December 2011 Monthly UK Domain Sales Report
Hello, and welcome to the December 2011 edition of the UK domain name sales report!
For those of you that haven’t been here before, every month I give an overview of all the interesting bits from publicly reported UK domain name sales.
You can read all previous UK domain name sales reports, which are powered by sales data collated from Domain Sales History.
If you have sold any UK domain names or are aware of any sales that do not exist in the database, please do get in touch and let me know.
Have you read last months sales report?
If you haven't done so already, I recommend reading the November 2011 Monthly Sales Report as we compare sales data frequently throughout this report.
With that shameful self-promotion out of the way, let's move on to this months sales report!
December 2011 UK domain sales overview
Lets have a very brief overview of the UK domain market over the last month...
The following table shows a breakdown of key data comparing this months sales data against last month.
| Month | Total Sales | .uk | .co.uk | .org.uk | LLL | Total Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December | 141 | 0 | 118 | 23 | 7 | £95,828 |
| November | 164 | 0 | 136 | 28 | 9 | ¤115,612 |
Total Sales Revenue
There were 141 reported domain sales this month, generating a total revenue of £95,828.
The total revenue of the top 10 sales this month was £55,703 (+7%)
Domain sales grouped by extension
Lets take a look at how many domains were sold per extension in December 2011.
The best way of achieving that is to group the sales by extension, then sort them into descending order, which gives us:
- 118 .co.uk (-18)
- 23 .org.uk (-5)
Coming out on top this month is the .co.uk extension with 118 sales.
LLL domain sales
There were 7x LLL's sold this month, which is -22% on last months tally of 9.
Breaking LLL sales down by extension gives us 7x .co.uk.
mmg.co.uk was the top selling LLL this month, with a price of £750 sold via Domainlore.
For those of you that don't know, LLL means a three letter domain. If it contains a number (or hyphen) it does not qualify as an LLL.
What was the longest domain that sold in December 2011?
For some reason, I like to keep an eye on what the longest domain is each month.
This month it was personalinjury-claims.co.uk with 21 characters, selling for £1,000 via Sedo.
Top 3 UK domain names sold in December 2011
Rather impressively, Sedo sold all of the domains found in the top 3 sales this month, generating total sales revenue of £30,500.
- In 1st place this month we have energyswitch.co.uk, selling for £12,500.
- littlehouse.co.uk comes in 2nd, selling for £10,000.
- Finally, in 3rd place we have gainingweight.co.uk, selling for £8,000.
Top 10 UK domain names sold in December 2011
| No. | Domain | Price | Platform | Extension | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | energyswitch.co.uk | £12,500 | Sedo | .co.uk | 12 |
| 2 | littlehouse.co.uk | £10,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 11 |
| 3 | gainingweight.co.uk | £8,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 13 |
| 4 | dentalcare.co.uk | £7,995 | Sedo | .co.uk | 10 |
| 5 | krabi.co.uk | £4,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 5 |
| 6 | homesolarpanels.co.uk | £3,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 15 |
| 7 | carhiremalagaairport.co.uk | £3,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 20 |
| 8 | rent4less.co.uk | £2,650 | Sedo | .co.uk | 9 |
| 9 | voyages.co.uk | £2,558 | Domainlore | .co.uk | 7 |
| 10 | tirecorp.co.uk | £2,000 | Sedo | .co.uk | 8 |
This months top 10 was dominated by Sedo. Not content with sitting top of the table, they also sold 9 domains!
Domain sales grouped by platform
Here I list the top sale from each platform to try and promote each platform as best I can - even if they don't hit the top sales figures.
Platforms are ordered alphabetically.
Domainlore sales in December 2011
Domainlore reported 112 sales this month, with a total sales revenue of £19,452.
The the top selling domain this month was voyages.co.uk, which sold for £2,558.
View all Domainlore sales from December 2011
Sedo sales in December 2011
Sedo reported 29 sales this month, with a total sales revenue of £76,376.
The the top selling domain this month was energyswitch.co.uk, which sold for £12,500.
View all Sedo sales from December 2011
Top Performing Sales Platforms for December 2011
I like to believe that “Top Performing” is a relative phrase. Some sales platforms have been around longer and have earned a loyal customer base. Other sales platforms (like Sedo) sell a broad range of domain extensions and naturally receive a larger viewership, meaning more potential buyers which can inflate the eventual sale price.
You also need to remember that Sedo charges 15% sales commission (at time of writing) for marketplace domains. The buyer is also expected to pay a 3% handling fee for any domain purchases over 500 USD / GBP / EUR when using Alipay, PayPal, and Credit Card.
(The below table is ordered alphabetically as that seems the most sensible).
| Platform | Sales | Revenue | Avg. Sale Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domainlore | 112 | £19,452 | £173 |
| Sedo | 29 | £76,376 | £2,633 |
Domainlore closed the month with 112 sales. Total revenue was £19,452, which gives us an average of £173 per domain.
Sedo reported 29 sales this month. Total revenue was £76,376, with an average domain price of £2,633.
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, total revenue has taken a dent this month.
But one of the good things about having historic data is the ability to look for trends. We can see that this was expected behaviour due to being so close to the end of the year.
December was always going to be a slow month. It is every year, primarily due to Christmas and everybody being skint.
On the positive side this does mean that January can go one of two ways - but it is almost certainly a good month to be a buyer.
Why is January a good month to be a domain investor? Because some people will be looking to raise funds and recoup some of the Christmas outgoings.
So my advice is to keep your eyes peeled, and get your morning routines in check for scouring all the UK domain sales platforms for any potential bargains!
I’ll look forward to seeing what the first domains sales report of 2012 brings us!