Yahoo’s sale of Contests.com was a win for everyone involved.

When Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) sold the domain name Contests.com on Tuesday, the mood was upbeat. It was a relatively big domain sale from a big company for a lot more money than the seller anticipated.

I was surprised to see some people questioning the sale. Larry Fischer made some fair points. TechCrunch went a little overboard, suggesting this was more than just a simple decision to sell an unused domain. (People who read the TC article took it a step further. Two commentors thought it was some sort of inside deal as a favor to the buyer. Gotta love conspiracy theorists.)

Here’s my take: it was a good domain sale. The seller got more than they required and the buyer probably would have paid more.

Yahoo set a reserve of $150,000 and was willing to take that much. The buyer was determined and probably would have gone higher had an internet bidder not pulled out at $360,000. But is $380,000 that bad for this domain?

It’s true that the domain was inserted into the auction relatively late. That may have to do with internal reviews at Yahoo. But the level of promotion inside the domain industry was better than for just about any domain sold at a live domain auction: a solo email blast to qualified buyers. Buyers knew about it and there were many qualified bidders at the auction who decided not to participate. It was very different from Toys.com, in which only a handful of bidders were aware and kept the secret to themselves.

This sale can only be good for the industry. So I’m just going to treat it as what it was: a good sale in which both the buyer and seller are happy.

DNJournal’s latest Top 20 chart of domain sales prices is shown below.

Fly.com leads the list with an amazing $1,760,000 sale. The domain was brokered by Sedo and bought by TravelZoo, a publicly listed company. TravelZoo plans to use the domain to launch a travel search engine later this month.

Brian Clark, senior vice president and general manager at Travelzoo, said:

“We are delighted to acquire fly.com for our new offering. The name is a perfect match for Travelzoo’s renowned approach: simple, fun, and world class. Where others see doom and gloom we see opportunities to serve travelers and advertisers with innovative approaches to finding the best values in travel.”

This sale, in combination with YP.com selling for $3,850,000, as well as several other high ticket sales that remained unreported, will serve as a timely reminder to owners of premium domains not to sell their domains too low. (December’s $300,000 sale of SC.com to Standard Chartered Bank comes to mind.)

Other noteworthy sales include:

• Roulette.it for $30,000 (the domain is still in escrow, but it was probably bought by a casino or casino affiliate)
• Fired.com for $20,600 (seems a bit much; it’s a catchy term but what are they going to use it for?)
• Miami.us for $15,000 (looks like a steal, even for a .us domain)
• Ergo-Direct.com for $12,000 (this domain was bought by German company ERGO Versicherungsgruppe AG, which already owns and uses Ergo.com, but not ErgoDirect.com)
• WirelessHeadphones.com for $9,000 (the domain was sold to a domainer and the price seems just right)

source DailyDomainer.com