Via Bronte Media:
“I did a bit of Friday reading, including NameMedia’s S-1 and various investor presentations from DarkBlueSea, an Australian based domain portfolio holder, looking to answer a simple question: How much does an average domain earn per year?
NameMedia owns 750,000 domain names and earnt $40.56 per domain name in revenue in the first 9 months of the year. That ends up at around $54.08 per domain name per year.
DarkBlueSea has 150,000 domain names and earns about $12.82 per quarter or $51.28 per year per domain.”
Important to note these two companies mentioned aboe are companies who sell some of their inventory constantly to “end users”, mostly for affordable prices (USD1K-USD10K range). A couple of years ago while chatting with a CEO of one of the more professional registrars out there, I was told that on average, renewal fees for a portfolio owner on average equals 5%-10% of portfolio’s pay-per-click revenues, meaning, If the portfolio renewal is USD50K/Year then portfolio on average makes USD500K-USD1M a year in PPC revenues. I think that may have been true a couple of years ago before “domain tasting” but today to many who have participated in “tasting”, I think it is safe to say that the percentage, due to scaling, has been negatively affected, although they have increased their bottom line.
It is all depends how far down that Long Tail you can venture before you start trailing in the dirt. The closer to the dirt you get, the more sensitive your entire business model becomes.
Indeed and that’s one the signs that the industry is maturing imo. People are scaling it bigger and settling for lower ROI.
But besides that with the competition growing it’s getting much harder to reg domains with traffic, so these companies put more accent on end user sales and mass developing of they domain assets.
Thanks for this post, I was just thinking yesterday about how much domainers are really making. there are so many development options and so many names that are season that to assess a whole portfolio does not really give anyone an idea of what they can make. Real Estate for Example is dead with internet traffic, for the most part over the holidays. It seems that big industry has yet to really get the value of a domain name. Anyway, thanks for the information. I know I certainly do not average $50 a year per domain name. That would be nice however, we have around 5000 names.
I look at my domains as office buildings that I pay no lease, no rent, and no yellow page listing fees.
Google or actual people give me cash each day from my domain names I own.
I do window cleaning and one call from the internet could yield me anywhere from $100 - $400 U.S Funds. I am the expert these customers are looking for when they Google window cleaning in this city!
Thanks for the revenue per domain numbers. A few of my domains have adsense on them.
I tried parking my domains and it didn’t work out like I thought it would.
When hard working people Googles the internet and call me and pays me for my services - I feel like a million bucks each and every time!