Yesterday there was quite the stir on Twitter after Swetha reported another batch of jaw-dropping .xyz sales. User @JackDomainer did some research and found that an overwhelming majority of her sales were still not developed, which he thought was suspicious given the price tags. Theories started flying around, and even the Castello Brothers and Rick Schwartz chimed in with vague statements alluding to some grand conspiracy.
Grab some popcorn and read it for yourself here:
WOW Swetha very nice #XYZ sale!🌈
Now lets take a closer look to some sales or “sales” she reported at @NameBio so we #domainers can see what is in those #domains many months after and learn about what “end users” have in the #domain they bough at 4,5,6 figures🧐🚩THE LIST👇🧵
— Jack Domainer (@JackDomainer) November 26, 2022
The low rate of development was the only “proof” provided so far. But why report fake sales? Well isn’t it obvious? To boost the value of her own assets so she can dump them on unsuspecting wholesalers, hoping to reproduce her incredible success, for inflated prices.
But ask yourself this… how many times have you seen Swetha wholesaling premium .xyz domains? I may have missed it, but I don’t recall seeing that.
For years I’ve been in the awkward position of publishing these sales reports. All I can go on is a screenshot, which she graciously provided for every single sale report since the day she started sharing. But screenshots can be faked relatively easily.
I could ask her to share her screen with me while she logs in to a marketplace, but even that could be faked with browser extensions that modify the page live. It’s more difficult than faking a screenshot, but not impossible. Not good enough.
To get a definitive answer, I reached out to Swetha and asked for the unthinkable. I asked if she would give me her username and password to her Afternic account, so I could log in myself and verify all the sales she has ever reported at this marketplace.
I felt bad even asking. Here she is sharing her valuable sales data with the community, all while being given endless grief about it. And now some stranger is asking to log in to her Afternic account. A lesser person would have just said “fuck it”, stopped reporting sales, and told me to go away. But you know what… she agreed! It was at this moment I knew it was all true and factual, but still, I’m going to “due diligence” the heck out of this.
So I quickly logged in to her Afternic account and visited this URL to get a dump of all the raw sales data. Then I started taking screenshots of her sales summary page. I logged out and let her know I was done so she could change her password. Then I started diving in.
One by one I checked the sales against what we have in our database. Every single one of them was perfect. Except I discovered something shocking. Quite a few of the sales were never reported. However good you think she’s doing based on what she has reported, she’s actually doing even better. That’s insane!
Now remember, Swetha has been reporting sales for quite a while now. All this time, she had no idea I would ever ask her to log in to any of her accounts, or which one(s) I would ask for. So if she was going to fabricate sales, she would have no way of knowing to always keep Afternic clean, as opposed to DAN or Escrow.com or whatever. Thus I now feel 100% confident in all her reports, not just the Afternic ones.
I also now feel confident in saying that Swetha is probably in the Top 100 of all domain investors who have ever lived, and she is probably in the Top 5 of all investors who aren’t part of the “old guard”. Maybe even #1 of the new generation.
But more than that, she is a kindhearted individual who is generously sharing what is working for her even though it makes new acquisitions more expensive for her. And even when the haters show up in droves, she stays the course. Thank you Swetha.
Is it possible that she’s a shill for the registry, and they’re creating hundreds of accounts across multiple marketplaces to buy the domains from her? I mean anything is possible. But it seems highly improbable that they would lock up funds and trust that she would always give them back, just to create the appearance of demand. They don’t benefit from the wholesale aftermarket, so it would just be for the sake of hand regs.
And then how do you explain the ones that are developed? And how do you explain other people getting large XYZ sales? Believe what you want, and skepticism is generally a healthy thing, but this theory seems so out there and lacking in any evidence that I have to think anyone who believes it is jealous (or loves conspiracy theories more than Rob Monster).
Here is the full screenshot I took of her sales summary page, with unreported sales blacked out for her privacy. Again, I took this screenshot myself while personally logged in to her Afternic account, it was not shared with me. I saw it with my own eyes.
Michael Sumner is the CEO of NameBio.com. Previously he was the lead developer at State Ventures which owns and operates geo domains such as OceanCity.com and Maryland.com. Michael was also the co-founder of DN Media, a company that was involved in seven figures worth of domain name transactions.
Why all these unnecessary investigation on Swetha alone. Can we do the same king of investigation to other top Sellers in the industry? Enough is enough, let us believe her sales in total.
And thank you Michael for all these endeavors to clear the doubts in many minds.
I kind of understand, she’s the biggest success story in the past decade of the domain industry. It’s understandable that some people would find it hard to believe. I’m personally relieved to have removed all doubt, at least for myself.
Great investigative reporting, thanks. Swetha’s sales are really amazing.
In addition to your detailed and definite proof, People also raise eyebrows over the possibility of proxy selling by the registry itself.
I mean I am from India, and no one I know in my active domaining community has met Shweta (Though I am sure she is a real person).
So, here are my addons:
1. She had most of her sales registered on Afternic.
First of all, it is the worst place to rotate your money with a 20% commission. and they are not the best in automatically reporting sales either.
2. Several of her sold domains were developed. Though many are not developed too, but it is a norm rather than an exception.
I even find the ratio of developed vs not developed sales at par with the industry.
3. Majority of her sales came at the time of crypto/nft peak, which is understandable, investors were just funding everything nft/web3 without second thoughts and the founders had to start things quickly.
4. Her median sale prices have increased as .xyz has gained attention (mostly thanks to herself) which also looks realistic.
Earlier she sold damn good domains at realistic low prices, now she does not sell them cheap.
5. Finally no one would have as much conviction in a TLD as one who has sold a few domains in that TLD. She was an early mover she sold a few and bought a lot more, as they were cheap, and that escalated.
Now even when she makes a 50 grand sale, third parties are much more skeptical to take it as a signal of .xyz’s adoption while she invests even more having a lot of first-hand experience.
I think we can finally put this to rest then. Swetha has been making these sales for years, got incredibly fortunate that web3 picked up on .xyz, and has rocketed into the stratosphere.
Also that original tweet of “none of these are developed” is very weak. Half the names I sold aren’t developed and still pointing to the original nameservers. It’s just the way of the game. If you had more than 3 sales, you’d know this.
That was my first reaction as well, having built multiple portfolio sites for large holders. Part of it was showing domains they sold that went on to be developed, and it was insanely hard to find examples. For him to not know that, he must have made very few sales, if any.
Thank you Michael . Swetha,I may not have known you personally but I want you to know,I am on your side and I support you.
I even made a $9888 sale for freshcut.xyz when I decided to give it a try .Guess what?It still has an afternic lander. So this must be a fake sale but money is in my bank account and I ignore who doesn’t believe .
Anyone can feel free to contact Afternic to verify (I don’t care )
Grown adults starting threads and Twitter nonsense to pick on a successful woman investor. You all have paper hands and couldn’t match so its all fake .
Shame on you all who know everything because it’s hard to see a fellow woman beat you all to hold out on her investment after some years to reap a bounty harvest. It was her time to shine .
It’s shameful how some people continue to doubt on Swetha despite all her efforts to show what is working for her.
I just think that some people in this domain industry are envious and jealous about her success that’s why they continue to throwing tantrums on her, it’s okay all these will be put on rest, all judgemental elements against Swetha should be put on hold.
Thanks Michael Summer for the investigations.
Show me the money
Where the tax returns… Trump
Who and where the buyers are?
Where is this Swetha located and did you talk to s/he in person?
When one goes to Godaddy’s Appraisal tool, it shows ten comparable sales. Try putting in any of the high priced names that Swetha says she sold at Afternic. None of them will show any sales of .xyz names with high prices. Or even the particular name itself. It’s as if the names are not in their database. It’s in Godaddy’s interest to show the highest prices possible, to encourage others to buy names. Yet, even though these names were sold in Afternic, they don’t show up as comparables in the Godaddy Appraisal tool. I don’t understand this.
But this stands in contrast to your investigation, and seems to be proof of the sales. So I am very confused.
Michael, you understand Godaddy’s Appraisal tool works. Can you explain why these sales are not showing up as comparable sales?
I have no special knowledge of GoDaddy’s GoValue tool. But I have seen a massive, massive amount of comps from that system and the most recent year I’ve ever seen a sale from is 2019. I think they delay loading in sales for quite a while to prevent people from reverse-engineering their earnings, for SEC reasons.
I really don’t care s/he makes money but if you really want to dig to the issue,
Show us the tax returns. Trump..
Follow the money
I’m no Swetha and my largest sale was only just shy of 8k. But in the 4 years I’ve invested in domains I have made 4 sales into the 4 figures and several retail 3 figure sales. Only one of my 4 figure sales (second lowest at $3,500 actually) is developed. Even my 8k sale which sold back in August still has its Dan nameservers.
Now there’s a big diffrence between my sale’s prices and Swetha’s but for some reason or another it seems common from where I am sitting for a name to not get developed for one reason or another even after someone spent a non trivial amount of money on it – then again I guess their definition of trivial may differ but I personally am not in the habit of dropping thousands of dollars (or more) for something I’m never going ot use.
Talking about this now 🤯😱
https://www.clubhouse.com/room/MdA6y4Ol?utm_medium=ch_room_mc&utm_campaign=wCAiKhVlKBMq4ORNHo9JmQ-475896
Well done swetha and Michael. Now there is No king in the domain industry, only Queen that’s swetha. Now lets ask the so called domain king to show the list and prove that he is actually a king of dot com buying or he is just a random dot com promoter but all kinds of stuff and pretending to be dotcomer?? Domain king should come up with his portfolio and share publicly and show us that he buys only dot com? I think he heavily invested in xyz as well and now he unable to get sales so he fumbled and and started crying on queen to show data.
Anyway Namebio trusted platform in the planet, i know He must confirm domain sale before posting. GOOD JOB Mr. Michael Sumner
Were any new sales announced in April, or March this year?
Two were reported at the end of March:
https://namebio.com/unnamed.xyz
https://namebio.com/twentyfourseven.xyz
None since. I’m not sure if her sales slowed down or she lost her enthusiasm for reporting.
I’m so tired of this Swetha thing. Can we give it a rest?
The 8 out of 10 five figure sales I randomly checked were developed. Definitely legit sales in my opinion. Haters going to hate.
When you are very successful, there are more jealous people who try to destroy your success, they are full of dark energy but they don’t know that a successful person is always a winner and a jealous person is always a loser.
This is truely a miracle, I think her success comes from her persistence. Thank you for your reporting.