Wednesday Linkfest
Guy.com
Sells for 1 million. 3 letter .com’s with good/great useable meaning are rare. Another compelling week for reported sales. .Net and .Org are the steady climbers. From: DN journal weekly domain sale reports.http://dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm
***FS*** I remember men.com selling for 1mm couple of years back.. Men.com is 100X better than Guy.com .. There’s the domain biz in a nutshell.
Classmates.com filing for IPO.
http://www.domainnews.com/general/2007112804/classmatescom-filing-for-ipo/
***FS*** 50 million signups and 3 million paid users like the name or don’t care what it’s called. Many folks aren’t crazy about it (the name).
Revenue domains.
What should you pay? : Whizzbang. http://www.whizzbangsblog.com/content/view/328/1/ Gilmour keeps ‘em coming. Here he gives rough
estimates as to what he thinks revenue domains are worth, purely based on the rev, and not the potential brand value of the name. He wades into potentially TM infringing names territory and different types of non infringing generics.
***FS*** I remember Rick Schwartz offering $8 per unique per month back in the early days .. or maybe it was per week.. Anyway, what a long way we’ve come. Expect other investors to start paying closer attention to this stuff after the Name Media IPO.
Dell vs. Florida Registrars.
http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/11/dell-vs-florida-registrars/ Josh says: Domain tasting or testing is not inherently a bad thing. It depends on how it’s used. Example: If you are setting up a blog or a start up company and are trying to figure out what name to use, you might brainstorm 50-100 different names, or more. Considering how blisteringly fast names are being registered, I don’t see anything inherently wrong with registering those names ASAP, and then deleting those you don’t want during the 5 day taste/test period. Having a small charge for doing so seems reasonable to me. There’s a difference between the bathwater and the baby.
***FS*** I’m inclined to agree … this is a different issue though.. second hand chatter alleges kiting obvious marks between registrars, large scale tasting and keeping deliberate TM’s without screening.. etc. Haven’t read the whole complaint, but this is a big action. Here’s to hoping for a peaceful and amicable settlement that makes the space better.
Elliot offers up to $50,000 for a US city .com domain;
population should be 50,000 or higher. (”city”.com, nothing else.)
http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2007/11/27/wanted-us-city-com-domain-name/
***FS*** It wasn’t that long ago that one could have probably got a name like this for much less. Is this a bubble price, or reflective of the importance of the Geo space? Josh says the latter. (It’s worth noting that he’s a big fan of geo and thinks geo is very compelling.) I’m a big Geo fan too.. but some of this is just related to inflation.. We live in a world awash in US Dollars. Some of that “money supply”/liquidity phenomenon is making itself felt in in the domain business, although it’s a lot less than in other sectors.
WeAreSanDiego.com sold to San Diego Union-Tribune.
Seller is Stephen Webb. http://www.domainnews.com/general/2007112723/san-diego-union-tribune-purchases-wearesandiegocom/ Some folks mocked Stephen Webb when he recently launched IamDomainNames.com. He’s now leasing IamSeattle.com to the Seattle Space Needle folks. He just may have struck a likeable little vein here. Congrats to Stephen! As an aside.. I see the day when the flurry of derals like this (domainers selling names to traditional media) is so thick and wide that it no longer can be reported in detail like this.
Brookstone.com offers realtime 3d store walkthrus.
(Uses Kinset.) http://kinset.com/brookstone.php Many web spaces/sites in the future may be realtime 3D. The smart ones will continue to offer 2D as well as 3D. The viewer will decide what they are in the mood for. Currently, most realtime 3d on the web still has that cartoonish look. In 2-5 years, full blown photo realistic/cinema realistic 3D will be here on off the shelf desktops and laptops.
Josh says: ”"I’ve been waiting for this for over 20 years. I’m old.”" ***FS*** You and me both bub.
Valleywag: Scripps to sell Shopzilla.
They paid 525 million. They want 525 million. http://valleywag.com/tech/shopzilla/scripps-to-sell-its-search-engine-327209.php
***FS*** I go to So Cal with my family at Christmas and Scrips has educational institutions and charitable stuff going on all-over San Diego. It’s a good thing Scripps has a lot of money .. they bought a bag of smoke when they bought Shopzilla and they are now trying to find another party to hold that bag. You should have bought domain names folks because:
A) You would have an asset with burn-down value
B) You would have made money on that asset
C) That asset would pay you dividends without the moving parts of thousands of staff .. and.. *drum-roll*
D) You probably wouldn’t be Selling that kind of asset. I should really charge for this info… sheesh.
RentYourSoul.com
Start up company guy wants to rent your soul for a week. Swears he’s not the devil. Will give you 10 bucks and donate 10 bucks to a charity of your choice, selected from his list. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9824150-7.html?tag=nefd.only
***FS*** Anything that gets people giving is a good thing. I read this story and donated $1000 online to World Vision. You should give too.. Because if you read this far down my linkfest, you’re probably a serious domainer and are making a pretty good living.. You’re blessed.. Count yourself lucky and pay something forward today. 
How can 50K qualify as a city? Madness? He could probably pick up something in IDN with 10 times that population for for a tenth of the price.
So which would be worth more? Well it will depend on the local economy, but real-estate rental and hotel prices in much of Asia will actually be higher than in the US.
Elliot’s going to be hard pressed to find a US city.com representing a 50,000 population for only 50K. You could easily make 50K a year in revenue from the hotel and real estate sections alone.
Thumbs up on the donation Frank! I help out the Long Island Association for AIDS Care who could desperately use some funds to purchase HIV tests, meals for families, etc. A donation link is here:
https://www.liaac.org/donation/index.php
They’ll thank you and if you let me know you helped out, I’ll thank you as well.
Regarding wearesandiego.com.
FYI, I sold MyCape.com to the Cape Cod Times two years ago.
Maybe the “my…” and “weare…” domains are the newspapers’ desired version of generic domains?
Does anyone else have any examples of newspaper buying, owning or using my and weare type generics?
But the Madness is that US Real Estate really isn’t that valuable.
“Mumbai and London have the world’s priciest rents for higher quality offices, with rent in Mumbai at an average of $189.51 a square foot.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7114852.stm
Why is domain investment for Cities in India and elsewhere shunned by most domain investors, when the Land Prices and rents, not to mention the population counts, make most US cities look like Toy Town?
David’s correct on just how difficult finding a 50k+ population city.com for “up to” 50k.
Looked at it this way, that’s only $1/resident; a real bargain for anyone who knows what they’re doing.
His best bet to do so, however, is to spend the likely many days and weeks personally contacting those owners who have (yet) to launch their own city site…or hire someone to do so on his behalf.
He could, however, own the next-best extension when it comes to US cities (since so many of the actual city government sites are .org’s; which is where many/most people expect the “official” city site to in any case be).
Our Glendora.org for 25k should fit the bill quite nicely.
Generic 2-word domain names selling for 60-72 months revenue!?! 1-word names for 72?!? Yea, right. I WISH they were that cheap. Multiply that by 4 and you’re getting close…
…and re Mr. Webb’s misguided purchase of some 13,000 silly domains (”4ThisAnThat.com” anyone?), hopefully he also reg’d WeAreBailingOut.com so he’ll have a nice place to try to at least recoup his reg fees…;-)
One sale ($1k? 5k? More…less?) and one lease does not a new “market” make.
Great donation, Frank - after CBS Sunday morning ran a segment on that site last weekend, about donating goats to families, Steph and I were all set to make a life or two happier in the name of some friends and family.
But, with a goat at $75 and you setting the bar at $1000, I am thinking this Christmas, we will buy a village a herd.
Pay it forward, my friend, and going into this holiday season, we should ALL think of those less fortunate than ourselves.
And, FYI, if you cannot give a goat, surf the site - for $40 you can give a fishing kit, $32 buys educational support in a third world country, and for less than a burger and fries at BK or McD’s, you can buy a share of an Alpaca herd in Peru or Ecuador, which can benefit a family for years.
‘Tis the season to reflect on our good fortunes and spread cheer to those less fortunate.
Do it locally, or give globally, but do your part to change the world.
Skip the cappu-mocha-lattes for a week and help someone less fortunate this holiday season.
Elliot offer must be a joke. I hear an Arizona city guy that make a cool one million a year off a city domain in ads. Hires a sales clerk(s) to sell the ads and the ad money rolls in.
This is a college town and bet he has some nice cute college girls selling those ads for his site(s).
Umm…you can buy city.com’s with populations of 50k or more for $50,000 easily.
I bought a whole bunch of them over the past year or so and I really dont even try too hard.
Thats just a tip.
Another thing about city.com’s…
They make very little money with PPC so if you are going to pay over $50,000 for them make sure you have a plan for them…unless you don’t mind waiting for your ROI.
Hi Frank,
I’m the guy behind Rent Your Soul.
Thanx for link. I wish I could afford to give 1000$ donation to World Vision, but I do it 10$ at a time for 20 different people per week.
You are welcome to rent your Soul on the site too!
Cheers,
Pierre Ayotte