Sean Markey explains why these mediocre domains sold for so much.
As I did last month, let’s review the domains Newfold Digital sold in March of 2023 — specifically those domains with a strong backlink profile and existing authority (vs. those that are inherently valuable as domains in and of themselves).
Jurn.org – $5,300
A four-letter .org that definitely fails the radio test, Jurn.org was definitely purchased due to its SEO value. A DR 58 domain with over 3,000 referring domains… this is a pretty fair price for such an asset.
SkylineHotel.com – $2,000
A site with solid authority, it was immediately used as a redirect to a southeastern Asian casino site built on a previously expired domain, religioustolerance.org (which itself was sold for $9,800 on April 5th of 2023).
[Interestingly, two sites were immediately redirected to SkyLineHotelNY.com: TheFillmoreDistrict.com redirects to EdinburghsChristmas.com].
CultureAndTourism.org – $2,650
More of the same! This one resolves to an old New Orleans restaurant’s site (which is down at the moment, but which is definitely another SE Asian casino site). CultureAndTourism.org ALSO has several previously expired domains with juice 301’d through this site to the final destination.
BuildABetterBurb.org – $2,540
A name that’s probably worth the price of registration (if that) without any existing SEO authority, this long .org went for $2,500+ because it’s a glass-half-full of “SEO juice.” The domain has 871 referring domains from highly authoritative sites like Wikipedia, Bloomberg, Business Insider, HuffPost, etc. Yet it sits un-built-out, resolving to a parking page.
NCWD-Youth.info $4,950
A .info! Any time you see a .info in a sales report, it’s probably there because it has some SEO authority. In this case, an absolutely ugly .info with a dash has authority. There are over 2,400 referring domains, and it is a DR 66. It currently resolves to a rebuild of the old site.
Heptune.com – $2,600
A DR 42 with over 2600 referring domains, with some big heavy hitters like Wikipedia, Huffpo, Cornell, NASA, and The Atlantic. The site looks like it used to be a general info/fact site and is ranking for over 100 keywords. Many of those keywords are related to farting, which sure is… interesting.
