Archive for March, 2010
Domain Name Appraised at $442,000 Expires, Apparently this Company didn’t think UPC.com was an asset
It’s not every day you see great domains expire. But it does seem like it’s happening more and more often, with the latest domain UPC.com which expired on March 1, 2010 heading to auction on NameJet.
Unit Parts Company (UPC), originally registered the name in 1995 and 10 years later, Unit Parts Company and its assets was acquired by Remy International. Unit Parts was a major supplier to the automotive aftermarket and had net sales of approximately $150 million in 2004 before selling to Remy in 2005.
Do you think UPC.com is a valuable name?
Apparently, Remy International didn’t think so and didn’t think enough of the name to renew it. While that might not obviously be the reason, anything is possible when it comes to end users of domain names.
The keyword UPC has an Exact Global Monthly Search Volume of 823,000. It’s Valuate.com appraisal sits at $442,000. UPC also stands for Universal Product Code, a barcode system that is used throughout the United States and Canada for tracking items in stores.
At the time of this story, UPC.com has over 100 bids with a current high pre-bid of $8,000 (the highest pre-bid of any name on NameJet right now). The name heads to auction on April 5, 2010.
Spending Millions on a Domain, DOES NOT = SUCCESS: PornHub.com valued at $660, yet millions of visitors
Sex.com heads to auction this week. Since the early days of the internet, sex.com has seen more ups and downs than any other domain name. The property, one of the most valuable and sought after pieces of virtual real estate, appraises at $14,350,000 USD according to Estibot.com. Estibot’s appraisal formula often uses past sales prices to help determine the value of the name and in this case, sex.com sold for $14 million in 2005.
Sex.com isn’t the largest adult destination on the web. Not even close. In fact, there are plenty of adult domain names like PornHub.com which ranks higher in the search engines over sex.com for the keyword “sex”, and the PornHub website gets over 11 million visitors per month, while sex.com barely breaks 150,000 unique visitors.
We use Estibot and Valuate.com all the time, and the engine is great. It helps us (as buyers and sellers) determine the value of a domain name.
But it’s not always great at gauging the true value of a domain name. Estibot appraises sex.org at $6,600 and appraises PornHub.com at a mere $660. $6,600 is roughly the same value that a buyer paid for the three character domain gzc.com in January.
Domains that cost less, don’t always struggle to succeed
Surprisingly, PornHub doesn’t struggle even though it doesn’t own sex.com. Of course, we’d love to sell our domains in the millions, and buy them on the cheap. After all, we’re domainers. But we’re also developers. And spending millions on a domain name like sex.com doesn’t promise success.
It might simply cause more problems for the next buyer who gets in over their head. Charles Carreon can tell you that. He’s the author of The Sex.com Chronicles and was kind enough to drop us a note and send us a copy after our previous story.
$14 Million for the original price of sex.com, probably could have gone a lot further with a lesser domain name — and a little more work.
Symbolics.com, The 25th Anniversary of the First Domain is less than a day away – What’s in store?
Being the first .com ever registered on March 15th, 1985 is a milestone in an industry that has churned out more millionaires than most can imagine, leveling the playing field for many in verticals ranging from dating to collectibles, to literally any type of business and hobby.
Being the first .com ever registered on March 15th, 1985 is a milestone in an industry that has churned out more millionaires than most can imagine, leveling the playing field for many in verticals ranging from dating to collectibles, to literally any type of business and hobby.
Aron Meystedt and XF.com made news in 2009, when Symbolics.com which belonged to a computer manufacturer, changed owners.
In 25 years of being registered, the domain never expired and it has never changed owners.
That is, until late 2009 when the acquisition by XF investments made news all over the internet and in the mainstream media.
If you visit Sybmolics.com today, a countdown clock appears at the top of web site. The latest blog entry was written on March 1st, 2010 and discusses one of Aron’s other ventures TrafficEstimate.com which was relaunched.
What’s in store for the Anniversary?
Whatever is in store for Symbolics.com in less than a day, Aron has promised a Big 25th Anniversary.
News has been trickling out by a variety of news sources celebrating the 25 year anniversary, but not much news has been put out by Aron in the last couple weeks. If you’re anxiously awaiting the anniversary, you have have less than 24 hours to go.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY, the Internet opened the door to business, and the world changed. Previously reserved for its academic and government users, the national computer network issued the first commercial domain name, symbolics.com, to a now-defunct computer company
….Barrons
Monday will see the 25th anniversary of the registration of the domain name Symbolics.com. Granted, it’s not particularly catchy, and to this day it’s renowned for nothing other than being the first. But it unwittingly became the eldest brother of a phenomenon that profoundly changed the world.
It’s not clear exactly what prompted a Massachussetts software company to contact the US Department of Defence – which was, at that time, responsible for administering the internet – and ask for it.
It certainly couldn’t have had any idea of the revolution that was to come – indeed, the world wide web was still more than five years away, and the internet was merely a network of computers used primarily for research purposes.
But Symbolics.com predated every other domain that we now type every day to shop, communicate, learn, entertain ourselves – even find partners
Years ago, I asked Marc Andreessen, creator of the first web browser, what surprised him most about the dot-com forces he helped unleash. “eBay,” he said without hesitation. “Who knew there was that much crap in people’s garages to sell?”
Personally, I’m a little more amazed at a site like Belch.com, “the largest collection of digitally recorded belches on the Net.” But maybe that’s just me.
It’s pretty mind-blowing that the dot-com domain is 25 years old. On March 15, 1985, a Cambridge, Mass., computer maker called Symbolics registered symbolics.com: the very first dot-com site. (That company, in its original form, died in the mid-1990s, and symbolics.com is now an odd blog about web sites.)
Lack of interest in domain names with high reserves, SnapNames March Auction Not Faring Very Well
The SnapNames Entertainment & Sports auction which is in progress and started on March 9, has over 500 domains up for auction, but very few bidders.
Are the names priced too high or is it just plain lack of interest among buyers? Just 7 domains have bids out of more than 500 names and the total amount bid so far is just over $4,000.
Why the lack of interest?
The auction that includes names like ScreenSavers.com and Troops.com has placed high reserves on the domains. Interested in the domain: TVBroadcasts.com? It’ll cost you at least $25,000 to meet the reserve set by the seller. In fact, the auction which has tons of sports domains to choose from like ProFootball.com, BasketballPlayers.com and more – has drawn bids mostly to its 4-character domains listed for sale: nowz.com, npia.com, and nyam.com.
The problem seems to not be a lack of interest to SnapNames.com, but a lack of interest for domains with high reserves. The website gets well over 60,000 unique visitors per month and its names are plastered all over the internet especially among domain blogs through their affiliate program. We would venture to say that many of these domains listed in their March Showcase auction could probably do better if the reserves were lowered.
Whether buyers have a fear of spending or whether sellers have a fear of selling – this is one auction that doesn’t appear to be faring too well.
A Tip on finding domain names on the aftermarket, the Easy and Free way: Get Acquainted with the Site
Finding domain names on the aftermarket, especially on auction sites can seem daunting but it doesn’t have to be.
There are a number of pay-services that can help you find better domains and provide statistics alongside them. But have you considered using the Search or Advanced Search features on websites like SnapNames and NameJet? They’re easy and free to use and you’ll be surprised by what you can find that others have not.
While the aftermarket search tools don’t provide much in the way of stats, it doesn’t take years of experience to spot a good domain.
If you prefer to pay for services instead of finding the information on your own, that’s one way and it can certainly be timesaving – but the technique many follow is to simply use the site’s search engine in a variety of ways. For example, watch what others are bidding on, then search for similar names that are expiring that have 0 or few bidders.
Get Acquainted with NameJet’s Improved Advanced Search Engine
Far from being an advanced search engine, NameJet’s search feature has come along way in the past year. You can start finding names without having to pour through the drop lists using keywords that interest you. Have you seen some of the names that people bid on?
Take a look at RankMyDoctor.com and RankMyHospital.com on NameJet right now. Both names are in PreRelease and head to auction on April 16th, 2010. Both names have over 40 bidders each. Neither domains have pagerank nor traffic, but both names have seemed to grab the interest of buyers – dozens of them. These names don’t interest us at all, but it’s an interesting example of what you can find on NameJet if you’re looking for similar names – or if you can’t afford to buy RankMyDoctor.com once it heads to auction.
Take a look.
A simple search on the keyword phrase “rankmy” will show you there are several domain names starting with the keyword “rankmy” on NameJet that have 0 bidders and all go to auction the same day as RankMyDoctor.com.
RankMyPhysician.com
RankMyNursingHome.com
RankMyChiropractor.com
RankMyInsuranceCompany.com
RankMyWord.com
RankMyWall.com
All of the names with the exception of RankMyWall.com and RankMyDoctor.com hold an appraisal value according to Valuate.com – with RankMyWall.com appraising at $45 and RankMyDoctor.com appraising at $35. The rest of the names in the list (including RankMyHospital.com) all appraise at $0. Maybe these names are catchy or someone has plans in mind, but with as many bidders as they have, they will probably auction off at an overvalued price.
Using the site’s own search tool is easy and free and quick. Search on keywords without bids that interest you. We regularly search on keywords like “Military” and watch the name up until minutes before its backorder due date, then snap it up for less than $100 since no other bidders got involved and we didn’t place a bid prematurely.
The keyword “social” also appears to be on the drop and attracting bidders. A simple search at NameJet shows results like Socialtips.com with 0 bidders and SocialMedias.com with just 2 bidders. SocialMediaJobs.net is also listed with 0 bidders. These names aren’t necessarily great or even good, but the point is, once in awhile you’ll discover names that are great or good that no one else has uncovered.
If you’ve got the time, hunting for a domain name on the aftermarket, can be easy and fun, especially if you’ve already got keywords in mind.
Retweet.com issues official Press Release on $250,000 sale, discusses Flippa for flipping sites/domains
Retweet.com issued an official press release today about the sale of the website for $250,000 – a sale that received a lot of mainstream press coverage.
The press release also discusses Flippa.com, the web site used to “Flip” the Retweet.com website after less than a year of being online.
I covered Retweet.com back in the early days, even before the web site launched after it was mistakingly listed on NameJet for auction. Then when the site launched and started climbing in traffic, to its meteoric rise in visitors that gave its next biggest competitor Tweetmeme a run for their money.
A look at the official press release
Retweet.com – a service that aggregates Twitter to help people find real-time news on popular stories – has just sold on Flippa.com for $250,000.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 12, 2010 — With zero revenue but generating millions of visitors every month, the seven-month-old Retweet.com was the subject of a hotly-contested auction on the Flippa marketplace. The site received forty-five bids over three weeks before the site finally sold. The knock out bid from an unknown investor was $48,000 higher than the previous bidder.
Since Flippa launched its website marketplace in June 2009 there has been a steady increase in the volume and prices of websites being traded. However, the recent successful sale of Retweet is the highest price paid for a virtual property in the Flippa.com marketplace.
Dave Slutzkin, the General Manager at Flippa commented: “The market’s growing so fast! We’re now seeing over $400k+ of websites sold every week, and this week will be bigger again. Although it doesn’t compare to other markets such as property and stocks, the significant increases every week show that there are big opportunities.”
Flippa is one of a growing number of sites that facilitate the trading of virtual property online, otherwise known as flipping. The auction mechanism is similar to eBay – website owners list their site on Flippa and bidders then compete for the prize, with the highest bidder winning the auction.
The term “flipping” was originally coined by property investors. On the Internet, “flipping websites” involves purchasing existing sites, adding value to them, then reselling them for a profit. However, despite the name, not all participants on Flippa are actually flippers – many are investors who buy and hold websites as investments that produce ongoing revenue.
The high price paid for Retweet seems initially surprising as the business doesn’t earn any revenue. Most of the higher selling sites traded on Flippa are businesses that generate profits, so buyers are able to value these sites as they would a bricks and mortar business. It appears the new owner of Retweet.com sees significant value in the domain name, the brand and the large volumes of traffic that the website receives.
As the leading marketplace for buying and selling websites, Flippa continues to improve functionality to facilitate large transactions such as the recent Retweet sale. The marketplace is currently in the process of integrating functionality of the Escrow.com site, to allow buyers and seller to have a higher level of confidence in their trade in virtual property.
About Flippa.com Pty Ltd:
Flippa.com is the largest global marketplace for buying and selling established websites. It has traded over $30 million in virtual property and presently lists more than 600 new auctions every week.
This is one Category Killer domain name that will “Fly Off the Charts”; Fly.net Expires, Unbelievable
Most domainers might be familiar with past sales of “fly” domains. Fly.com sold for a whopping $1.5 million in 1999 and was acquired in 2009 by Travelzoo for $1.8 million. Fly.co.uk sold for $181,042, Fly.co.za sold for $65,000 in 2010, and even Fly.ma sold for over $4,000 in 2007 via Sedo. Domain owners work in mysterious ways, and fly.net is one example.
The domain name expired on March 4, 2010 and is up for auction over at NameJet with a mere 4 bidders and a high pre-bid of $300. The domain itself gets over 1,000 unique visitors per month alone according to Compete and it’s a keyword that is searched globally over 1 million times per month. That’s an exact match type.
Why Fly.net expired, is anyone’s guess
The original owner of the domain going back to 1997, Chris Townsend, also owns slack.net – which is still an active and registered name. Fly.net is a huge domain to let expire, so either Chris Townsend has been slacking on renewals or for other reasons — the name just hasn’t been renewed.
If this name makes it to Auction on April 8, it’s going to be one whopper of an auction on NameJet.
UPDATE: Shortly after we ran this story, the owner of Fly.net renewed the domain name. Although NameJet still has the domain listed for PreRelease, when NameJet refreshes their database today, the name will no longer be up for auction.
WeddingGift.com, WeddingGifts.com: Pair of Domains Sell for $160,000
Sedo GreatDomains has been ringing up some significant sales recently. The premium domains auction site and parking program, also reported the sale of MusicVideos.com for $250,000. The competition for auction sites and domain parking programs has heated up over the last few years, but Sedo continues to beat the competition.
The new owner of the category-killer names (WeddingGifts.com and WeddingGift.com) has not been revealed while the registrant information points to Sedo Transfer Service – but the pair of Wedding Gift names managed to attract one savvy investor – who moved to acquire both the singular and plural to own the .com category.
The keywords “Wedding gifts” was searched globally (exact match) in the month of January approximately 110,000 times, while “wedding gift” was searched over 40,000 times. For comparison purposes, “birthday gifts” was search just over 130,000 times globally and “gifts” reached 1 million searches.
Other Notable Wedding Domain Sales
Weddings.org sold for $34,500 in 2008 in a Private Sale
WeddingPlace.com sold for $16,000 in 2008 on Afternic
WeddingChocolates.com sold for $12,611 in 2006 on SnapNames
GayWedding.com sold for $10,100 in 2008 on Sedo
WeddingCatering.com sold for $10,000 in 2007 on Moniker
WeddingGift.net sold for $3,600 in 2008 on NameJet
$800,000 Sale of Domain Guns.com Shatters 2010 .com record; Previous Sales of “Gun” Domains
Ron Jackson of DNJournal, the domain industry news magazine, is reporting that Moniker has brokered the sale of Guns.com for $800,000 shattering the 2010 .com sales records of .com domains by over 100 percent. The next highest .com sale of 2010 is PartySupplies.com for $360,000 which was also sold at Moniker, followed by Biking.com and Boating.com each for $250,000 which sold on Afternic in February.
Though the buyer hasn’t been disclosed, for the price tag of $800,000, it’s hard to imagine this name not being developed. In terms of visitor traffic, the URL guns.com had over 13,000 visitors in January 2010, and reached as many as 30,000 unique visitors in January 2009. As far as the search engines, GunBroker.com ranks at the top with over 1.5 million unique visitors per month for the search term “guns”. ImpactGuns.com gets nearly half a million visitors, followed by NRA.org with almost 200,000 visitors.
Here is some of what Ron Jackson had to say about the transaction:
You might recall that Guns.com was in Moniker’s live auction at the DOMAINfest Global conference in January but did not meet reserve. After that event Moniker brokers continued to work hard to close a deal for the category defining domain and have now succeeded. The name was transferred on Friday and the WhoIs record currently has privacy listings…
Previous Sales of Gun Domain Names
If you’re curious about previous sales of Gun-related domain names, here’s a list of sales pulled from NameBio:
GunVendor.com sold for $28,000 on Sedo in July 2009
SpearGuns.com sold for $14,000 on Monkier in April 2009
PaintballGun.com sold for $10,299 on NameJet in December 2008
GunSpace.com sold for $5,000 on Afternic in April 2008
Guns.tv sold for $140 on Sedo in June 2008
It’s MIND-BOGGLING to see the domains that expire, especially when they appraise in the six-figures
It truly is mind-boggling to see the domain names that individuals and organizations allow to expire. Some of the most promising domains end up on the aftermarket and fetch top dollar by buyers.
It’s not the owners who reap the rewards though. It’s the business savvy aftermarket companies and their partnerships with the registrars who make out big. Everyone has their reasons for letting domains expire – they forget to renew the domain, they go bankrupt, they just don’t care — the list goes on and on. But when it’s simply a mistake or oversight, it’s one of those things that give domainers a chance to pick up a great name at a great price.
Top domainers like Frank Schilling made a killing in the early 2000s when many gave up on the power of the internet and let their domains expire. And he’s amassed a portfolio of domains that is virtually unmatched. Yun Ye, who sold his portfolio of names he snapped up on the drop, raked in millions.
It is Mind Boggling in this day in Age
While the number of killer names that are dropping will never equal the flow of names in the early 2000s, great domains are still dropping all the time and that’s why it’s amazing to see some of the names that end up on the aftermarket.
Take TennisCourts.com for example. The domain name expired on February 26, 2010, and it’s now up for auction on NameJet. The name is appraised at $114,000 according to Valuate.com.
CRG also known as the Customer Relations Group allowed CustomerRelations.com to expire. It expired on February 23 and is now up for auction on NameJet, as well. Valuate.com appraises the name at $13,000. Customcabinetry.com expired on February 11. It’s valued at $15,000. The list is endless.
While the volume of GREAT expiring names has certainly slowed down over the last 10 years, the volume of drops is still high, given the number of subpar domain names like 18900000000.net (which is also on NameJet) that someone chose to register.
But if you have the time, there is plenty of opportunity for you to turn someone else’s oversight, into something big for yourself.
