2010 Archives – We're Fusible

Flippa releases its 2010 Year in Review

Some are skeptical about the sales numbers and auctions over at Flippa, but even the most doubtful have to be impressed with the site’s success in 2010. Despite a number of failed auctions reported as “Won” like Fiverr clone Zeerk.com, Flippa has some pretty good stats to show for the past 12 months.

Flippa, which launched in June 2009, released its year in review Tuesday and the site is growing fast.

How did things look in 2010?

Over 150,000 bids placed. $21MM worth of websites and domain names sold. 2 million unique visitors. 1.6 million logins.

Philip Ferreira the President of WebCorp, was one of the site’s biggest users selling off a number of online properties including Debate.org which sold to Juggle.com.

And the company is trying to battle shill bidding and other problems that regularly plague online auction sites.

“…the team suspended or banned over 2,300 user accounts in 2010, primarily for registering duplicate accounts, shill bidding or not following through on a won auction transaction – the types of users the rest of the Flippa community won’t miss.”, writes Andrew Knibbe on the Flippa blog.

Six-figure sales, a bright spot for Flippa

But not all was bad for one of the top marketplaces for buying and selling websites and domains. The company was involved in a number of high profile six-figure sales, including the sales of: s9.com, retweet.com, list-of-companies.org, debate.org, and blogtopsites.com. The company issued a press release after selling Retweet.com for $250,000 – but it was the sale of s9.com that set a new sales record at Flippa, selling for $400K.

Other high points in 2010 include the sales of Audioo.com, Qwitter.com, Song.ly, and Facemash.com for $30,201.

As Andrew points out, “The precedent set by these terrific websites in 2010 is already looking to continue through 2011 with exciting listings of the likes of Links.com, ay.com, songbright, dirt.com and twaud.io.”

The listing of Dirt.com, could turn out to be a news maker if a deal is struck with NewsCorp, but according to a number of tips I’ve received by readers, the listing of Dirt.com for $3 million is nothing more than a publicity stunt for the website’s eventual launch which is rumored to have people at Sundance 2011.

Read Flippa’s recap of 2010.

HugeDomains.com overtakes BuyDomains.com for entire 2010 according to Compete

Maybe you’ve typed in a web address into your browser and landed on a BuyDomains.com “For Sale” page. Or maybe in the past year you’ve typed in a domain name and landed on a HugeDomains.com “For Sale” page.

Well, according to a rough estimate by Compete, more people are landing on HugeDomains’ “For Sale” pages than they are on “For Sale” pages on the BuyDomains.com web directory.

Last month alone, HugeDomains drew 44,000 more visitors than its competitor. The marketplace that allows buyers to shop from over 200,000 domain names attracted 132,813 unique visitors while BuyDomains barely broke 88,000 visitors, despite the site featuring over 1.5 million names.

But the numbers don’t tell the whole story.

As you can see by typing in a HugeDomains.com domain like MechanizedWarfare.com, you’ll be re-directed to the sales page on the HugeDomains web site. BuyDomains on the other hand, doesn’t re-direct domains, but rather features a prominent, text banner at the top of each landing page that reads something like: “The domain junglewarfare.com is for sale. To purchase, call BuyDomains.com at 781-839-7903 or 866-866-2700. Click here for more details.”

So while HugeDomains web site traffic has trumped BuyDomains for the entire 2010 year, you can bet the network traffic across 1.5 million domain names is significantly greater. Still, the story of HugeDomains.com is still notable.

HugeDomains.com

Back in May of this year, Mike Cohen wrote a story titled HugeDomains.com = the next BuyDomains.com, which for some including myself, was the first time hearing of HugeDomains.

Mike Cohen has some background on the site’s founder, Andrew Reberry.

Andrew Reberry’s company, TurnCommerce.com got accredited as an ICANN registrar a little while ago as NameBright.com which is currently one of the top 60 largest registrars in the world. Now of course all of the domains registered there are their own… But that just goes to show you that this man is on a mission. Anybody who is running a huge operation like that should have his own registrar, plus it makes sense because you can save some nice cash. Guys like Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling have their own registrars as well.

According to the TurnCommerce website: “TurnCommerce is located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains of Denver, Colorado. The business was incorporated in August of 2003 and we have experienced triple digit growth numbers nearly every quarter since launch.”

In addition to running HugeDomains, the company also owns and operates a number of killer properties ranging from Margin.com to Enough.com.

While it’s hard to find a lot of information on Andrew and his company, there’s likely a reason as Mike pointed out: “he [Andrew] is registering thousands of domains and making improvements. I tried to get the lowdown but the man kindly refused when asked for an interview. I guess he’s just not done yet and ready for the spotlight but really, the man has accomplished a lot in a very short period of time and should be recognized for that… It’s impressive for a thirty something year old self made businessman / entrepreneur. He’s now part of a very elite group of domainers.”