Here come the toys.com sale riders.
After Toys ‘R’ Us bought Toys.com for $5.1 million, I joked that we’d start seeing forum postings for mycrappytoy.com domain names.
“I’m only asking $100,000. Toys.com sold for $5.1M, so this is worth it!”
This week’s stupid press release isn’t actually a press release. It’s an article at ToyNewsMag.com about a toy company that will “consider” selling you its toy domain names:
[Flying Toys] owns the rights to www.flyingtoys.com, www.flyingtoys.co.uk and www.flyingtoys.eu and would consider selling all three if it received a genuine offer, according to Flying Toys boss David Rawlings.
“All these Flying Toys domain names are currently linked to the Flying Toys Ltd website. As we have no plans to discontinue selling ‘Flying Toys’ in the foreseeable future, we would only consider a really serious offer of around £1m.
Indeed, a really serious offer.
“It just seems remarkable that in light of Toys R Us recent purchase, selling a company’s domain name can be more profitable than selling products in the present climate.”
Don’t worry, David. Selling your domain names will not be more profitable than selling your toys. Unless you’re losing money.
…hmmmm…wonder if’n they’re be any money in a “toy” domain like…ICANNToys.com?
‘ought ta’ be worth at least 5k. Hmmm…
Yo Dub-A,
I went to a Home and Garden Convention last weekend cuz my wife wanted to “get some ideas” oh dear God…(just bought a nice little 1 acre creekside home this week YAH! I promise there WILL be domainer parties there this summer).
Anyway, at this convention, I met a guy with a great product, and a KILLER domain name. He said he owned about 30 other domains that I thought were intriguing. However, he was willing to SELL HIS PRODSERV DOMAIN NAME of his product! I figured this domain was worth a minimum of $15,000. I told him selling his prodserv domain wasn’t smart, but he said he had so many other businesses he was involved in, and he just did most of his biz by WOM anyway, he didn’t think he needed the domain anymore.
I felt I would be taking advantage of him if I sold his domain. (God was giving me that dang guilty conscience problem!) I believed, ethically, I should tell him to hang on to his domain name, so I did. But he didn’t care, which told me one thing: He wasn’t reviewing his website’s unique visitor count and conversion rates. I can tell you that I saw his prodserv and it is very sellable, nicely built, and definitely priced well. So why would he want to sell his domain name?
He says he has about 30 other domains he bought ten years ago, 3, 4, 5 character domains… wants to sell them too. He just doesn’t understand the connection between his sales and his category killer domain name.
Overall, in my business, it’s odd to see small companies doing the OPPOSITE of what the large companies are doing (which is owning their competition by purchasing their category killing prodserv domains.) This is probably why most companies stay small, and the reasons why Fortune 1000 companies are, well… F100 companies.
Or, it could be nogginheads with mid level or low level domains that could benefit a small company are asking for Premie domain prices. It would be interesting to follow any reported bidding on certain domains, good and bad, in order to analyze the bidders’ and the sellers’ understanding of this business, and how to successfully close the deals they want.
But back on topic… so many people get the wrong idea of how to “prep” their understanding of domain evaluation, especially in the two word or more phrasings. One word popular object nouns are no brainers. How about FlyingToys.com? Well I think that domain is worth at least $10,000 minimum. The owner of this domain obviously hasn’t found a way to control the online market of “flying toys”, which I imagine, are in the thousands.
It’s all about domain value education and the application of what you learned…
Here’s a shameless Big Moe promo example of a company that learned:
http://www.successclick.com/a-fortune-1000-company-goes-nuts-with-a-domain_2009_03_02/
thx Dub-A
Andrew — great post. That’s hilarious!