Tag: flippa

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Purchased for $100,000 in Sept., Dirt.com domain name now up for auction for $3,000,000

dirt

Dirt.com, arguably the most brandable domain name available for sale today? 

Some investors in the domain community might argue otherwise, but for the owner of Dirt.com, they’re arguing: “Dirt.com has unlimited possibilities, and can reach across multiple verticals. Whether you have the next Facebook, next Groupon, next TMZ, next Green or Solar Technology Company, next Wikipedia, or the next big new idea, Dirt.com in the right hands can virtually ensure your success.”

The domain name is now up for sale at Flippa.

And you might not be surprised to learn that the auction has not reached its reserve price of $3,000,000.

It appears the owner of the domain, who purchased it for $100,000 at GoDaddy auctions in September, is putting it up for sale on Flippa with a buy-it-now price of $5,000,000. 

The owner had plans for unveiling a celebrity gossip site, but according to the sales description on Flippa, they’ve had a change of heart:

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.  If you are interested in owning Dirt.com, or partnering for the next big thing, I am open for discussions.”

Whether it sells or not, the listing is certainly going to attract attention with its high price.  Since being listed yesterday, comments are starting to pour in, and with almost 4 months left in its listing, the thread is sure to become long.  Right now the seller is debating with commenters over which domain name is better:  Loans.com or Dirt.com.

As one reader by email points out, Dirt.com could be seeing an uptick in traffic itself, due to the popularity of TheDirty.com, a gossip and satire web site with monthly traffic that numbers in the hundreds of thousands.

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News

WebCorp owner Philip Ferreira selling off domain assets on Flippa, to focus on social gaming site Dork.com

dork

Philip Ferreira the President of WebCorp, which owns and operates online properties like Debate.org and Find.net, is selling 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). 

Philip has decided to use Flippa, the marketplace for buying and selling websites, to sell off properties including Debate.org, Swap.net, Newcars.org, and Dontvote.org.  Philip writes in the auction descriptions:

For those of you not familiar with my other listing(s) on Flippa right now, I am the owner of WebCorp.com and I am selling my entire portfolio of domains and websites in order to focus on DORK.com

According to Flippa, 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.

WebCorp auctions on Flippa

WebCorp currently has some of the most active auctions on Flippa.

The public auction for Debate.org, a growing social network website with 1 million page views per month has met its reserve price and is in extended bidding, with the current bid at $66,000 (as of Dec. 7, 2010).  Each time a higher bid is submitted, the auction is extended another four hours on Flippa.  I’ll be posting updates on the auction and final sales price in the comments.

Dontvote.org, a political election voting site, has reached its reserve price with the bidding at $2,100.  The public auction has just under 2 days left before closing.

The final WebCorp auction is for Swap.net, a Craigslist-like website.  The site was launched this past October and hasn’t generated much revenue (a whopping $4.19 from 2,320 AdSense impressions and 9 clicks, Philip writes), but the auction has received a high bid of $6,100.  However, the auction has yet to meet its reserve price.

UPDATE:  The auction for Debate.org has closed.  The winning bid came in at $130,000.

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News

Could Flippa be a better domain name marketplace than SnapNames & Sedo? One auction tells more

flippa

The domain name Offended.com just sold minutes ago for $19,500 at Flippa.  Offended.com sold at SnapNames almost a year ago in January 2010 for $9,075.00  but as sales records show, the name never changed hands.

After checking the registrant record, I noticed the domain name had been put up for auction by Andrei Polgar, a familiar face in the online domain community.  Andrei launched AuctionPus earlier this year, a domain auction site that promised no more crappy domains for sale.  But despite its mission, many could argue that the reason AuctionPus, Bido, and other auction sites haven’t taken off is because of low-quality, overpriced domains. 

Andrei also started DomainDiscussions, an online discussion board for members to discuss domain names.

Andrei (who writes at DomainingTips) might be remembered best among domain bloggers for an auction he ran last January, where he put up several of his names for sale (including offended.com) in a auction hosted by SnapNames that netted him $66,295.   Necklace.net was the best seller in the bunch, selling for $25,000.  Andrei had originally marketed the SnapNames auction in effort to raise six-figures for his domain related projects which included AuctionPus and DomainDiscussions.  

But despite developing and running his own auction site which is still online, Andrei went with a safer bet and put Offended.com up for auction at Flippa (which had nearly $300,000 in sales in the last 7 days alone). 

The domain name, which has been parked and listed for sale at Sedo, one of the world’s largest and most successful marketplaces for domain names, has had 0 offers since its listing.

What pitch did Andrei give buyers on Flippa?

The auction on Flippa had received 30 bids as I was writing this story, and had reached its reserve price with a $13,000 high bid.  But right before publishing the story, the name sold for its Buy-it-Now price of $19,500.  Take a look at the original screen shot below that I was going to use to headline the post.

flippa auction

So what’s the pitch Andrei gave buyers on Flippa?  Because, the formula seems to have worked, although until the transaction completes, it might just be another flop like the listing on SnapNames in January. 

Take a look at the pitch Andrei used over at Flippa:

I follow flippa on a regular basis and this is by far the best domain which has ever been auctioned on this platform:

1) Registered back in 1998

2) Currently parked and receiving thousands of unique type-in visits

3) 5154 uniques in 2010 so far (again, this is type-in traffic, the domain is not even developed)

4) 769 uniques last month (again, this is type-in traffic, the domain is not even developed)

5) The first page has been archived back in 2001 according to the Wayback Machine and this, along with the age of the domain (it has been registered since 1998), will give you a huge SEO edge over the competition

I have attached two traffic screenshots from the parking company, one for 2010 so far and the other one for October. If the winner is an established member of this community, we can handle the sale without an escrow service. If the winner is a member who doesn’t have a lot of history on Flippa, we will use Sedo.com or EscrowDNS.com as an escrow service and the escrow fees will be split.

What sets apart Flippa?

What sets apart the domain listing of Offended.com on Flippa versus SnapNames and Sedo, is more difficult to know, but one auction certainly isn’t an indicator that Flippa will be taking over Sedo or SnapNames as auction sites anytime soon. But for Andrei Polgar, listing the domain over Flippa, could be a nice pay day.  And if the deal closes, it looks like the SnapNames auction that never closed worked in Andrei’s favor.

Have you put up for domain names for auction at Flippa? How did they do?

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News Trademarks

Recent sales of Facebook, iPhone, and Twitter domain names

twitter facebook

Since its launch Flippa has been a goldmine for domain and web site owners who quickly flip for cash. 

Although there are a large number of people selling legit properties, there are others who sell questionable sites and domain names.  And while not every listing is necessarily a violation, either way, the demand continues to grow on the Flippa marketplace for all things Google, Apple and of course social networking: particularly Twitter and Facebook.

While most might call it risky behavior to flirt with trademark violations, the latest sales data over at Flippa indicates not much is going to change anytime soon.

Deals are getting done despite potential problems down the road for new owners. 

In case you’re wondering what’s been selling, here’s a look at some of the recent sales of Facebook, iPhone and Twitter domain names/web sites sold through Flippa. 

Facebookfanstore.com sold for $1,400 today
Twitterfollowerswidget.com sold for $41 yesterday
Trafficfacebook.com sold for $610 yesterday
iPhoneinsanity.com sold for $350 yesterday
Topfacebookmarketing.com sold for $225 on Nov. 19
Facebookfansnow.com sold for $1,010 on Nov. 19
Twittermarketingblog.org sold for $77 on Nov. 18
Twitterfollowerservice.com sold for $100 on Nov. 17

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News

Twitter domain names and websites see strong sales on Flippa

increase my followers

Flippa, a marketplace for selling websites and domain names, is helping owners of Twitter-related domain names and websites see strong sales.  Flippa sellers have access to a huge crowd of buyers.  In October 2010, traffic to Flippa was nearly 250,000 unique visitors according to Compete. 

For sellers looking to be quickly rewarded for registering a Twitter domain or established web site, the figures are strong – especially compared to other recently ended sales reported by Flippa.

The sales today include:

Thetweetmaster.com won for $80
Twitterfollowersnow.net won for $100
Increasemyfollowers.com won for $1,750
Twitterfollowing.info won for $100

In March 2010, Flippa was credited with selling Retweet.com at public auction for $250,000 – it’s biggest sale since the site launched in 2009.  The company even published a case study about the sale entitled:  How Retweet.com was built then sold for $250K.

Tell us about the Retweet website sale.
We’ve only sold Retweet.com through Flippa. We originally planned to sell the website through a private broker, but later decided a competitive public auction was our best route for this domain.

We acquired (purchased) the domain during the explosion in the popularity of the Twitter.com platform.

Mesiab Labs had been building marketing software for Twitter for nearly 6 months when we saw the growing market demand for real time news and how Twitter was an essential tool in making this possible ( Hudson plane crash ).  Now since news spreads through Twitter by users retweet’ing stories, we figured retweet.com was the most appropriate name for such a service.

After the domain name was acquired we spent the next couple of months building it up as a side project. We worked with crowd-sourced designers (ed: 99designs.com ) and a few highly-skilled outsourced programmers to help complete the project while we focused on our ( Mesiab Labs ) bottom line.

The website began to grow organically after online blogs and other press announced the release of Retweet.com, the popular name created much buzz around the web ( positive and negative ).

What inspired you to sell Retweet?
The website eventually got to a point where we realized it obviously shouldn’t be a side project ( rather someone’s main focus ).  Since our expertise is in marketing software platforms, we felt that we had taken retweet.com as far as we could. This combined with our new focus on our latest startup company Jounce, Inc., we decided to sell.

The full case study can be read online at Flippa.

You can expect the Twitter sales to continue as Twitter continues to grow in numbers.

A few Twitter facts (updated September 14, 2010 on Twitter’s web site)
Twitter has 175 million registered users.
95M tweets are written per day.