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100,000 Domains Sold for $164 Million
miller60 writes "Here's a news item that puts some hard data on the domain typo millionaires post from a couple weeks back. Marchex Inc. just paid $164 million to buy Name Development Ltd., an obscure company that displays pay-per-click keyword ads on 100,000 domains. It's not a stock swap, either, as $155 million of that was in cash. The seller reportedly built the portfolio by scarfing up expiring domains (including hardware-update.com, previously owned by Microsoft and linked from within the Windows 2000 OS) and replacing the content with pay-per-click ads."
Because you don't just want any old domain, but the ones that are most often visited by mistake.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
This isn't spam - you request a page, you see an advert, it's not forced into your inbox.
This is seeing an opportunity and using it, and they deserve a bit of success from that. Whether they deserve $164m worth of success is another matter.
Who meta-moderates the meta-moderators?
The fine folks at BuyDomains.com still have the SlashDot.Net for sale, and "The quoted price will be at least $688 and may be over $10,000." Valid business model or what?
(I intentionally left out all AhRefs, if you really want to see it, type away, I don't endorse domain stealers.)
Just
You couldn't pay me to own a bunch of typo. domain names. It sounds like a thousand lawsuits waiting to happen.
What's horrible is that the guy who sold it was given the site as directed by the pervious owner's Will. He died and left it to this guy who sold it. Isn't that nice?
That is truly horrible.
You know, when I die, I think I will put a clause in my will that requires my next of kin to pay the estate taxes themselves, and LIVE in my house, not sell it. I mean, the thought of a next of kin selling something they don't want to maintain is just horrible.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I had the impression that the buy-a-domain-to-be-rich story was over, not only due to NASDAQ, but also because of google! I can't imagine anyone who wants to update its hardware typing www.hardware-update.com, instead of googling "hardware update" (and at least in the first 20 pages of results that I checked, hardware-update.com does not appear!). Personally I even type "apple" in the google bar sometimes, its easier than www.apple.com).
Apparently domain sales prove me wrong.
I grew up on Long Island, home of 1-800-FLOWERS (now 1-800-FLOWERS.com) (really), and I saw articles about the company getting pissed off at competitors who did things like this. Some competitors bought 1-800-FL0WERS (with a zero) and 1-800-FLOWER5 (with a 5).
Ever wonder why 1-800-MATTRESS ends every commercial with people spelling their name melodically? It's because they don't own 1-800-MATRESS -- or at least they didn't years ago.
For more information, click here.
What a lot of the "this isn't fair, this is criminal, this is predatory" posts seem to be predicated around is the mistaken belief that life is fair and that the stupid should have the same good life as the intelligent.
This is not a life insurance-selling shill forcing his way into some poor ignorant grandma's house, putting pressure tactics on her to buy into scam xyz. Much like people caught up in ponzi scams, Tom Vu seminars, what have you, it is entirely up to the user what he sees. Remember that truism about lotteries being a tax on people who're bad at math? Well there you go.
Nor are these guys pushing (for the most part) spyware, trojans, credit card theft, viruses, what-have-you, on unsuspecting PC users who've taken all reasonable precautions. I understand that your post is facetious (at least I hope it is) but referring to what I wrote above, the stupid, ignorant and lazy have exactly the same chances as everyone else. What they make of them is entirely up to them, including learning how to spell slsahdot.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Well, the number is actually spelled "googol" and not google (which was an accidental misspelling of googol) or googil. Googil is actually closer to the real spelling.
Hey, Tardmo. You the stupid inexperinced one.
Whatismyip.com and other similar sites are a great tool for any network admin that deals with lusers from other companies.
I can't count how many times I have said "ok, what's the address of the mail server" and gotten something like "10.0.0.200" or "198.168.1.3". Sure, _I_ know what my machine IP is (most of the others on the network for that matter), and I know what my WAN IP is and the DMZ IPs of my servers. However, my customers dont... likewise even if they do know ipconfig and can do it on their machine, it is a local network IP that doesn't do any good when looking for the WAN IP. For that, you need to know it, get it from the ISP (good fucking luck with that) or have them log into a router... (if they know what a router IS.)
What IP points to the outside world on any given network probably escapes the average "comptuer guy" at small companies.
Rather than getting the clueless to figure out or find out the IP from their ISP, it is a lot easier just to send them to one of those sites and have them read off the number. Most of them are not too numb to read a number out loud, though having them cut and paste it into an email can catch the ones that are dislexic.
I use some of the sites listed at "traceroute.org" rather than the other ones... no confusing flashy ads, just the start IP of the trace.
Are you selling internet service, or managed security networking service? Does maintaining "common carrier" status hold any meaning for you?
If I'm buying access to the whole internet (and not to a managed content-provider) I want the whole internet, not your filtered version of it. I'm a big boy and I'll protect my network and hosts from Bad Things(c) without your blackbox filtering TYVM.
About Warren Buffet: Buffett believes that much of the problem with the economies of the United States and other industrialized countries in recent years results from the proliferation of persons and organizations who produce nothing directly but are compensated based on the volume of business which they transact. He feels that most stock trades are recommended and made primarily to benefit the brokers rather than the investors and has stated that he feels that the world would benefit if each person had a lifetime maximum of twenty stock trades. He steadfastly refuses to split Berkshire Hathaway stock because the purpose of this would be to facilitate trading, which he has no desire to do. -Wikipedia entry on Warren Buffett Read that passage, then read it again..and when you're done reading it, read it one more time. Then you'll understand why some knucklehead will pay 160 million clams for absolutely nothing of real hard value.
- I want to go read my localnewspaper.tld
- clickety clickety localnewspapper.tld
- Oh, this is obviously not the newspaper site
- This strange gentleman is offering me a mortgage! Come to think of it, my pocketbook has been feeling heavy lately. I'll bite!
I just don't understand how people think, I guess. Neither do they probably. But I guess this is what American style "impulse buying" is all about. The marketing psychologists have trained society so well that all you have to do is show advertising, even out of context, and people bite.A lot depends on how they use they typo page.
If they are clearly the wrong page then I see no harm in it. If they try to look like the typo page then that is wrong.
The best of them even put up a link to the correct page.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Amen.
And just yesterday the slashdot groupthink was bashing France's scocialist/protectiontist policies.
Today, we come across something we deem immoral and start crying "oh noes!!1!!!1 somebody must put a stop to this"
Well guess what people, the free market is amoral. You either need to accept the positivies and negatives that come with it, or sart imposing ethically motivated restrictions on it. Guess where that leads?
For the record, I'm a socialist (with a lower case 's') Each system has its advantages and disadvanteges, but at least be consistent.
That's my opinion anyway. I think its wrong. Buying a domain and selling it on at a huge profit however is not the same thing, and I have no problem with this provided the domain wasn't used for the above purpose in between..
There are some dynmaic dns utilities that automatically poll and screen scrape IP addresses off pages such as this. A client that I use polls every minute, cycling through about 15 different sites. This means that I myself am accounting for a hit every 15 mins to whatismyip.com. Yet, I never see the content on the page and rarely even think about it. Not exactly making the ideal situation for those bidding on the domain. Plus, add in the number of techies who aren't inclined to click on banner ads when they're actively trying to troubleshoot (the most likely use of the site), and the extreme ease of setting up a competing service. Nah... the winning bidder isn't getting much of a deal here.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I've heard this too. But I've also heard that they know this, and they buy the property across the street too. Burger King can then either buy or lease from McDonalds.
Don't tell me about losing domains. In 1994, I registered several very good domains:
snell.org (Me of course)
cjs.com (Me again)
eleet.com (I thought I was...)
grateful.com (I was into the Grateful Dead)
bikeworld.com (for my dad's co.)
When NSI took over registrar duties for
Biggest. Mistake. Ever.
Here's a little snippet from the WHOIS record for grateful.com:
Administrative Contact:
Reflex Publishing Inc.
Internet Admin (not for sale) (admin@reflex.com)
+1.8133544500
Fax: +1.8133544500
1971 W. Lumsden Rd. #110
Brandon, FL 33511
US
"not for sale"
I get sick to my stomach every time I think about this.
Internet domain names are a lot like commercial real estate. The value is based on traffic count much like the number of cars that pass by a retail shopping center. Real estate investors also use solid investment analysis when considering the purchase of properties which makes the sale of these domains interesting.
It was noted on NetCraft that these domains get about 17 million unique visitors a month and at a $5.00 CPM (which is quite generous) that would be $85,000 a month ($1.02 million a year) in revenue. Consequently, the ROI (Return on Investment) would be 0.622% which is a very poor rate to receive.
In order to get a decent ROI, the new owners are going to have to increase traffic, create better content for higher paying ads, or provide some upsell item with a high profit margin and conversion rate. If this were a real estate property, this rate of return would definately make this property a "don't wanter".
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You're right! It's not spam, but to actually credit dirt bags like this for scrafing up domain names as "intellegent" or "opportunits", I think is just wrong.
I totally hate how expiring domain names are up for grabs the minute they expire, because it creates the very market for nasty tactics like snagging someones domain. Yeah it's legal, but the morality is just wrong.
I think there should be a waiting period after a domain name expires. Say a company goes out of buisness, decides not to renew, whatever the reason, that domain name should become void for a period of a year. After that point, then it becomes availible for purchase.
I just think that's the responsible thing to do with respect to the end consumer.