Recent domain name sales that have garnered some pretty hefty prices included 2 domains sold at RickLatona.com.  They included MeetPeople.com that sold for $100,000 and Plums.com that sold for $26,000.  Of the two, some might would have though that a 5-letter dictionary word domain like Plums.com should have sold for more, but when you consider the high value placed on social networking sites and dating sites these days, you quickly come to realize that $100,000 for MeetPeople.com has the potential of becoming a bargain price for the person or company that purchased it.

Of the social networking domain names I personally own, I consider my eCliques.com to be the most valuable.  It has great potential for the right buyer with social networking and multiple community portal plans.  If anyone is interested in buying eCliques.com, I’ll consider offers provided they’re in the 5-figure range.  My InternetHighSchool.com has the potential to be a great social networking domain name with lots of montetization potential.  I visualize it being able to sell just about anything teenagers would be interested in, plus all the supplies and apparel associated with high school students, plus GED degrees, cheerleader supplies, etc.  I’m the original owner of InternetHighSchool.com and its got a clean history.

BathSafety.com sold for $33,725 on Moniker during the week of April 21, 2008, along with Go.org for $25,350 and OnlineFinancing.com for $17,500.  In a blindfold test no one would have ever guess that BathSafety would have sold for more than either Go.org or OnlineFinancing.com.  Of the three, I feel OnlineFinancing.com has the bigger and more profitable audience, but its up against stiff competition in the online financing arena, whereas BathSafety.com is a great domain name that accurately describes a very narrow but lucrative market niche.

The top domain name sold on Moniker/TRAFFIC during the week of April 21 was actually SearchEngines.com, which sold for $92,500.  I would have thought it would have gone for higher.  A great one-word d0main name that sold was Winnings.com — which sold for $27,000 on Moniker/CAC.  Okay, I give up — why didn’t Winnings.com sell for a higher price?  I think that domain was worth so much more than $27,000.  This is living proof that you need to develop your domain names if you want to get maximum value.  You can’t always hold out for name alone.

On the 3-letter domain name front, MNO.com (a super 3-letter domain) sold on Sedo.com for $18,250, while HD2.com sold for $15,000 on Afternic.  Would someone please give me an education via comment.  I must be getting old or else I’m asleep at the wheel.  For the life of me I’m not sure I know what and HD2 is — do you? 

Two days ago Bucket.com sold on Sedo.com for $30,000. Sure it was just one word, it was a dot com, it only had 6 letters, its easy to say and easy to spell. But $30,000? C’mon folks, what is the buyer thinking? Hopefully, he plans to sell buckets. But what if he doesn’t. Then he had no choice but to seek ways to branding the term bucket until it becomes a household word with another meaning. As for me, I hope he opts to sell buckets, for if he doesn’t, branding the word bucket for another meaning altogether will not be easy.

Currently, the highest bid on Sedo’s 7-day auction is at $29,000 for the domain name, Derek.com. If you’re wealthy and your name is Derek, I guess you can say its worth paying $29K for Derek.com. But if you just bidding on this domain name because its a one-word dot come, maybe you better develop a good business plan for a domain name before you place a firm bid on it.

While visually screening an expired domain names list I found, to my surprise, a one-word dot com, that had expired on March 1, 2008. I checked and to my surprise and astonishment, the domain name had not been taken and was available for registration. So why was this domain name overlooked. Well, for one, it is not in the common vernacular of the general public. Secondly, its likely not in all dictionaries yet, but it will be in a matter of time. Why? Because its a relatively new Internet word, one of the new words of our decade.

So what’s the word and domain name. Quite simply, Wikifying.com — an Internet buzzword that is repeated on 25,800 web pages indexed by Google. The word itself may be less than 5 years old, but certainly less than 10 years old. Still, it is growing in popularity and will only be used more and more in the future. For example, a recent article at Popsci.com announced that Google was in the process of “wikifying” its Google Maps program. An August 2007 article at Columbuser.com about Ohio elections ran under the headline “Wikifying Ohio’s Elections.”

For anyone familiar with the widespread popularity of Wikipedia.org and Wiki’s in general, you’ll know that my discovery and registration of Wikifying.com is worth many thousands of dollars. Given how I just stumbled across the domain doing one of my manual screens of a 90-day dropped domains list, the lucky find reminds me of those diamond discoveries we read about once every few years when a tourist visits the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas and just happens to discovers a valuable diamond, in the same spot where thousands of other tourist have trampled beforehand.