 NameBio-listed domain sales, with a total reported dollar volume of about $85.5 million. Of course many sales are not reported in NameBio, so this is by no means the entire domain name market.

That is a increase of...

Bob Hawkes · Jun 13, 2024

For more than 19 years NamePros members have been reporting sales in the thread, started by @RJ, Report Completed Domain Name Sales Here.

In this article I look at sales data posted at NamePros so far in 2024. I went through the thread, noting the domain name, date sale reported...

Bob Hawkes · May 2, 2024

Since I started writing for NamePros Blog in 2019, I have been waiting for the right day to share an article about the Standard Model of particle physics. That day has arrived.

Recently SquadHelp rebranded to Atom, as discussed in the NamePros thread Squadhelp is now Atom. In...

Bob Hawkes · Apr 18, 2024

One of the current featured polls at NamePros asks What non-com extensions have you sold so far in 2024?.

The poll, started by @Leo2k, has produced some interesting results. Just over 170 had voted at the time this article was written, and, beyond the ‘other’ category, the most...

Bob Hawkes · Mar 7, 2024

Most domain name marketplaces do not report sales, at least not fully, so it is difficult to assess their reach and effectiveness.

If you have a large and successful portfolio, and have been in domain investing for some years, you probably have a good idea of what works for the type of names...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 5, 2024

This report is based on 145,100 domain name aftermarket sales recorded for 2023 on NameBio, with a total dollar volume of just over $139 million USD.

The domain name market, at least as reflected in the NameBio data, was down 21.2% in dollar volume when 2023 is compared to...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 28, 2023

This article takes a look at the highest-value domain name sales from 2023, at least those reported on NameBio. I also compare the year with the preceding few years, to get a sense of the nature and health of the upper end of the domain market.

Keep in mind that by no means all sales get...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 14, 2023

As domain investors, we are in the business of providing names that businesses and organizations will use. Succeeding at that can be a win-win-win situation. We do well, but startup owners are well served by many good name choices in efficient marketplaces. The marketplaces also benefit when...

Bob Hawkes · Nov 30, 2023

Most large businesses will brand on a single-word domain name, whether that is a dictionary word, a creative spelling, or a made-up word.

Still, it is true that there is a place for longer domain names. In this article I look at the sales record, at least as indicated by NameBio, for...

Bob Hawkes · Oct 26, 2023

The demand for names for new businesses globally is immense. While current figures are probably even higher, Moya K. Mason estimated that worldwide about 305 million businesses are attempted each year, of which roughly one-third, or 100 million businesses are actually started globally...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 24, 2023

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...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 16, 2023

Short names are highly valued, both because they are easy to remember correctly and they are rare. This week I take a look at 3-letter (3L) .org domain names.

To focus on current and recent market conditions, I used data from the past 5 years only. While no dividing line is perfect, I...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 3, 2023

One of the key ways that a prospective buyer seeks a domain name is by using the search feature at the marketplace. But how effective is that really? I take a look at search capability at general purpose and brandable domain name marketplaces.

Try This

To get a feel for how...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 26, 2023

The .eu domain extension was one of the bright spots when I analyzed how different extensions had fared in aftermarket sales volume during the first six months of 2023. The .eu extension sales dollar volume was up significantly compared to the same period during the preceding year, or...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 5, 2023

The first six months of 2023 resulted in just over 70,000 NameBio-listed domain sales in total, with a dollar volume of just over $66 million.

That is a decrease of 21.5% in sales dollar volume compared to the same six months of 2022.

In this article I use the same...

Bob Hawkes · May 24, 2023

Afternic recently provided data insights from the 2022 sales year. While precise numerical values are not given, graphical results are presented for total dollar volume, average price, sell-through rate and average revenue per domain. This allows one to compare the performance of different...

Bob Hawkes · May 1, 2023

In recognition of the 15th anniversary of general availability of the .me domain extension, I thought it was a good time to look at the performance, use and sales record for the extension.

The registry has a 15th Anniversary promotion on – you can read about the anniversary in a blog post...

Bob Hawkes · Apr 5, 2023

Diverse opinions have been expressed, on NamePros and elsewhere, on whether the domain aftermarket has recently dropped.

Certainly there are reasons for a possible decline.

There is considerable business uncertainty.
With inflation rising, the cost for a business or individual to...

Bob Hawkes · Mar 16, 2023

When seeking names on the buyer requests section at NamePros, or filtering a list of expiring names for consideration, domain investors often use filters to make the size of the list manageable. For example, they may seek only names with a certain minimum age, maximum length, or minimum...

Bob Hawkes · Feb 16, 2023

With so much interest in artificial intelligence of late, it was suggested by a NamePros member that I should take a look at the .ai domain extension.

While it is almost certainly true that .com is the dominant extension for large, established artificial intelligence companies, .ai has found...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 26, 2023

One measure of domain name sales success is the sell-through rate (STR). For your own portfolio, that is simply the number of domain names that sell in a time period, usually one year, divided by the average number of domain names for sale during that period, and expressed as a percentage...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 12, 2023

The question of whether aged domain names have greater value has been discussed in various NamePros threads over the years. Here are a few of the points expressed:

Age by itself does not determine the worth of a domain name.
In the past, there were fewer domain names registered, and a...

Bob Hawkes · Jan 5, 2023

For each of the last four years, I have looked at NameBio reported domain sales in a number of extensions. The data reflects the situation just after the close of the year. While some sales for the year get reported late, by using a consistent procedure from year to year, the trends should...

Bob Hawkes · Dec 1, 2022

During recent seasonal promotions several registrars offered .tv domain names at the lowest price in many years, perhaps forever. I suspect I was not alone in picking up some names for a trial investment in the extension.

That brings up questions such as:

Who are typical buyers of .tv...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 28, 2022

Darpan Munjal of SquadHelp has been sharing great data insights on brandable domain names. I reached out to him for permission to summarize the data, and to get additional information.

As Darpan wrote in 2021,

Data and analytics can play a huge role in maximizing the...

Bob Hawkes · Sep 8, 2022

Many investors dream of one day making a million dollar domain name sale. The odds are against you, with only 156 sales at this price point recorded on NameBio over all time. I take a look at those sales, and how the names are being used.

The Million Dollar Sales Data

I...

Bob Hawkes · Aug 18, 2022

Web3 is a hot term these days, with many startups in the sphere, and existing companies reimagining themselves as Web3.

In this article, I take a look at the names of 156 top Web3 companies. I also study what extensions are popular, and the sectors that predominate within the Web3 world...

Bob Hawkes · Jul 6, 2022

The first six months of 2022 resulted in 76,000 NameBio-listed domain sales of $100 or more, accounting for a dollar volume of just over $84 million.

That is an increase of 0.9% in number of sales compared to the same six months of 2021, and a 4.1% increase in dollar...

Bob Hawkes · Jun 29, 2022

The second half of 2021 saw eye-popping sales in exact ETH domain names, even in extensions with few significant prior sales. In this article, I take a look at the current status of those domain names, recent ETH name sales data, and how investors are currently pricing their ETH domain names...

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