Candy.com is now a shiny new, online store for all sorts of sweets after the domain name was sold for a whopping $3 million back in June. The fairly old-school website offers a range of lollipops, jelly beans, gum, candy bars and dispensers which it ships all across the United States.
According to the website, Candy.com even ships internationally but I think they just left out the word ‘not’ by accident (seriously).
The new owner of the candy.com domain name is G&J Holdings, a Weymouth, Massachusetts-based Internet candy retailer that has been in business since 2005. The $3 million question for them: how quickly, if at all, will they make up for the price it paid for the admittedly attractive .com domain name?
(Hat tip to DNxpert)
“I think they just left out the word ‘not’ by accident (seriously).”
Lol, I agree:
“International Shipping:
Candy.com does ship internationally at the moment. “
The International shipping fees is double the product prices
What kind of a moron will order candy online?
Next thing: Over seas bananas shipping, but AirMail… It will be there between 4 to 10 weeks.
Its not ordering for self, Guess if your family or close friends live in other country there is no point sending a gift from your place, its better to order online which is very much cost effective. Think about other options!
I know the whole idea is to sell old skool candy , but I don’t see any reason why that means your site has to look outdated.
true , it’s not all about the looks, but to get in the mood for candy, I would prefer to use a website that boasts more fun and pleasure, which it does not imo.
You might say it lacks some eyecandy.
Like the pun, agree with the sentiment.
Not only that but it uses also an old technology: ASP classic (that’s what 3dcart, the shopping cart which powers candy.com, uses)…
Looks like they really want to be old school…
After spending 3mil on the domain name, they only had enough for a Yahoo storefront. Which is the same as every other candy site out there.
ha ha, i just noticed they have one of those “chat live!” applets that always show up on crappy sites. translation: “you’re about to have a frustrating experience, and you’re going to need help here!”
It’s like 1999 e-commerce for candy. Strange.
3 million ? by selling online candies? Are you joking?
Historically, candy sales spike big time during down economic times, and that’s just what’s happening now. This was a calculated move on their part, I’m sure, and factors big into my own recent candy venture, http://www.taffytimes.com/. Interesting side note: Hershey’s and Mar’s were both born during and because of the Great Depression.
location is the holygrail to all online endeavors.
how quickly, if at all, will they make up for the price it paid for the admittedly attractive .com domain name?
They already have a good head start from the free TC press.
The ownership becomes capital… he did not spend $3 million, hes holding it. The purchase of this domain name for their online store was a great move.
Exactly, they don’t have the pressure to please investors. If it takes 5 years to turn 1 million in profit, they can say spending 3 million was worth it…well, relative to the opportunity cost.
Exactly. What kind of ‘candy’ are they selling.
People can still get rich on domain names? Who sold it?
Is this the sign of a returning bubble? Or just someone who really likes candy.
Looking at some other purchases, totaling over $8M –
Seniors.com
Cameras.com
Computers.com
Vodka.com
They have less traffic than the amount of people that are reading this comment.
source:
http://abcnews....4819&page=2
compete.com
YOU should stick to fishing or get a clue.
All of those domians are parked, redirected or have limited website access. So all of that traffic is from real people typing in name into their browser. That’s 2000+ new customers knocking on your door every month.
Candy.com will do over 500k new customers every month in a very short time.
To the above replies: Wait until you understand how the domain name market works before commenting. While it is a ridiculous price to pay for such a domain, it’s like buying a house: You may have put out the upfront capital and even if you sell it you’ll get less, but it’s not as much of a risk. They may have plonked down $3,000,000 on candy.com but in times of trouble they could quite easily sell it on for a similar price, meaning nothing is lost.
I’m sure they understand this and it’s part of their venture, they’ve seen a market for candy online and know that even if everything goes tits up they can still fall back on the value of the domain.
“Wait until you understand how the domain name market works before commenting”
I couldn’t agree more…
A lot of money for this domain, I hope to worth the money
People still seem to want to build destinations, which for retail makes less and less sense. Better they would use our NextWidgets platform to distribute their candy store to lots of content destination sites – and it wouldn’t cost them a dime!
The web fragmenting and online retailers should embrace the changes.
SPAM
Administrative Contact:
Savic, Alex alex.savic@sands.ch
Zaehringer str. 9
Zurich, Zurich 8001
Switzerland
793583685 Fax –
oh my heebie geebies! 3 million for a domain name? Whoa!
Would it be mentioned in TC if it wasn’t for the domain name?
I notice books.com is owned by Barnes & Noble yet I always buy books from Amazon.
You, my friend, hit the nail on the head.
Yes, but I don’t know of a candy website as brandable as Amazon. There’s no go-to destination for the sale of candy, so candy.com can (and will) emerge as the market leader.
If I was them, I probably would have bought buycandy.com instead though.
That’s dumb to pay 3 million for a domain name…LOL
To someone with no business sense yeah you are right, to anyone who has a clue not dumb.
That’s a lot of candy for $3m. haha
i don’t buy it. it doesn’t make sense. the buyout of the domain for $3M smells like money laundering for me.
What doesn’t make sense is anyone regging 10things.me what was Clueless.me already regged ?
The most ridiculous statement of the week, you are clueless, someone with a .me not believing in a category defining .com sale. I always look to Tech Crunch for comedy and it always comes through.
Gfy, you got to all of the good comments before I even had a chance.
blast!
say that again in a week …
.me = lol
wtf is wrong with you ppl. do you think everyone is a domain squatter? did you even click on my site?
who would like to order candies online ? i dont think there would be hardly any customers, rather than to market and buy themselves in this economic crisis.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about, but this really sounds like a good or bad idea!”
Wow… 3 millon in sweets!
For that price, they could have bought a handful of television ads that would quickly be forgotten. Or print ads that would likewise disappear into obscurity. Instead some savvy candy company has etched itself into the minds of global consumers by acquiring a brand that nobody can ever forget.
The best values in online brands are found in the short, category-defining generics.
We could make a list of branding failures. They would include the Dallas Cowboys ‘returning’ their recent purchase of Cowboys.com. And Starbucks letting Coffee.com go to a competitor.
As commerce shifts online, high value domains will gain in value as investments. The uninformed wailing about Candy.com’s purchase price can be traced to people who lacked the foresight to invest in online brands at an early enough stage.
Consumers aren’t fooled. And neither am I.
I couldn’t agree more. A category defining domain name like this get instant legitimacy and perceived authority site status.
Commentator Fishing above reported $8 million in “recent domain sales” but they are well over a year old.
Seniors.com
Cameras.com
Computers.com
Vodka.com
For sales from this year look at:
Toys.com $5.1 M
Candy.com $3M
Auction.com $1.7M
Ad.com $1.4M
Total $11.2M
SO in the worst economic time in our history the top 4 sales doubled what the top 4 sales from the previous year did.
Domains are pretty impressive investment if you ask me
A domain name is only worth what one wants to pay for it! This is one sweet deal and Rick the previous owner of this domain is certainly experienced in commanding a good deal!
Whats my domain name worth???
3 MILLION ..WOW . ….
Hello All
I have to say the domain name is worth the money and even more
but i have something else to say i have website and i carry mored then 3000 items on my website and here is what i am trying to explain
choose 10 or 20 itmes from candy.com and my website i am sure you will find your self paying double or triple the price when you purchase from candy.com
candy.com prices is sky high & wish them all the luck
Seems like a fair price to me and now it is up to them to monetize; however if they never make a nickle, the domain name could be worth double in 5 years.
seems like fair to you saying that beacuse you don’t see the prices i am offering on my website at least you will be saving 50%
so if you spend $100.00 on candy.com on my site you will be spending $50.00 for the same items
i am can put it to you in deffrent way
if you buy any candy bar like reeses cup 36 ct kit kat hershy bar 36 ct you pay 33.99 per a box on my site the same itmes for only $17.99 so how much you will end up saving mr fair to you with all the respect
try another item trident gum orbit there price 16.99 i have in my site for $8.89 so where you going
and another downside they using ups for delivery and that’s more money from fedex
wow and they even charging for ice bag $2.99 and it cost them not even $1.00 it deneds on what size of ice bag they use
i think it’s cheaper for you to go to any local store and buy your candy bar
LOLWUT
Exactly! huh?!
I personally believe that Candy.com is worth $3.0mm
These people actually get it, Candy.com has thousands of people each month going to the site without even advertising the name or brand.
People that are looking for what? CANDY !!!
I don’t see how anyone can think this name isn’t worth $3.0mm just for that traffic alone.
Most other companies still haven’t got it and when they eventually do get it $3.0mm will be cheap for a generic domain name like this.
You have to remember people $3.0mm will buy you some national press and TV Coverage for what maybe 12 months and then you need to spend another $3.0mm the year after and again and again in the hope that people see your ads and visit you site but the new owners of Candy.com don’t need to do that as they already have people going to the site looking to buy what? CANDY ! ! !
Once the rest of the worlds CEO’s wake up and realise that owning a generic domain with TRAFFIC is going to grow your business!
If anyone is wanting to read and learn more about owning a generic domain and what it can do if your business then hit me up.
I’m willing to help you, drop me a line – robbie(@)mycreditscore.us
Congratulations to Rick the Seller and to the new owners of Candy.com – You get it and are going to be very rich people!
Regards,
Rob
Yum.
A vitrual candy shop that you can look at that’s sweet, and if you want can order online for “trick or treat”.
I just hope they will have some “BLASTS” in stock in time for Halloween.
Yup, this domain name is worth every cent. Even Google puts a value in its quality score for such a thing.
Would be interesting to know how much direct type-in traffic candy.com gets.
I believe that the majority of the traffic the site gets is direct navigation.
why do you believe that?
Because Rick had the site parked before and parked sites dont get ranked high in Search Engines therefor for him to have the stats he does the type in traffic must be huge!
How much is a typical marketing budget for such a company? ( Kellogg’s marketing budget is more than $1 billion. Sure they are not Kelloggs but still… )
Super Bowl 30-second ads cost $3 million.
I think they already made up for the money.
Hmmmm Books.com or Amazon.com? Auction.com or Ebay.com? SearchEngine.com or Google.com?
It’s nice to have a one word domain that clearly explains what you sell but 3 Million dollars is a ridiculous waste of money. Suggestion: Buy a catchy domain for $9, spend the $2,999,991 on targeted online marketing, affiliate programs, creating unique products and for god’s sake..web design and that wont cost anywhere near 3 million total.
Sometimes, life lessons cost 3 million dollars.
Hey guys, look, it’s an idiot on Techcrunch!
well, he’s pretty much right. a good site called johnnysrockincandy is certainly capable of being more successful than a yahoo store called candy.com. implementation is everything, and candy.com screwed the IA pooch here.
You’re clearly ignoring the ease of branding and pre existing type ins. You spend $3,000,000 on candy.com – which you can always recoup after because it has resale value like a house! – which gives you the pre-existing huge amount of type in traffic + the ease of branding; “come to candy.com for candy!” is easier to do that “come to johnnysrockingdancy.com”.
Candy.com: Cons – $3,000,000 upfront, Pros – Pre-existing traffic, people ALREADY going there for Candy + ease of branding AND if the business goes tits up they can recoup a lot of costs through the domain, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another business buy it for close to $3,000,000, maybe even more in the future.
Johnnysrockincandy: Pros – $10 to register. Cons – Harder to brand compared to “candy.com”, I’m not going to remember “johnnysrockincandy”, I would remember candy.com. There is no value in the domain outside of that business, nobody else will but that.
So really, if you had the capital to invest why on earth wouldn’t you go for Candy.com?
Moron.com or AndresBurgos.com?
haha, that’s fucked up.
Web design is vastly, vastly overrated. Craig’s List, Myspace (it’s death has nothing to do with its design)….. Web design isn’t important unless you’re a B to B company, and even then, it’s debatable.
Craigslist is design simplified. Incredibly usable. Putting it in a category with MySpace is criminal
Candy.com prices are a bit high.
That ’s it!
I’m buying CheapAssCandy.com and I’ll undercut those MF’rs!
Your rite the price verrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyy high beacuse i have website and i do sale candy on the website between my price and candy.com price at least 50% deffrent
And the reason everyone will be buying from candy.com instead of you is you aren’t even smart enough to include your URL in your comments…
+1
Why don’t you tell us the name of your site, already?
Please refer to TC’s other post about an idea without execution is not worth much.
Rick is getting rewarded even though he couldn’t make a business of it. That takes talent.
To own real estate or domain names takes NO talent, just luck in buying at the right time and place.
Rick’s real venture is porn from the 1995-98 time frame, candy even has that porn flavor to it.
Rick is a good guy, selling money from tree’s is his business. Many of us do the same thing.
TC sells ad space, which is not really that effective LONG term. Any 1st rate domain name gets more valuable with age.
It was not that Rick could not make a business of it, it is that is not Rick’s business. He is a “land” speculator. There are many people that buy and sell land and never build houses on any of that land. The same it true with Rick. He is a land owner……Candy.com, Widgets.com, Property.com, etc…… Get it now?
Candy.com, before being sold, was making over $100,000 a year simply parked, doing NOTHING.
So….does that tell you how powerful the domain is? It made six figures paid out by Google or Yahoo for its clicks …..WITH NO ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, NOTHING!
IT’S ALL DIRECT NAVIGATION FOLKS! SOMETHING YOU WEBMASTER AND TECHIES KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. GO LOOK IT UP.
Who said that it made 100k a year?
Rick did. I know he is right because I too have been buying domains since 1995 and I don’t have to work anymore……I just let guys like you click ads on my pages and sit back while the money rolls in. I do NO promotion, nothing……it’s all in the weight of the domain names.
Do you think that people type in Sex.com into their browsers? Of course you do. The same is true with Candy.com and millions more other domains. It’s called DIRECT NAVIGATION, and most techies and webmasters just don’t get the concept.
I’m off to the pool now since I don’t have to work anymore…….LOL.
I do not believe the 100k figure until Rick confirms it.
Melville Candy said the domain got 1,000 visits per day before they set up the website.
If I give you a 20% CTR on that, it takers a PAYOUT of over $1.50 per click to give you the 100k.
Show me I’m wrong.
Hey, Weymouth, MA. That’s my town!
“how quickly will they make up for the price it paid”
Answer – they already did.
Candy.com has got so much promotion from the purchase of this domain from sources like you who continue to talk about and quote the domain sale. No PR agency could ever provide so much attention without billing substantial sums month after month.
30 second Superbowl Ad – $1.8M
Candy.com (An Asset Forever with visitors always knocking on the door) Price – $3M
PR – Priceless.
I think 3M was cheap for Candy.com; they can own the category in the minds of a lot of consumers with that domain. And make money with online sales.
Congrats to the ones that get the power of a great domain
all worth hundreds of millions…
cars.com
hotels.com
creditcards.com
bodybuilding.com (sold 50% for like $100,000,000
skateboards.com
snowboards.com
Ecommerce domains seem to produce steller results…. when you are talking about ebay vs auction.com it is not the same because ebay built the category from scratch.
Once you buy the domain you own it FOREVER.
hilarious!
bodybuilding.com sold 50% for 100 million? um, I don’t think so.
I think it was more like a gazillion – that’s what I heard, anyway…
Actually, Bodybuilding.com has a real business and a full site behind it (number one bodybuilding/fitness site based on traffic), and it sold like 80% for over $100m to Liberty Media, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
I have to agree with robbie(@)mycreditscore.us – $3m is a steal for what they are getting. They now OWN the candy market. OK, they might not be the biggest at the moment, but the Hersey’s and Nestles of the world should kick themselves for missing this.
$3m would pay for a small ad campaign, or they could have bought this and owned the whole category. They could have even paid Rick $5m or $6m to take it off the market and stop a new competitor coming in, but no, they missed the opportunity.
The only way that the “big” buys are ever going to get that domain name now is to buy the company. And that will be considerably more than $3m.
funny to see all the domain vultures talking up this deal like a domain name means EVERYTHING.
1. Get domain name
2. Profit!
such an amazing system you have there!
Not at all – Candy.com are adding a business to it, with the result that it won’t ever be availble as low as $3m again. Do you think that they would sell it to cash it in without selling the whole business for at least ten times the amount? Possibly hundreds?
I’m amazed that some people still don’t seem to understand that a generic category definer holds massive value when developed. Note the last two words.
If you develop a name the value will go up massively, and that’s what’s happening here.
GJHoldings.com and it’s associated business had a ceiling value. Candy.com and the associated business (which may be exactly the same) has a value that blows that away. Far, far in excess of $3m more.
@EH
Funny to see people without an ounce of business sense claiming this isn’t a good deal. Of course it’s a good deal. Obviously if they just bought the domain without a business idea it’d be stupid, but they clearly have one and it does have a market.
It’s an excellent deal.
Please do explain how we are “domain vultures”?
Yes……it’s almost that simple if you have a decent business plan and can execute it.
How about BobbleHeads.com. That guy bought the domain, put up a quick website, contracted with workers in Asia to make Bobbleheads and now he can’t hardly even keep up with the business.
It was a smashing success in the first month.
IT’S CALLED DIRECT NAVIGATION PEOPLE!!!! IT CAN MAKE YOU RICH!!!!
How many lollipops they have to sell for 3m? But I will buy the domain, too. If I have that money and am running a candy store.
http://www.candywarehouse.com has better SEO and a larger set of products.
same “yahoo store” style, so i guess SEO scams are all they have to rely on.
You just gotta wonder what it would have sold for in the bubble days. $3m in a down economy is awesome.
Good to see the news in the mainstream tech blogs too. There’s lots of domain fire-selling lately with more and more auctions popping up all over the place on a much more regular basis.
Watch out for some bargains. RickLatona.com has one going now, Greatdomains.com has one ending in a couple days and Snapnames Summer Stimulus domain auction ends tomorrow too. http://xr.com/snap
erm, why would people want to buy 2lbs worth of m&ms on the internet, when they could buy a slightly more manageable amount a walking distance away at the local shops?
I seriously can’t believe theses idiotic comments. It’s usually not this bad on TC.
People shop for candy online because it’s usually the ONLY way to get non-mainstream candy. There are thousands upon thousands of candies, old and new, that people love or grew up on that aren’t sold in local stores — not to mention thousands of foreign candies (especially Japanese/Chinese ones) that people enjoy trying. Most people don’t live next to a candy superwarehouse. And beyond that, it’s convenient (for mainstream candy too). Do you ever shop online, Amazon? Welcome to the 21st century Internet where some people like getting stuff delivered rather than wasting time driving to 10 different stores just to get everything. But does one really have to explain that?.
$3M is insanely low. It’ll probably pay for itself on search rank alone within the first year.
Imagine how much candy they will have to sell to make up the difference and pay their employees.
Another good question is where do they put all of that candy!!! Did they buy land in Antarctica too?
At last, a place where I can order licorice jelly beans in bulk. There is no other type of jelly bean except licorice!
If they focus on specialty stuff, they should do well.
I can’t believe how many people think this is a bad deal.
I agree that the domain was worth 3 million simply as a parked domain for the direct type in traffic. Put an effective e-commerce site and it should pay for itself in 3-5 years plus the actual domain will do nothing but grow in value.
I can’t believe Yahoo e-comm though don’t you usually pay a percentage of sales with that cart?
I doubt they actually stock any candy they are most likely simply a middleman drop shipping from candy distributors.
Candy.com is a sweet name. However, I would find the 3 Million dollar price tag a bit sour. They will have to sell a lot of 3 cent candies to break even. I’m sure they can, but that is a very steep hill to climb.
They could also ad space if selling candy doesn’t work out for some reason. Mars Inc. spends about 3 million a month on advertising. They can get candy companies into a bidding war… etc. etc.
They will have NO problem at all recouping the 3 million.
It will be interesting to see when and how long it takes the site to crack the top 10 organic results for the term “candy”.
1 day!
They are #9 right after M&M’s, See’s, Hershey’s, and Jelly Belly
http://www.goog...F-8&q=candy
Good investment, now work on building the business.
I for one think they paid a little much for this url. I’ve never even been to candy.com before, so I don’t know what used to be there.
This url really isn’t worth what they paid for it.
and that’s based off what? Your uneducated opinion?
I would say it’s worth every penny. No risks involved at all. If they can’t sell candy, they still have the domain name.
Exactly, this is the equivalent of buying a 30 year mortgage on a moderately priced property. With a thirty window to sell it, you have very little chance of losing money. Worst case scenario, you’ll sell it for what you paid for and break even.
This was a $3 million purchase with almost no risk whatsoever.
Strong generic domain name + matching business is like 1+1=5 (or more)
Look at the evolution of Business.com for example. The DOMAIN first sold for $150,000 then the DOMAIN sold again for $7.5 million and eventually the Business.com BUSINESS was sold for close to $350 million.
A company with an established business in a particular market can generate instant additional sales by buying the generic domain that exactly matches their business. Since the domain’s getting typein traffic, that’s a steady flow of new visitors every single day to a business that already knows how to source products and close sales.
“Proving” that generic domains names “aren’t worth anything” by looking at outliers on the very extreme right of the success curve (Google, eBay etc.) is like proving that all people are tall by looking only at Yao Ming! In other words, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: you’re focused on the handful of businesses that made it big, so of course they didn’t need generics to do so (you selected them precisely because they’re big, and you wouldn’t even have been able to name them if they hadn’t been).
For the 99.99% of businesses that aren’t Google or eBay or Yahoo, securing the strongest domain name for their market turns them from being A company in that niche to being THE company in their niche. Not to mention the benefits in terms of SEO and SEM (generic domains have been proven to simplify SEO and to reduce the cost of PPC campaigns) as well as the credibility boost and of course the benefits from any built-in traffic that comes with the domain.
Ya…pets.com was super successful…they are morons paying that amount – there is no way they can sell enough candy – the price competition is cut throat from all their competition – search on Google to see what I mean – then to sell the domain name when, in my opinion, they fail they will never get 3 million – perhaps 500K – do an archive.org search for candy.com – looks like another dot bubble company started and failed with this same domain name and millions in funding
The Pets.com nonsense was a hundred years ago. It failed because, like most people running bubble 1.0 companies, the people running it took big bags of cash and threw them in the fire daily.
This site has nothing in common with Pets.com, save for a 1 word domain.
I don’t get why people are focused on how much candy they have to sell – that’s so short sited. It’s about a business plan/model being executed with candy.com being memorable address for the user, and with long term results. Maybe ad model, resellers, franchise, etc…
C’mon folks calm down. It’s pretty obvious this was a quickly built site… lots of typos and English language failures, nothing optimized, pretty much minimal execution to a functional storefront.
But it’s running… a candy store on Candy.com
The only thing to play taps for is the previous candy company name, whatever that was. Because now it’s Candy.com and no one will remember anything else.
For those who just don’t get the domain name “investment” industry, let me try to explain it simply:
You are a company that sells a product or service.
That product or service can be defined very simply by a word or short phrase.
Your product or service is always in high demand
You have $3million to spend on advertising your product or service online
You have two options to invest that $3million in order to order your product or service:
1) Go traditional media, with lots of new media SEO and SEM techniques, bugaboos, tricks, banner campaigns, email blasts, etc. In less than a year, you will have promoted your company’s name “Xyzcandiesinc.com” all over the place, and your $3million is gone. You achieved about 100,000 new customers. Cost per customer is $30.
2) You decide to invest in an appreciable marketing asset, what domainers call a “generic descriptive domain name”. Instead of just buying some nice memorable domain name like “Candyline.com” for $599, you go balls to the wall and decide to completely OWN THE NAME OF THE PRODUCT YOU ARE SELLING online. So you spend $3million and are lucky enough to nab CANDY.COM. A word that everyone says, everyone knows, worldwide. A word that describes a multi-billion dollar industry yearly. You now own the domain name that puts your company’s competitor’s at a loss for trying to use the word “CANDY” in their future promotions without actually, incredibly, promoting YOUR WEBSITE.
Then, you take advantage of the 100,000 a month who will eventually be typing in the word “candy” into their browser, or finding you through OST on SE’s. Now your $3million domain name suddenly looks a whole lot different in the scheme of OWNING YOUR COMPETITIONâ„¢.
Once the first year passes, where you took the big advertising hit of $3mill on your ad budget, the next year comes around and that same investment has to be renewed… ooops! Costs you less than $10. You decide to renew it for 10 years, and it costs you less than $100.
Now you have a domain name that has obliterated your competitors online, captured the full power of the demographics the domain name defines, your domain name will “suck” off every advertisement paid for by every candy store on every possible medium there is, thereby making your domain name “CANDY.COM” work for you 24/7/365 for only ten dollars a year for as long as you own the domain.
Now, all the people here who think “candy.com” was bought for too high a price, they are just talking from lack of education of this business and why a good domain name can decimate, eventually, your competitors online.
And by the way, B&N owns Books.com and the singular, but someone still shops at Amazon.com. How many people have typed in the domain “books.com’ over the years, that B&N takes advantage of for simply the renewal fee of $10 annually?
Buying a good domain name isn’t hard, for those of you who are responsible for building value in the marketing area of their companies. If it defines your company’s products and services, and also your competitors products and services, spend your annual ad budget if you need to, in order to get that domain name before your competitor does.
Ask questions before belittling domain name values. You need to understand a domain name just isn’t a word, it can be the right tool that will work harder for you than any ad agency or PR firm will do for the same price.
As a domain consultant, I’ve had clients who have sold their business to another competitor, where the competitor didn’t want their category descriptive domain name, and the client’s domain name is worth almost the same price as the total value of their business. My client scored twice on selling his business because he has a descriptive generic domain name, an “appreciable marketing asset.”
Stephen Douglas
Successclick.com
This sounds like a conversation from 1997 not 2009. I have not seen such silly stuff posted in a long time. How many of you heard of Melville Candy Company before I sold them Candy.com?
The comments made without knowing THEIR company make no sense. Without understanding they are wholesalers first. That they do custom stuff. That they have an interesting business model that others don’t.
Building a website is like being a plumber and having water get from one end of a pipe to the other. Sure, there will be plenty of leaks when you first hook it up but you have running water and there is TIME to take care of the leaks. Perfection at the beginning is meaningless.
Same with building a car engine. If you build it and it starts that is what matters. You have time to fine tune it and make it purr. But getting it running is the key. What if you built the perfect engine and it failed to start? I’d rather have a rough running sputtering engine that was ugly than that pretty piece of crap that won’t even start.
I have an entire blog post today about the conversation here. I won’t even give you the address. Maybe you can figure it out. My name is Rick and I have a blog.
I screwed my info up royally on my post. My correct url and twitter info are here. lol
Found it… http://www.rick...techcrunch.html
I read your blog and you hit the nails on the head. I believe your right that techies have little or no consumer facing experience and may never fathom the value of location. You have a wealth of information on your blog that every entrepreneur, startup, businessman should read. Great work, this plugs for you.
http://www.ricksblog.com
Rick – please enlighten us on how much you received for candy.com – did you receive 3 million all at once or over how many years? I do not know the answer to this.
The price competition is massive in this industry – in my opinion, their margins are going to be tiny – to break even “just” on the domain sale, in my opinion, will take forever – then they have expenses leaving, in my opinion, a small net profit.
Candy.com was an excellent purchase provided that the future marketing efforts are worthy of this most excellent name. I won’t call this a “home run” purchase yet because the new owners could easily fumble away the potential of this domain but if they market their business well, their success will be exponentially higher than if they were working with a “B” or “C” quality domain.
And they can always flip the name if it doesn’t work for them…