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Could Dirt.com really sell for $5,000,000 on Flippa? Rumor is NewsCorp is interested

Dirt.com

It sounds like a pretty wild rumor, and for now that’s all it is.  

A reader tipped me off that the owner of Dirt.com, who put the name up for auction on the internet site Flippa for $3MM, might be entertaining a deal with NewsCorp – who is considering selling off its social networking site MySpace.

The story of Dirt.com started back in September 2010, when the domain name sold on GoDaddy for $100,000. 

For months, the owner displayed a “Coming Soon” page, until December when the name went up for auction on Flippa.  Despite the big payment and obvious construction of a website, the owner decided to auction the property, because in his own words:  “I recently sold my Company and have decided to take a hiatus for thirty-six months to travel and focus on Foundation and Charity Work.”

Less than a week after listing the name over at Flippa, a website was unveiled. 

Whether the owner was creating buzz for the pre-launch of Dirt.com or whether he truly was headed off to do charity and fundraising (as I wondered back in December), whatever the case is now it seems he has definite plans for a website and charity work – that is, if the domain name doesn’t sell for $5,000,000 – 50 times its purchase price.

Yesterday, Yessman (the owner’s Flippa username) posted a message on the sales page that  gave more details.

Since so many people are watching this domain sale on Flippa, and there has been so much speculation and rumor on the internet in various forums and Blogs regarding the sale, it may make some sense to lay out a few discussion points about the domain, the site, and the sale at this time.

1. As mentioned in the description, I am an Internet Entrepreneur. I have just sold my Company and the reason that I wish to sell the dirt.com domain name is that I am planning on taking a hiatus for thirty-six months to travel and focus on my Foundation and Charity Work.

2. Thankfully, I have no financial need to sell Dirt.com at this time. However, due to the recent interest in Dirt.com from buyers throughout the world, it would have been foolish for me not to test the waters in selling the domain name versus building the business I had planned for it. This is why I have placed the domain up for sale on Flippa. Any good business person would look at all available options, and that is exactly what I am doing here.

3.. The business that I have planned for Dirt.com is to build the World’s Largest Celebrity Gossip and Entertainment Site. If I do not sell the domain, I will proceed to build the site out as I continue my Charity Work. I will also donate a portion of the dirt.com advertising proceeds to the ASPCA, The Humane Society, and PETA.

4. I am willing to sell the domain now as there is an opportunity cost in building out the World’s Largest of anything. If I do not get a buyer now, I will proceed to build out the Site, and sell it down the road after it is has reached the metrics in my business plan. I will continue to do my charity and foundation work, but will obviously have to spend time, energy, and effort, building out Dirt.

5. At that time, the value of the site with be more than the 5 Million asking price today…Substantially More. There currently is a site up where the domain exists. Already, people in Hollywood are talking about Dirt.com, and we haven’t even gotten busy yet! Weather i sell it now for the 5 Million asking price, or sell it later for much, much more, is simply a matter of what is called “Opportunity Cost”. Any serious Entrepreneur following this sale will understand the concept.

6. It has been reported throughout the web that the new owner of Dirt.com (me) purchased the domain for $100,000 just a few months ago.
Is the site worth 50 times the purchase price (if the reports are true)?

The answer is best served with a question…

…Name a more brand-able domain name available in the world right now…especially in the Entertainment Space (Which happens to be a Multi-Billion Dollar Space)…YOU CAN”T

If the rumor of NewsCorp partnering or buying Dirt.com becomes reality, it would be interesting to find out whether its listing on Flippa had anything to do with it. 

It would be even more interesting to see the final sale price.

Have a story tip? Submit it here.

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Something fishy about the “Most Active” auction on Flippa bidding at $830,000?

Flippa Most Active Acction

A number of users are voicing their opinion and displeasure on what is the “Most Active” auction currently over at Flippa.  The bidding price, which has topped $800,000 for a website that claims to make thousands monthly by selling iPads and iPhones – is just another indication that some Flippa users are clearly irritated with the listing.   

In addition to what appears to be artificial bidding by upset Flippa users, many have left comments on the listing.

What’s the issue?

What’s at issue here are some of the claims made by the seller, which include an Alexa Rank of 2,097 and over 500,000 unique visitors per month. 

The site being put up for auction is affordableelectronicsandmore.yolasite.com, which is hosted on Yola, a popular website builder and hosting service that was started in 2007.  Yolasite.com, is the website with the Alexa rank of 2,097, not the sub-domain as one reader commented: “…yolasite.com has an alexa ranking of 2,097, not your site”.

The traffic and Alexa ranking claims are just the tip of the iceberg.  

Users chimed in with a laundry list of issues in the comments section which include: how could someone buy iPads for $200 for resale, how come there is no checkout on the site, why is the seller’s eBay user id is new with zero feedback?  And on and on.

As one user writes to the seller in the comments: “Well so far you have a bunch of shill bidders, who aren’t going to pay you $10 let alone a quarter of a million dollars. The sad part of this is, that these sales just make a poor impression on Flippa than anything.”

Flippa isn’t perfect, but it could probably improve its system when it comes to certain types of listings.  

In March 2010, Flippa was credited with selling Retweet.com at public auction for $250,000 – it’s biggest sale at the time, since the site launched in 2009. 

Is this listing for affordableelectronicsandmore.yolasite.com, really legit?

Whatever this listing is, it’s certainly upsetting several Flippa users.

UPDATE:  Since this story went online earlier this morning, the auction listing has now been removed.

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Juggle.com acquires Debate.org from WebCorp owner Philip Ferreira

juggle

Juggle.com, the company that builds and creates websites focused on engaging users with quality content, acquired the website Debate.org from WebCorp owner Philip Ferreira.   As reported here, a few weeks ago, Debate.org sold on Flippa for $130,000.

Juggle

Juggle CEO Stephanie Leffler and President Ryan Noble, founded the company in 2008 after selling their ecommerce platform MonsterCommerce, to Network Solutions in 2006.  According the company’s info page: “In the last year, Ryan Noble and Stephanie Leffler’s leadership has helped Juggle.com surge from 400,000 monthly unique visitors to 1.7 million. Their dedication to publishing has grown the site from a mere 150,000 pages of information to 8.3 million and counting. The company has even grown beyond the flagship site, adding on MonsterMarketplace.com and ScalableWorkforce.com in the last year.”

Juggle Debates

Juggle updated its own home page and Debate.org.  The Debate.org About page now reads: “Debate.org was acquired by Juggle LLC in the winter of 2010. Juggle builds and creates websites heavily focused on engaging users with quality content, organized information and useful features. Moving forward, Juggle will focus on improving the site by expanding the debate platform to allow multiple debate formats, enhance usability and design, and improving member profiles and features.”

Juggle already runs its own online debates,  covering a variety of topics like politics and religion, on debates.juggle.com.

WebCorp Auctions

Philip Ferreira the President of WebCorp who sold Debate.org to Juggle, has been using Flippa in an attempt to sell off several of his company’s assets in order to focus on DORK.com (a social gaming web site with over 1,000,000 games played).  Auctions have included: Debate.org, Dontvote.org, Swap.net, NewCars.org, and others.

The public auction for Swap.net, a proprietary swapping classified Website like CraigsList ended at $8,000 – failing to meet its reserve price in early December.  Dontvote.org sold for $2,100.   The auction for Newcars.org ended on November 25, but failed to meet its reserve price.  The auction ended with 4 bids, with the high bid coming in at $20,000.

Philip Ferreira recently listed some not-so-premium names up for sale including a group of dating names: DateFree.net, DateFree.org, DateFree.us, and DateFree.biz.  Bidding at $11, the lot of names already reached their reserve price.   In addition to the dating names, Philip listed TheWimp.com which is already bidding above its reserve at $65.

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Domain seller may lose big at Flippa looking for a fast sale

Raffaella Fico Italian Model

A domain seller at Flippa may lose big on the auction of the domain name Italian.net.  Advertised as a “Premium Domain – Fast Sale – 326,000,000 Results”, the owner looks to have acquired the name via Sedo in June 2008 for $15,682.00.  However, the way the auction is going (which closes in an hour), the high bid is only $5,000 – and it’s already over its reserve price.

As with most auction houses, Flippa’s guidelines on bids and offers are clearcut.  According to Flippa: “accepted bids that meet or exceed the auction’s reserve price are legally binding for the buyer and seller, and enter the running to win the auction.”

If the name sells at $5,000, the auction is resulting in a quick sale for the seller, and a bargain price for the buyer.  The seller appears credible, so one lucky winner may get a domain name that is roughly valued at $69,000 by Valuate.com, the free domain appraisal service by Cybertonic.

Here’s a look at the listing description:

You’re bidding on a premium domain that was registered in 1996 and hasn’t been dropped since. Nothing has been done with the domain and it is currently offline. When it was online just displaying a parked page, it managed to get a page rank of PR4. There are many possible things to rank the domain for, or you can just hold on to it for real estate value. Some possible idea :

Learn.Italian.net
Cook.Italian.net
Travel.Italian.net

The search “italian” on Google yields 360,000,000 results. I need to sell the domain quickly so it’s priced extremely under value.

The auction closes at midday, unless of course additional bids come in, which could cause the auction to be extended for hours or even days.  In the last four hours of an auction on Flippa, the end time of that auction is extended by four hours if a higher bid is received.

Final sale price: $6,400

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Dirt.com owner who put domain up for sale for $3MM on Flippa, unveils web site

Dirt.com

In a previous blog post, I reported about the auction of Dirt.com on Flippa for $3MM.   The listing seemed to be fueled by the owner’s desire to travel and focus on charity work, after reportedly selling his company. 

According to the listing description by the seller Yessman: “I recently sold my Company and have decided to take a hiatus for thirty-six months to travel and focus on Foundation and Charity Work. The recent interest in Dirt.com from buyers throughout the world has peaked my interest in selling the domain versus building the business I had planned for it.”

Dirt.com site unveiled

The Dirt.com site was recently a “Coming Soon” page that hinted at a celebrity gossip web site, similar to TheDirty.com (a popular celebrity gossip blog with visitors in the hundreds of thousands).  

In the last few days though since the listing on Flippa and my story here, the owner has unveiled a web site on Dirt.com (screen shot above).  The site looks, and sounds somewhat similar to CelebrityGossip.com (a property owned by domain development company: First Beat Media).  Only instead of dirt being dished every 5 minutes as it is on CelebrityGossip.com, it’ll be served up every 15 minutes on the Dirt site.

Unrealistic Sales Expectations?

The domain Dirt.com was purchased for $100,000 at GoDaddy auctions in September, and the owner is trying to flip it with a buy-it-now price of $5,000,000.

I’m not sure if the owner has unrealistic expectations with the multi million dollar price tag, but according to the discussion thread on Flippa, he even argues that Dirt.com is more valuable than Loans.com (a domain name that sold in 2000 for $3 million). 

Whether the owner is creating buzz for the pre-launch of Dirt.com or whether he truly is headed off to do charity and fundraising, from the angle of a domain investor, it would definitely be amazing to see the name sell for anything in the high six figure or low 7-figure range.

The auction for Dirt.com ends in three months.