Popular expired domain service paid a measly 600 bucks for its brand.
Even domain marketplaces have to buy their own domain names.
A notable case was when thought Convergence’s Aftermarket.com paid $125,000 to pick up its name at auction.
Drop catching service NameJet paid decidedly less: just $600.
The company bought the domain name in September 2007 on Afternic.
YummyName’s Bill Sweetman stumbled on this sale when doing some research. You can see historical domain sales prices on sites such as DNSalePrice, NameBio, and Estibot.
I looked at the whois history of the domain to see who the seller was. It wasn’t one of NameMedia’s own domains; it was from a third party seller based in Texas.
This is proof that you can build a solid brand on an affordable domain purchase.
(Sorry if someone else has pointed this sale out before; it was news to me.)
DotCom says
And domain owners are willing to negotiate fair prices. There is always a small group that is very greedy and responds to every sale with $1,000,000 firm.
Most domainers I talk to, say if they were approached politely after a counter-offer has been made then we are willing to part with our domains.
The problem is, most people are so self-entitled they believe they are the right owner so they become very rude and prefer contacting a lawyer. Once the lawyer is contacted they only see $_$ so they say sure we can get it — for about the same price we would sell for.
Then after years of filing for trademarks and lawyer fees they decide a UDRP is the best way to get “their property” and a lot of the time it actually goes down this way. People are such assholes they would rather line the pockets of a lawyer than someone they consider a “cyber-squatter.”
It’s a shame because there is so many people in this community are innocent good people who were smart and bought land when it was cheap in the early 00’s. Now we are seeing a backlash of abuse of the legal system set in place to protect big brands. I feel the UDRP system is currently useless. The big brands won their domains years ago, the lawyers are still milking it at the expense of more and more generic domains some of us paid 6 figures for, and then being treated like criminal scum.
It’s good on a day like today, when you see other people aware of the lobbyist movement and SOPA/ProtectIP — At least people know the systems set in place are not there to protect the people, but to protect big business as usual.
Six Hundred says
$600 wow.
They found a name not owned by schwartz or schilling!