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Rick Schwartz Puts Together Another Strong Domain Name Sale; PunchBowl.com Re-Directs to MyPunchBowl.com

MyPunchBowl
MyPunchbowl.com helps you plan a party that your guests will always remember by bringing your party to life with ideas, invitations, favors, gift registries, photo/video sharing, and more.

Each domain sale by Rick Schwartz is always exciting and always big.  Last week Rick announced the upcoming sale of the domain PunchBowl.com – which re-directs to MyPunchbowl – a website that helps you plan a party that your guests will always remember by bringing your party to life with ideas, invitations, favors, gift registries, photo/video sharing, and more. What a great transaction.  For Rick and for MyPunchBowl.

According to Rick’s blog post that discusses the sale:

“In the not too distant future I will be announcing my 12th domain sale is PunchBowl.com. Another multiple 6 figure deal plus other considerations. There should be a press release forthcoming and the buyer will decide how much of this to go public with as there will be a confidentially clause .”

No official press release has been published yet, but with the name already re-directing looks like just a matter of time. They also have a blog, but haven’t announced news of the Domain Name.

Rick has made a number of landmark sales over the years, and it’s been an interesting domain ride to follow his story. His trackrecord and success with Domaining and more importantly, his insights on his blog are a wonderful source of information. Hopefully, the media and end-users take more notice on these landmark deals. The sale of Candy.com which was huge in terms of a domain name, didn’t seem to get that much press in the media, but with more and more notable sales by Rick and other domainers, more people will take notice.

Some of Rick’s notable domain sales include:

236.com to IAC

Property.com (Undisclosed)

Candy.com $3M+++

Men.com $1.3M

iReport.com to CNN for $750K

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Twitter domain news: TweetLater.com changing its name to SocialOomph.com

tweetlater

TweetLater, the popular third-party application Twitter tool which gets over 200,000 visitors per month, has decided to rebrand themselves by changing their domain name. 

Although Twitter encourages the use of the word ‘Tweet’ (as long as their users are protected), TweetLater has decided to go with SocialOomph [a name much harder to type in by far, especially with the letter ‘o’].

Here’s what TweetLater had to say about the name change:

From Monday, August 31st, 2009, TweetLater.com will be no more and will be known as SocialOomph.com.

The transition to the new name takes place over the weekend of August 29th and 30th.

Why The Change?

To date we have been focusing on providing productivity solutions for Twitter users. We decided to change our name to allow for future expansion into other social media solutions, and to ensure that our brand does not conflict with any current or future legal rights of the Twitter organization.

To allay any speculation, we want to make clear that this is an unsolicited, proactive and preemptive action on our side.

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Taking a Look at Domain Name Purchases with the word ‘Domain’ in the Name Over the Past year

Yummy NamesIndeed many domain names that are purchased with the word ‘domain’ in them, end up in the hands of domainers, aftermarket websites or registrars.  During the last year there have been several notable purchases like YummyDomains.com, GamingDomains.com, ByuDomains.com, Domain.pl and many more.  We take a quick look at some of these names, and what they’re up to now.

Domain.pl which was purchased in September 2008 for the cool sum of $45,000 went to European Domain Name Registration website, EuroDNS.  In a smart business move, EuroDNS also acquired Domain.my via Sedo for $16,000 a month later in October.  Both names resolve to EuroDNS. 

Byudomains.com (an obvious typo of BuyDomains.com) was sold at Sedo for $3,260 in Septebmer 2008.  The name doesn’t appear to have been purchased by BuyDomains.com as it sits on a parked page, and according to Domain Tools, the site doesn’t get any significant traffic whatsoever. 

GamingDomains.com has done a great job with their name that was purchased in October 2008.  Gaming Domains offers aged Premium Gambling Domains for Sale and it’s a fully developed website.  They even show up on the first page of Google Search results for the phrase “gaming domains”.

YummyDomains.com was also purchased in October 2008, by Tucow’s YummyNames.  Tucows saw their Second Quarter profit rise in the recent Earnings report.  YummyNames owns premium domain names that generate revenue through advertising or resale, and owning YummyDomains.com makes sense.  They purchased the name from Afternic for $2,800.

Other domains with the keyword ‘domain’ over the past year to note:

MyDomains.net purchased for $1,200 (parked at Sedo)

iDomainName.com purchased for $1,088 (parked at GoDaddy)

An interesting name that was acutally purchased in 2007 for over $17,000 – DomainNameAuctions.com – sits on a parked page.

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Pre-Bidding for HongKongHotel.com Reaches $5,000 on NameJet

hong kong hotel

UPDATE: The final closing price was $10,000.

The domain name HongKongHotel.com has reached $5,000 in pre-bidding over at NameJet, with over 100 bidders.  Estibot gives this name an appraisal of $75,000.   The Global Monthly Search volume for this exact phrase last month topped 33,000.   HongKongHotels.com has very few U.S. visitors per month according to DomainTools, but the search term “hong kong hotel” on Google search has nearly 10 pages of Sponsored Links, so with the right development, this could be a moneymaker. 

This name will be fun to watch, and we will make sure to tweet the final sale price and update this post.  If you want to place a pre-bid, backordering for this name ends at 11 PM PST tonight.

A little more background information can be found at Domain Tools.  Apparently, the name was first registered in 1998 but was allowed to expire.  And as many domainers have been pointing out, Bing is alot more domainer-friendly.  If you type the search term in Google versus Bing, the results are very different.  Depending on whether you type it with or without quotes, sites with the keyword phrase in their name, definitely appear higher in the search results.  Below is a screenshot from the first page of Bing search results for the search term “Hong Kong Hotel”:

Bing Hong Kong Hotel

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Domain Name Melodious.com Expires, Up for Auction at NameJet

bird singing

The domain name Melodious.com expired, and it’s set for auction over at NameJet.  According to Domain Tools, the name was originally registered in 1997.  Estibot gives the name an appraisal of $15,000, but with a current high pre-bid of $120 and 29 bidders, the appraisal sounds pretty high.

Using Google’s Keyword tool, the term Melodious gets an ‘Exact’ Global Monthly Search Volume of 8,100.

The .net version is owned by Melodious Data Systems. The .org is owned by DotOrgNames.org, and nearly all other extensions of the name have been registered for years.