You’d think in the midst of a recession domain name sales would become less common and be negotiated for far less than the high-priced .com acquisitions we remember from the late nineties and during the dotcom boom.
The reality, however, is that we’ve been seen a remarkable amount of high-profile, generic domain names go at fairly high prices for the past 8 months or so (e.g. Toys.com, Candy.com, YP.com, Vibrators.com, etc.).
Maybe professional domainers and regular companies with an attractive portfolio are more willing to sell now that cash is in shorter supply than it was before the economy collapsed, or maybe these are all calculated bets made by companies that have the capital required to purchase / invest in quality domain names. Most likely, it’s a combination of both.
Either way, we haven’t seen the end of it: earlier today, server.com was sold for a healthy $770,000 by domain brokerage house Sedo, reports DomainNameWire. Currently parked, the domain name averages only about 12K unique visitors per month according to Compete. Hence why I think this is a decent deal for the owner – an individual from Boston, MA – although a lot of professionals from the sector will argue that he could have fetched a lot more for this one.
No word on who actually bought it, but that information will likely surface sooner or later.
More domains were auctioned off today by Sedo (listed here) but the most apparent ones were definitely server.com, jesus.net ($124,337), omg.com ($80,000) and enlargement.com ($56,000).
(Picture via TFTS)
omg.com for 80k seems like a good deal. Great domain for a break/collegehumor style website
The sale would be okay if the company’s name matches the domain name that was being held by someone else. omg.com can stands for many things…it seems crazy to buy it for such a sum.
I had no idea spammers actually made money from what they did. Not enough to buy a domain name for 56k anyway….
did you think they spammed out of pure enjoyment?
This seems like a pretty decent deal for the buyer to me. Web hosting companies spend more up front on acquiring customers than almost any other major online segment. They are the high spenders in all of the major affiliate networks. $100-120 up-front commissions on $5/month hosting plans are the norm.
For dedicated servers and other higher-end hosting services where there’s even more of a margin, $770k isn’t all that much if there’s even a couple thousand built-in visitors a month. It’s a traffic purchase and a great brand to have.
people who are looking for ‘enlargement’ are very probable to just type it in the address bar, but people who search for servers are supposed to be people working with the tubes all day.
die domainers die
It’s not about type-in traffic (but if there is some, then that’s a bonus). Hosting is such a competitive market, that having “server” in the domain is a boost to SEO, and it’s also a great brand. It’s easy to remember (need servers? server.com), and comes with built-in trust compared to myrandomservercompany.com. Same benefit web.com, hosting.com and such have.
$770k seems like good value for server.com, the type in traffic and SEO benefit aside, the real value is in the long term branding potential, and how it could also add more than $770k to the value of an existing company that was sufficiently profitable in that sector, if they were to rebrand.
I dont expect $700k but if anyone might want to pick up HowTwitterWorks.com; let me know!
Let me buy a domain that I’ll instantly lose to Twitter via ICANN’s trademark dispute resolution process, great investment. Using trademarks in a domain, outside of something like “PayPalSucks.com” non-commercial criticism sites, is just a bad idea. Too easy to take the domain from you, they don’t even have to prove a case in court.
I’d rather have something like servercheap.com or cheapserver.com which is more brandable. Sometimes generic domains are too forgettable although the traffic it gets would be nice.
who wants “matchmeme.com”? contact me!
Great buy!
raj
Why did the comments turn into a lets spam my domains for sale thread.
Robin told you where the seller listed the name…go list yours there and maybe you will get a buyer for it. The comment section of Techcrunch is def not the place though.
Sorry Robin but we alerted TC earlier today to some much bigger news regarding domains. Bummer that you guys didn’t pick up on a story that has a much greater impact on the internet realm. Stolen domains are virtually impossible to recover without a great deal of money and time. Hope you guys take the time to cover the story.
don’t cry your little eyes out, looks like slashdot picked up on your spam.
Actually the P2P.com story is a lot bigger than Server.com.
Server.com is ‘just’ a sale (of a very nice domain) – criminal prosecution of stealing a domain name (something even sex.com did not fully manage) is something else.
bizcloud.com
I’d say its a deal at $770k. The domain is a PR5 with thousands of backlinks. The new owner should build it out (with something) quickly before it loses all of that SEO value. It won’t take much to have this domain ranking for a bunch of valuable search terms. Money well spent.
JobTV.com let me know.
nobody is buying that crap.
I’m surprised omg.com only fetched 80K. Server.com for 770K is a great deal for the seller.
so what would “servers.com” be worth? I understand there was some lengthy litigation over it in federal court in Texas.
great domain for a great company.