Month: November 2010

Categories
News

3D domains becoming a hot trend: Have you started buying?

3D games

Mike Berkens has wrote about it.  Stephen Douglas has wrote about it.  Combined, the number of comments for both stories has reached nearly 1,000.  I even wrote about it this week in a story headlined: 3D.com delivers an amazing pitch for its domain name, after reading Stephen Douglas’ story and stumbling upon the changes to the 3D.com web site that had transformed from a parked page to a web site in recent months.

When it comes to 3D, there is definitely a trend taking off in 2010 with companies and individuals getting into the mix of things by developing 3D movies, computers, televisions, cameras, games and a slew of 3D-enabled products and technologies.

3D Domain Names

With domain names, it’s always a gamble especially if the name isn’t a category-killing name, but as 2010 sees an increase in 3D products, you can bet that most 3D domain names worth buying will be gone soon.  As a matter of fact, if you do spend the time searching for names, you’ll notice that most 3D product domains weren’t registered in the last 12 months, they have been registered for years.

NoktaDomains owns nearly 1,000 domains with the keyword 3D, including 3Ddomains.com.  Even YummyNames owns 3D domains with names like 3Danimations.net listed for sale for $3,277 and 3Dalbums.com listed reasonably at $677.

Mike Berkens owns only a handful of 3D domains among his portfolio of thousands at Most Wanted Domains, but names like 3Dflatscreens.com (which looks to have been registered in August) could be a windfall for the savvy domain investor.  Stephen Douglas landed 3DSLRs.com (referring to single-lens reflex cameras) this past week as a hand-registration. 

Earlier, Sony announced more than fifty 3D games including Killzone 3 a first person shooter (screenshot above), are in development for the PlayStation3 console.  Industry competition for 3D gaming, as with 3D TV is also heating up. 

I’ve gambled on a few ‘3D casual game’ names, putting myself back about $30 – with names like 3DMilitarygames.com and 3DArmygames.  It’s a no-brainer with the best-selling video game of all time already enabled for 3D – Call of Duty: Black Ops.

But it’s worth the risk to wait and see all the 3D developments over the next year.

Categories
News

Group buying is hot, just not the domain name: Groupbuying.com

group buying

Back in mid October I wrote about GroupBuying.com up for auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C Miami with a reserve range of $100,000+ .  Although group buying is one of the hottest industries right now, the domain name didn’t sell at auction. 

As I also mentioned in the story – if one thing is certain, it’s that group buying start-ups don’t need category-killing names to be successful.  Start ups in the group buying space have their share of success stories, despite not having what many might call “great domains”. 

While groupbuying.com certainly describes its industry, the phrase “group buying” is not something you would expect consumers to search on when seeking out bargains and deals online.

According to Goolge’s AdWords: Keyword tool, the exact monthly search volume [globally] for the keywords ‘group buying’ was less than 3,000 searches.  Meanwhile ‘deal of the day’ had over 40,000 searches in the same timeframe, ‘daily deals’ had 27,100 searches and ‘hot deals’ raked in over 90,000 searches globally.

The group buying industry is abuzz with speculation that Google may buy GroupOn, the Chicago-based daily deal web site that launched in late 2008 – and is valued over $3 billion. 

But the news most likely won’t help the chances of groupbuying.com selling for a six-figure asking price, but other relevant domain names in the ‘daily deal’ space could certainly benefit.

While ‘group buying’ is a hot buzzword, it’s not the case with consumers.

Categories
News Trademarks

Media giant Hearst Corporation acquires domain LittleAngels.com for $100,000

hearst tower

The news broke earlier this week on GreatDomains.com that the domain name LittleAngels.com sold for a whopping $100,000.  But until now, the new owners had remained a mystery. 

Earlier the registrant records switched from Sedo over to Hearst Corporation, one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies that owns 15 daily and 38 weekly newspapers, nearly 200 magazines around the world, 29 television stations, and has ownership in leading cable networks such as ESPN.

Now that the name has traded owners, what are the plans for the domain name: littleangels.com?

At the time of this story, littleangels.com is nothing more than a parked page at MelbourneIT.  But if you dig a little deeper, for example search trademarks on the United States Patent and Trademark Office, you’ll find that Hearst filed for the “LITTLE ANGELS” trademark back on July 26, 2010.

According to the filing, Little Angels will serve up: ‘Digital media, namely DVDs, videos and CDs featuring children’s audio visual programing and music; computer applications for mobile phones, namely downloadable children’s audio visual programing and music; sound recordings.’

‘Angels’ Domain Names

On a somewhat related note, littleangels.com isn’t the only big sale of an ‘angels’ domain in 2010.  Earlier this year, Angels.com was acquired for $200,000 by the MLB for its the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim web site.  The price tag put the sale in 37th place among the Top 100 sales of 2010, according to the current rankings at DN Journal.

While the DN Journal rankings don’t include littleangels.com yet, the sale price will rank it somewhere among the top 60 sales, tied with Prize.com, Cheesecake.com, and other domain names that sold for $100,000.

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News

Calvin Ayre: ‘Slots.com purchase is one of the best deals I’ve ever made’

calvin ayre

Billionaires have been known to blog, but it’s quite rare that billionaires blog as often as Calvin Ayre who averages about 3 to 4 stories per month on his online gambling news site at CalvinAyre.com. 

What’s even more rare, is for billionaires to blog about domain names.  But that’s just what Calvin Ayre did this week in a story entitled: Slots.com purchase is one of the best deals I’ve ever made.

Have you been wondering whether Calvin Ayre regrets paying $5.5 million earlier this year for the Slots.com domain name?

Not a chance, Calvin writes: “I’m sure a lot of people thought I was off my rocker when they first heard that Bodog Brand had purchased the Slots.com domain at auction for $5.5m in May of this year. After they learned the deal had gone down while I was enjoying a drink at London’s L’Atelier restaurant, they probably thought I was wasted, too. And while I might have been enjoying a bevvie or two (or three, etc.) at the moment I pulled the trigger, I have yet to experience a single shred of ‘morning after’ regret.”

Read more about Calvin Ayre’s thoughts on the Slots.com purchase.

Categories
News

FamilyTree.net domain name sells for $11,000 – Familytree domains have been selling in 2010

family tree

This is still not officially confirmed, but it looks like the new owners of FamilyTree.net are the same owners of FamilyTree.com.  At the time of this story, the name has changed registrants and currently re-directs to FamilyTree.com. 

Network Media owns FamilyTree.com.  The company represents several popular websites, catering to the female demographic including – Families.com, eRomance.com, FreeCoupons.com and SnugglePie.com.  eRomance.com according to sales records was purchased in 2008 for $100,000 through Moniker.

Family Tree domain names

If you haven’t noticed, over the last several months somebody has been busy acquiring ‘familytree’ domain names.

 While FamilyTree.net sold for $11,000 at Sedo earlier this week, September saw three back-to-back sales of ‘familytree’ domain names. 

Familytree.info sold for $899 on Sept. 11, 2010 and on the same day Familytree.co.uk sold for £25,000.00 at Sedo.  

Familytreeweb.com sold for $1,500 on the following day.

A year before, Familytree.co.uk had sold for $40,000 on Sedo according to DomainTools.