Tag: sedo

Categories
News

DesignContest.com sells for $40,000 at GreatDomains

design contest

The domain name DesignContest.com has sold at Sedo’s GreatDomains for $40,000 USD. 

The DesignContest web site, which is already online but has unfinished business in terms of development and content, plans to run logo, web and other graphic design contests.  The site has a feel of 99designs.com, a popular ‘design contest’ web site that has nearly 60,000 projects completed to date and last month alone paid out almost $1 million to designers ($742,096, to be exact).

In April, 99designs, had nearly half a million people visit its site, according to Compete.

Interestingly enough, DesignContest.net, runs a similar web site and currently owns the #1 spot in Google for the search term: design contest.  In 2010 DesignContest claims to have awarded $42,238 in prizes.

DesignContest.com, which still appears to be in Beta, has a number of test contests online.  But based on the track record of 99designs and other clone sites, the $40,000 investment for the domain name seems like a smart investment.

Last year, Contests.com was acquired by National A-1 from Yahoo! for $380,000.  The Contests site is online, but still under construction.  While not much is known about the plans for Contests.com other than the WordPress site that is online, launching a ‘design contest’ web site might not be such a bad idea.

UPDATE:  DesignContest.net purchased the domain DesignContest.com.  DesignContest.net left a comment on this story: “DesignContest.com has been acquired by DesignContest.net. The new version (V2) of DesignContest.net will be launched on .com in early 2011 to bring new unique functionality and services to it’s customers that look for top results in graphic design.”

Categories
News

Will the sale of Gambling.com even come close to $20MM (its previous sale price)?

online gambling

Fusible.com was the first blog in the Domain industry to report about the auction of Gambling.com, shortly after reading a tweet sent through Calvin Ayre’s web site announcing Media Corp had retained Sedo to sell Gambling.com. 

Hours earlier, Media Corp had issued a press release through BusinessWire: ‘Whilst the Group has received a number of very significant indicative offers for www.gambling.com, the Board believes that a formal auction process with the World’s leading domain name broker will achieve the best possible outcome and valuation as Sedo is uniquely positioned to present the domain to global gambling brands and other qualified buyers.’

Purely a Domain Sale?

Gambling.com, if you recall, sold for nearly $20 million in 2005.  However, the sale wasn’t purely a domain sale. 

According to Sedo back in 2005: ‘The sale of Gambling.com turned heads when it hit the multi-million dollar mark and sold for 20 million dollars.  Also included in the sale were benefits of a direct mail database and affiliate program connections.’

In 2010, will Gambling.com even close to its multi-million dollar sales price from 2005? 

Back in 2005, Casinomeister wrote about the sale.

“Gambling.com is the number 1 listing on google.com for “Gambling” search and has over 500 other internet and affiliate sites linking to Gambling.com globally. It also has extensive expertise in direct mailing and has built a double opt-in database of over 200,000 members.”

Times have changed.  Gambling.com is no longer the number 1 listing.  Though type in traffic is always a nice perk, long term businesses want to own the search engines.

What are people saying?

Over at Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, the site that was originally tapped to auction Slots.com, members are a bit skeptical that Gambling.com will get anywhere near that $20 million price tag.  Here’s a look at some of the comments:

Christoff says, “Superb domain but will never get $20m for it”
 
Brean78 says, “For what its worth, I think Gambling.com has suffered from a bit of an identity crisis for a while now. It appears to be heavily focused on sport (for traffic I presume), but I don’t know too many people that associate gambling with sports betting.”
 
Graham says, “20 million?? I just don’t see this as good of a domain as something like onlinecasinos.com, sportsbetting.com, casinos.com, etc. where the people are coming to the site knowing exactly what they want to do. Gambling is too broad and I don’t think would convert that great, nor have the player value that some other terms might carry.”
 
Categories
News Trademarks

Media giant Hearst Corporation acquires domain LittleAngels.com for $100,000

hearst tower

The news broke earlier this week on GreatDomains.com that the domain name LittleAngels.com sold for a whopping $100,000.  But until now, the new owners had remained a mystery. 

Earlier the registrant records switched from Sedo over to Hearst Corporation, one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies that owns 15 daily and 38 weekly newspapers, nearly 200 magazines around the world, 29 television stations, and has ownership in leading cable networks such as ESPN.

Now that the name has traded owners, what are the plans for the domain name: littleangels.com?

At the time of this story, littleangels.com is nothing more than a parked page at MelbourneIT.  But if you dig a little deeper, for example search trademarks on the United States Patent and Trademark Office, you’ll find that Hearst filed for the “LITTLE ANGELS” trademark back on July 26, 2010.

According to the filing, Little Angels will serve up: ‘Digital media, namely DVDs, videos and CDs featuring children’s audio visual programing and music; computer applications for mobile phones, namely downloadable children’s audio visual programing and music; sound recordings.’

‘Angels’ Domain Names

On a somewhat related note, littleangels.com isn’t the only big sale of an ‘angels’ domain in 2010.  Earlier this year, Angels.com was acquired for $200,000 by the MLB for its the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim web site.  The price tag put the sale in 37th place among the Top 100 sales of 2010, according to the current rankings at DN Journal.

While the DN Journal rankings don’t include littleangels.com yet, the sale price will rank it somewhere among the top 60 sales, tied with Prize.com, Cheesecake.com, and other domain names that sold for $100,000.

Categories
News

FamilyTree.net domain name sells for $11,000 – Familytree domains have been selling in 2010

family tree

This is still not officially confirmed, but it looks like the new owners of FamilyTree.net are the same owners of FamilyTree.com.  At the time of this story, the name has changed registrants and currently re-directs to FamilyTree.com. 

Network Media owns FamilyTree.com.  The company represents several popular websites, catering to the female demographic including – Families.com, eRomance.com, FreeCoupons.com and SnugglePie.com.  eRomance.com according to sales records was purchased in 2008 for $100,000 through Moniker.

Family Tree domain names

If you haven’t noticed, over the last several months somebody has been busy acquiring ‘familytree’ domain names.

 While FamilyTree.net sold for $11,000 at Sedo earlier this week, September saw three back-to-back sales of ‘familytree’ domain names. 

Familytree.info sold for $899 on Sept. 11, 2010 and on the same day Familytree.co.uk sold for £25,000.00 at Sedo.  

Familytreeweb.com sold for $1,500 on the following day.

A year before, Familytree.co.uk had sold for $40,000 on Sedo according to DomainTools.

Categories
News Video Games

German gaming portal Bigpoint acquires Ruined.com for $7,800 for its post apocalyptic third person shooter

ruined online

Bigpoint, one the largest German gaming portals and one of the top 3 gaming portals worldwide, has acquired Ruined.com from Sedo GreatDomains for its post apocalyptic third person shooter called ‘Ruined’.

Bigpoint originally used the domain name Ruinedonline.com for its site which debuted in October.

According to an article in Gamasutra: ‘Hamburg, Germany-based Bigpoint said that it’s adding 250,000 new registrations every day, and with the pending official launches of Battlestar Galactica and the company’s first U.S.-developed game Ruined Online, Bigpoint expects growth to continue.’

As of late October, the company claims to have over 150 million registered members of its browser-based games.

Bigpoint owns nearly 1,000 domain names for over 65 online games bundled on its game portal.

The company issued a press release about the launch of Ruined in early October:

Bigpoint Inc., the US-based subsidiary of Bigpoint GmbH (www.bigpoint.com) – a worldwide leader in online gaming – today unveiled its first browser game developed in North America. Set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, Ruined (www.ruinedonline.com) is a fast-paced, arena-style combat game that includes high-end features common to traditional console games.

“We came to the United States to extend and optimize our existing portfolio of games and to create new titles specifically for this market,” said Heiko Hubertz, CEO and Founder, Bigpoint. “With Ruined, we believe we’ve taken a huge step forward in producing a game that looks and feels like something you get with console and PC games, but requires nothing more than a browser to play.”

While still in early development, Bigpoint is showing-off a playable demo at the Game Developers Conference Online in Austin, Texas this week. In its current form, the game includes two arenas based on well-known San Francisco landmarks. Players can select one of three characters and engage in a deathmatch against other live players.

In developing Ruined – which is being built atop the Unity 3 engine – Bigpoint has partnered with dSonic Inc., an award-winning audio production company, and Cinematico Inc., a full service 3D design, animation, and motion capture studio. Bigpoint selected these firms to achieve a high-caliber experience for hardcore gamers.

Bigpoint is targeting this winter to release an open beta of the game. At that time, three more characters, additional San Francisco-inspired arenas, and multiple game modes will be available. In addition, the game will include 3D positional and stereo sound, including voice chat.

For more information about Ruined, including character back-stories and 3D scenes from the game, and to sign-up for the game newsletter, please visit: www.ruinedonline.com.