Archive for the 'Domain Sales' Category


Exclusive: The Future of Call.com

$1.1 million purchase may be just the beginning.

Boris Kreiman (and his company PhoneToPhone) has been confirmed as the buyer of Call.com. The better news is that he’s an end user, and he’s not done buying domain names.

I briefly connected with Kreiman on the phone this morning to learn about his plans for the site.

Kreiman runs a network of sites that connects consumers to professionals via the phone. An example is NewLawyer.com, where consumers can find a lawyer through the system and call them through the web site. He runs a similar service at NewDoctor.com. The businesses are doing quite well, so he doled out $1.1 million for Call.com. Instead of focusing on a niche like NewLawyer.com and NewDoctor.com, Kreiman says Call.com will be a general site for connecting with professionals for advice.

Kreiman clearly understands the power of a prime domain name, and he’s not done yet. He says we should hear about some other six (and potentially seven) figure domain name purchases he’s making in the next week or two.



Live Current Sells Call.com Domain Name for $1.1 Million

Live Current sells Call.com domain name for seven figures.

Live Current Media has sold the domain name Call.com for $1.1 million through domain brokerage Sedo.

The domain has a storied history. Live Current, when it was known as Communicate.com, sold the domain name as part of a package including Makeup.com, Automobile.com, and Exercise.com. Part of the sale included lifetime royalties on all earnings for these domains. Communicate.com reacquired Call.com in 2006 in exchange for eliminating the royalty provision. The company valued this future royalty stream at $250,000. In other words, it traded in $250,000 in future revenue in 2006 for a $1.1M sale in 2009.

Call.com was surely one of the two domains Live Current announced in a press release last week that it had sold for a total $1.6M. The other domain was likely Brazil.com for $500,000.

That press release also mentioned the company’s sale of Cricket.com for $1M cash plus $750,000 in other consideration.

Sedo brokered many other high profile domain name sales in the past week, including Editor.com for $225,000, Alternate.com for $90,000, and Games.eu for 67,500 EUR.



Bido Guarantee Program: It Makes Sense Now

The missing piece of the puzzle glues it all together.

BidoWhen domain auction platform Bido announced its “Bido Guarantee Program”, I was a bit confused as to why any buyers would participate. Essentially, buyers would participate in a pre-auction where they could bid for domains. The seller could choose to accept the winning bid in the pre-auction, send the auction to a “real” auction with the pre-auction bid as the starting bid, or walk away.

This didn’t sound too appealing to pre-auction buyers. They would essentially bid up the prices of domains, only to face more competition in the real auction.

But there’s one detail that wasn’t in Bido’s original explanation: pre-auction winners get a cut of the commission if they don’t end up winning the “real auction”.

Let’s say I’m a bidder in the guarantee program. In the pre-auction I win with a bid of $500 for a domain. The seller decides to send it to a real auction and the domain sells for $1,000 to someone else. That means I’d get 50% of the total commission (4% of the sales price), or $40. It would give me an incentive to bid high in the pre-auction (let alone participate at all). This should push domain sales prices higher on Bido.

My only worry, as I’ve discussed before, is that this makes things more complicated. But I think it’s a nifty addition to Bido.

Current guarantee bidders include NameMedia, Parked, Domaining, Reinvent, and several other companies.



Live Current Sells Cricket.com

Live Current Media ends a sad saga.

Live Current MediaLive Current Media (OTC: LIVC.ob) has sold its Cricket.com domain name and assigned its Indian Premier League contract for a total consideration of approximately $1.75 million. About $1M of that will be paid in cash over four quarters, and the remainder is the assumption of liabilities and payment of severance to a key Live Current employee that will be hired by the purchaser, GCV Mauritius.

Last year Live Current Media claimed to reject a previous $6M offer for the Cricket.com domain name. But a lot has changed since then. For one, Live Current entered into a 10 year, $50M agreement with DLF Indian Premier League. Not only did the company not have the money to pay for the agreement, but he company knew nothing about the sport. It showed in its execution. The company bet itself on cricket and lost the bet.

Assuming this deal relieves Live Current of any future obligations under its cricket agreements, this will help the company get somewhat of a fresh start.

Live Current also announced the sale of 2 domain names for $1.6M. One of these domains was previously sold for $1.25M but the buyer backed out. Live Current retained $355,000 that had already been received under the $1.25M agreement. The most recent known sale of a Live Current domain name was Brazil.com at $500,000.

In other news, Live Current restructured its payments for its purchase of Auctomatic, a company that has absolutely nothing to do with Live Current’s business. The Auctomatic acquisition is another example of the company’s poor execution.



XP.com Tops Great Domains Auction at $99,000

XP.com nearly cracks six figures at GreatDomains auction.

Bidding for this month’s GreatDomains auction at Sedo concluded today. Although none of the domains have changed hands yet, it looks like XP.com will be the top sale at $99,000. The domain was originally registered back in 1995.

BestPrices.com came in second at $81,000. BestPrices.com is an active web site with significant traffic. Sued.com came back this month with a lower reserve price that resulted in a much higher sale at $25,003.

None of these results are official yet, but here are other top bids:

bfc.com $18,400
khz.net $452
ahh.net 826 EUR
vgx.comnet $510
982.net 1,052 GBP
xhn.net $440
collectable.net $436
jiny.com $1,280
ambience.net $510
consumercontent.com $80
declined.net $121
desires.net $724
floorwax.net $70
bellyrings.com $8,899
dxb.com $22,500
nxm.com $4,100
zwm.com $3,600
2t.net $6,600
0a.net $2,450
object.net $1,160
sieve.net $559
selfproduced.com $100
usercontent.com $110
userpublished.com $70
musicbase.com $5,600
sneakpeek.com $3,500
travelguide.net $10,100
irishriverdance.com $70
lining.net $859
15.net $9,999


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