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analysis Mike Mann's Top 10 Sales: Where Are They Now?

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Mike Mann has a long and successful history within the domain name industry. As the founder of BuyDomains.com, Mike created the second largest market for domain names at the time and successfully exited the company in 2005. Now, @Mike Mann heads up DomainMarket.com and boasts a portfolio of several hundred thousand domain names.

Mike regularly posts sales data via his Twitter account and has amassed some impressive five and six-figure sales. Here, we take a look at Mike's top ten sales of all time from his DomainMarket.com portfolio, according to data from NameBio.


1. CryptoWorld.com

The largest publicly disclosed sale from DomainMarket.com is that of CryptoWorld.com. The sale closed in January 2018 for $195,000 and the buyer was revealed as Binance, a cryptocurrency asset exchange. Six months after the sale was announced, Binance has failed to do anything with the name, with CryptoWorld.com currently displaying an error page.


2. Favorites.com

Our second sale on the list is Favorites.com for $165,000. This deal took place in mid-2011 and was quickly developed by an Oklahoma based company called MyResource. The site is still running, although the traffic looks to have declined significantly, according to Alexa.

Interestingly, the company also purchased Favourites.com. According to NameBio, the sales price was just $5,100.


3. Business.co

The eighth highest .CO sale of all time, according to NameBio, is Mike's sale of Business.co in 2011. The name looks to have been acquired by a European domain investor based on the last available WHOIS records. Various archival copies of the domain indicate that the name has been parked at Sedo since the $80,000 purchase in 2011.


4. RiseUp.org

In March 2017, Mike announced the sale of RiseUp.org via his Twitter account. According to Mike, he purchased the domain for $350 in 2005 before selling it twelve years later for $75,000. Although the name sold in March 2017, the WHOIS data still showed Mike's company as the owner in September 2017.

By early 2018, the name was put under privacy protection and the domain currently doesn't resolve, so it's difficult to ascertain who the owner is.


5. BroadSpectrum.com

BroadSpectrum.com is a domain that is certainly being used. Australian infrastructure company Transfield Services rebranded to "Broadspectrum" in October 2015, buying the BroadSpectrum.com domain name for $75,000 in the process.

The domain was quickly developed and still holds the company's homepage.


6. BetterFuture.com

One of Mike's most recent sales is that of BetterFuture.com for $65,000, which closed in April 2018. This two-word name was acquired by a company called Better Future who offer free background checks. The company upgraded from GetBetterFuture.com and currently hosts the company's homepage.


7. TotalDesign.com

Another sale that occurred in April 2018 was another two-word .COM, TotalDesign.com. Mike's company acquired this name in 2007 for $5,200 with the sale coming eleven years later for $60,000. The buyer was a Dutch design agency that rebranded from Total Identity to Total Design. The domain now hosts the company's homepage.


8. SkyBoard.com

Another $60,000 sale from Mike Mann occurred in 2012 when his company sold SkyBoard.com. The original acquisition price was less than $2,500 in 2007, representing an impressive return on investment within five years.

The domain is now home to a French service called Skyboard who offer unique meeting venues for company executives and their clients.


9. UpperPeninsula.com

The penultimate sale on our list sees a fourteen-character name sell for $55,000. The name, which sold in 2012, looks to have been acquired by a Michigan-based individual. The name is forwarding to theUP.com, but the site no longer responds.

According to archival copies of theUP.com, the website offered products and gifts from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.


10. Offset.com

The Offset.com domain is another name from DomainMarket that sold in 2012. This name was acquired by stock photography giant Shutterstock's Offset brand for a price of $50,000. Offset launched in 2013 and was designed to offer royalty-free photography for commercial and editorial use.

Five years later, the service looks to still be a popular destination for premium stock photography.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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thanks for the info
now we know the true...
 
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riseup.org looked to be under development on 22nd April when I commented on this thread of yours.
 
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If an investor buys a domain and later you see a "This domain is for sale." page then yes years can pass without any development. But one has to wonder why a company would go through all the internal processes that typically are required in companies to approve a large expenditure, spend five or six figures on a domain acquisition and then just sit on it undeveloped.
 
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But one has to wonder why a company would go through all the internal processes that typically are required in companies to approve a large expenditure, spend five or six figures on a domain acquisition and then just sit on it undeveloped.
may be it was a fake sale...?
 
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Thanks for sharing. Even though they are a design agency, I actually like the Total Identity name. Not to say that Total Design is bad
 
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may be it was a fake sale...?

That is unlikely. MM's reported sales are subsequently reported in DNJournal.com who requires a sales receipt or other proof of transaction completion with price.
 
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That is unlikely. MM's reported sales are subsequently reported in DNJournal.com who requires a sales receipt or other proof of transaction completion with price.
Seriously? Stuff like that is so easy to fabricate.
 
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That is unlikely. MM's reported sales are subsequently reported in DNJournal.com who requires a sales receipt or other proof of transaction completion with price.
Where did you get that information?
 
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Personally I'm surprised to see he paid $5,200 for TotalDesign.com. From an investor perspective it sure seems like a high wholesale number.
 
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Seriously? Stuff like that is so easy to fabricate.

Why would MM waste his time doing that? He's simply reporting his transactions to DNJournal just like we do for each of our sales over $2,000. We're trying to establish a record of comparable sales that benefits the entire secondary market for domain names just like Realtors do with residential home sales via MLS.
 
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This and various other evidence (like the article James did recently on the 10 biggest sales of the year) seem to suggest that even when large amounts are paid for digital assets they not infrequently go unused soon or sometimes ever. I am surprised but this does appear to be so.
 
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Thanks @James Iles ...

This info gives good insight into after life of big purchases.

Wish there is an article like this covering different fields and top domains in those fields...

Only surprising name in this list was Upper Peninsula . com
That is totally geography term and not even specific...
As I see there is something Geo location related to this term...may be that's only reason.
 
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Why would MM waste his time doing that? He's simply reporting his transactions to DNJournal just like we do for each of our sales over $2,000. We're trying to establish a record of comparable sales that benefits the entire secondary market for domain names just like Realtors do with residential home sales via MLS.
Not saying he would but stuff like that is easy to manipulate. It seemed like you were saying that if there is a sales receipt or some proof of transaction then every single sale reported by DnJournal is true.
 
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HumanAbility.com $40,000. Purch 6/5/11 $375

This is a new Verizon campaign for clean energy.

Just happened to see a post on Twitter that said "HumanAbility" and remembered seeing the sale on DNJ.
 
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Not saying he would but stuff like that is easy to manipulate. It seemed like you were saying that if there is a sales receipt or some proof of transaction then every single sale reported by DnJournal is true.

Who do you trust more for reporting verified sales than DNJournal then?
 
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1. CryptoWorld.com
The largest publicly disclosed sale from DomainMarket.com is that of CryptoWorld.com. The sale closed in January 2018 for $195,000 and the buyer was revealed as Binance, a cryptocurrency asset exchange. Six months after the sale was announced, Binance has failed to do anything with the name, with CryptoWorld.com currently displaying an error page.

Really hard to understand why they would pay 195k and 7-months after the big purchase still be using mike Mann's sales page hosting and his nameservers! I have seen other names sold by domainmarket which are unused much later. It's real weird and odd to say the least.
 
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Really hard to understand why they would pay 195k and 7-months after the big purchase still be using mike Mann's sales page hosting and his nameservers! I have seen other names sold by domainmarket which are unused much later. It's real weird and odd to say the least.

why cant some old timer domainer here ask him this question?

I mean no one here can talk to him or what?

just wondering.

thanks
 
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Really hard to understand why they would pay 195k and 7-months after the big purchase still be using mike Mann's sales page hosting and his nameservers! I have seen other names sold by domainmarket which are unused much later. It's real weird and odd to say the least.
Does anyone buy a Ferrari and never drive it on the road? Absurd nonsense.
 
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There are some questionable reported sales in this industry particularly in the new TLD space. Domain investors' purchases, auction bidding and renewal decisions are certainly influenced by reported sales. Yet we do not have a true audit from an independent source as exists in the stock market.

For my own sales I recently did a review of twelve years of data and found that only about one in five sales turned into meaningfully developed site. So most of my sales were purchased by either investors or unmotivated buyers. In many cases the buyer must have subsequently dropped the domain because the domains were now forwarded to Huge Domains' website. On the other hand more than 90% of my sales are for $1500 or less. While I did not specifically check for this I believe that the development ratio for higher-priced sales was much higher.
 
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If an investor buys a domain and later you see a "This domain is for sale." page then yes years can pass without any development. But one has to wonder why a company would go through all the internal processes that typically are required in companies to approve a large expenditure, spend five or six figures on a domain acquisition and then just sit on it undeveloped.
Because many companies fail to realize it takes more than just a great name for a business to be successful.
 
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Does anyone buy a Ferrari and never drive it on the road? Absurd nonsense.
A Ferrari has intrinsic value. Domains only have real value when there is a business behind it. This is why no bank will accept a domain name as collateral.
 
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Because many companies fail to realize it takes more than just a great name for a business to be successful.

Yes a successful online business is far more than just a domain. But other than small family businesses there is an approval process - expenditures above certain levels will have increasing levels of approvals (often multiple director's or VPs) with appropriate justification. So a company is not going to approve such a domain expenditure without some reason to acquire it. It takes a few minutes to forward a domain to an existing website so at a minimum a domain purchase can be used for its branding value.
 
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......It takes a few minutes to forward a domain to an existing website so at a minimum a domain purchase can be used for its branding value.

The only reasonable reason I can think of for not spending a few min to forward it to their main site is the strong possibility the deal was never completed for some odd reason and Mann still owns or controls the domain.
 
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