Uncategorized Archives – We're Fusible

I had my first sale with Toby Clements

I submitted my first domain name studentloancenter.com to Toby Clements’ newsletter (website forthcoming) since he took over 100% of it from Rick Latona and it’s database of more than 15,000 subscribers. The newsletter by the way, includes Fortune 100 companies and end users.

I also made my first sale to SimpleTuition Inc., a company that launched in 2006 and offers tips, advice, interactive tools, and deals to college students.

My asking price of $5,000 for the domain in Toby’s newsletter was also my sales price. I acquired the name on NameJet in 2008 for $2,100. I had plans for the site, but changes to student loans came along and I no longer wanted to operate a student loan website, so I finally decided to try and sell the name by submitting it to [email protected].

Whether you think the sale of studentloancenter.com is a bargain or not for the buyer (and think I could’ve sold for alot more), one thing that I can tell you is that I had the name up for sale online before and couldn’t seem to get a bite that would go past an inquiry and lower-than-expected offer.

That is, until I listed it in the newsletter.

The newsletter approach has become increasingly popular among buyers and sellers of domain names, and it’s always been the most effective way for me to sell domain names, particularly with Toby Clements (who helped broker and facilitate several domain deals for me in the past).

Mike Bowden (who helped me complete the transaction) and Toby are both easy going and great to work with and kept me informed each step of the way.

For those of you interested, the rules are very simple, if your name is accepted, you will be under a 30 day exclusive from the last day the name is ran in the newsletter. If your name sells, you’re a 15% commission of the selling price or a flat fee of $250.00 (whichever is greater).

Buyers passed on the domain at TRAFFIC NYC 2009, now Salesforce.com unveils Database.com

TechCrunch is reporting that Salesforce.com, the cloud computing company that runs the world’s #1 sales application, has launched Database.com, its enterprise cloud database. Last year, if you recall, the domain name database.com went up for sale at the TRAFFIC 2009 New York Domain Conference – with a reserve range of $800,000-900,000 USD.

Buyers passed on the name, with some commenting that: “Database [Database.com] is not worth $250,000 let alone $800,000!”.

Not everyone saw the potential of the name, but Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff did.

Marc Benioff says: “We see cloud databases as a massive market opportunity that will power the shift to real-time enterprise applications that are natively cloud, mobile and social.”

Built to power cloud-based applications, Database.com will offer an infrastructure for enterprise apps to deliver updates and information in real-time. Developers can write their applications in Java, C#, Ruby, PHP or more and can run their apps anywhere – on Force.com, VMforce, Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure or Heroku.

Apps can also run natively on any device, like an iPad, an iPhone, Android or Blackberry. Salesforce says that these apps can all call the Database.com APIs whether it be for a small application or for an app that supports hundreds of thousands of users.

Salesforce.com heavily invests in domain names for branding purposes. In 2007, the company acquired Force.com. As Andrew Allemann pointed out: “The branding change was necessary because the company has expanded beyond simply sales management.” eWeek ran a story that discussed the domain acquisition.

Apparently Salesforce was in negotiations for the Force.com domain with a California man who had used the dot-com designation for his company, which was named for his surname, according to media reports. Its not clear how much Salesforce paid for the right to Force.com, but the ownership of Force.com has enabled Salesforce, finally, to settle on a brand with continuity.

“We needed a name change. The message wasnt clear enough,” Benioff said during a question-and-answer session with press and analysts following his keynote address. “The key thing was getting the brand out there, a new brand. [We had] sales, service, marketing [and then] heres the platform and the UI. On the platform side, we needed a revision of naming. I did it under duress of the employees. Today I think we really got that.”

Read more about the debut of Database.com.