July 23, 2018
The owners of this domain name reportedly just scored $3.5 million dollars for it (in US dollars) - and just for the name.
For the past 19 years, Ice.com had been focused on jewelry. However, the company (which also used other addresses for its site) was wanting funds to build out its platform and parted with the name for the huge sum, which is likely to be the highest disclosed sale price this year.
The Ice.com domain now redirects to TheICE.com (Intercontinental Exchange), a Fortune 500 company offering financial market services; so it's quite a departure from its previous use.
Grit Brokerage represented the seller and Brannans.com acted for the buyer in the transaction that was facilitated by Escrow.com. While it seems like a lot of a cash for a name, Brannans CEO David Clements offered this perspective.
"For less than the cost of a single, 30-second Super Bowl ad, we were able to acquire a powerful, single-word domain name with significant long-term value for our client," he said.
The Ice name certainly has a lot going for it - a common, English word, easy to remember, a .com and just three letters. Names like this are very few and far between - the Scrabble Dictionary recognizes 1015 three-letter words and all of those are registered.
This sale tops another we recently mentioned by quite a margin. Back in May, we reported the Block-Chain.com domain was apparently sold for USD $1 million - a particularly high price for a hyphenated domain.
As far as we can tell, the highest publicly disclosed price paid for an Australian domain name was $125,000 for InvestmentProperty.com.au back in 2011. That sale also provided an important lesson - don't let your address expire. When you "buy" a domain name, you're actually just leasing the rights to use it and those rights must be renewed towards the end of each registration period.
While .au names may not be as valuable as premium .com's - they are certainly valuable to the businesses that use them as .au enjoys a high level of awareness and trust.
As for what your .com.au domain name may be worth; that figure will be whatever someone will pay for it. That's probably less than helpful advice, but as we've previously mentioned it's unwise to put too much faith in many of the domain appraisal services around as they can be very inaccurate (particularly automated services) and some fee-for-service appraisals are outright scams.
Have a web site or blog? Get our free domain news widget.
How to register a name: Enter your choice in the search tool and click 'GO'. If after the check the domain names search results show your choice is available, you will then have the option to proceed to purchase registration; which is a very quick and easy process - start a search and find your ideal website address now.
AUSTRALIAN OWNED AND OPERATED SINCE 1996
1300 863 436