What’s in a TLD? A lot when it comes to resale value

Tonight I was browsing through Twitter when I saw an interesting tweet from Logan Flatt. It covers a topic I’ve written about before on my blog and that we’ve all thought about and talked about for years, how pricing varies based on TLD. In Logan’s tweet he shared a great example, see below:

Domain sales by TLD

While yes, this is just one example it shows a general trend that we all know is true – .COM sells for the most and another TLD will sell for some multiple of the corresponding .COM.

Of course you can’t do the calculations based on this one example and yes, every name is different, but one thing I have seen more and more of lately is extensions like .IO going head-to-head with .NET. The point is, if you say one year that a specific TLD sells for one-tenth of what the corresponding .COM sells for, the following year that could get cut to a fifth or fall to one twentieth.

While in this example the .ORG sold for more than the .IO, I’m seeing more and more .IO’s sell for a lot more than their .ORG counterparts. But once again, they all sell for less than the .COM.

Typically when I’m buying a .IO name I look at what the .COM sold for divide by ten and use that as my general guide of what the .IO could sell for. Lately I’ve been thinking of maybe dividing by seven or eight as the market for .IO has continued to heat up.

I’ve been wondering if anyone out there is keeping track of how other extensions fluctuate compared to .COM. Do you know of anything? When you buy a non .COM how do determine what the fair market value would be if you know what the matching .COM sold for?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton