Peaches.com owner Kelly Pitts tells how he got the domain — and why he’s putting it up for auction.
The next Sedo Great Domains auction kicks off Thursday, and my pick for the top domain name on the list is Peaches.com. It’s a spectacular category killer domain name that also has branding potential. I reached out to owner Kelly Pitts to find out when he acquired the domain name and why he has decided to offer it for sale.
When did you originally register/acquire Peaches.com, and why did you choose the domain name?
I registered it in November 1995. It was available at the time for registration, as was almost every produce domain. I had started registering domains in August of 1995 and this one one of many I registered before the year’s end. I did not even own a computer at the time, but was instead going over to a friend’s house to use his computer to fill out the applications on Peaches.com and others.
Mainly though, I registered this domain because it gave me a representation in the produce niche, it was extremely memorable, could be used for many different purposes, and lastly because I am from Georgia. So it made sense.
What have you done with the domain name since then?
Even though I developed some 400 domains by 2000 I did not develop this one to any great length. I had to pick and choose what domains to develop since it was much more expensive back then to develop domains. Everything from software, computers, internet connections, to tech help was much more expensive than it is now. Truthfully, great category killer domains like Peaches.com have helped fuel my development and domain acquisition efforts to a great degree over the years since they kept spinning off passive income. I think this can be said is true for most of the old school domainers. Those early purchases helped propel most of us through the ninetees, oughts, and still do to this day.
I’ve parked the domain and tried affiliate programs going back to the 90’s for everything from peaches, peach trees, dating, adult, presents, gift baskets, fruit baskets, ringtones, domain names, jewelry, etc… and every one of them have converted to sales. The traffic volume helps to this end. The sheer traffic volume that comes with great domains like this one can make for decent income in affiliate programs or redirects.
Why did you decide to sell the domain?
I’ve decided to sell the domain because just like many other “older” domainers out there I have come to the realization that time is finite for the living and developing Peaches.com will never be my passion like it could be with other domain names I own. Therefore, I want to sell some domain assets and get into other new domain assets, as well as other traditional investments as part of a regular, prudent approach to investing.
I’m definitely am going to invest some of the proceeds in ccTLDs. I see the ccTLDs as being the next real exciting place to be. There is an opportunity right now in the market to take the profits from Peaches.com and some other great category killer domain sales and reinvest in the ccTLD market and ride that wave to new highs. It’s a treacherous investment realm, but so was .com back in the nineties. It’s where the fun still is because plenty of direct navigation traffic is available for the taking at reg fee. The ccTLD market reminds me of buying domains in 1998 in the .com extension. I totally believe there is an incredible opportunity to replicate what I did in the .com again in the foreign markets. I speak Spanish, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent some other languages, so the opportunity to shift into those markets at a greater clip has been screaming at me to take advantage of. I’ll be moving out of the .com and into ccTLDs to a larger degree after some sales occur. Peaches.com and others I am/will be selling will further that cause.
Basically, It’s time for someone else to develop Peaches.com and for me to part ways and move on to new hunting grounds.
Who do you think the ideal buyer is?
I think it could be used by so many companies for the memorable qualities it has to represent a multitude of prodservs.
It’s also extremely brandable, yet generic…..the best of both worlds. That is hard to say about many generic domain names.
Josh says
Great Adult name!
jeff says
what a category name for a fruit company
great write up and hope an end user grabs this name and sees the generic value of a name and have there customer know they mean business in selling peaches
Jim Holleran says
Peaches.com is a great name, and Kelly Pitts is a great person. He is one of the good guys in the industry and deserves all the success.
Thanks, Jim
Ripped Off says
How can you saw Kelly Pitts is a great man?? I wanted to open a business with the intentions of selling my product online. Kelly Pitts outbid me on GoDaddy with the intention of “never” using the domain name, except to sell it back to me for a higher value. In fact, when I called him he wanted $2500, and he only bought it for $48. A great man, I think not. Now I’m stuck with a different name, tooling with an altered website, a domain name that directs traffic to his website-which tells my customers they can buy this domain name; thus, leaving my customers to think I am out of business. This man is not helping small business he is only hurting it.
Mike says
Peaches.com is a great name and hope it could fetch a good price.
santa says
Folks, don’t let anyone fool you. If you have money you can use any name to sell anything, you just need money to adversise your product. You can use banana as a domain name and be selling houses, computers, water or anything. What the domain name godaddy.com has to do with the business of registering and auctioning domain names? Does the domain name godaddy suggest registering or auctioning domain names?
It’s not easy to sell a domain name, specially nowadays, because people already understood that the success of a business does not reside in the domain name you are using but rather on the money you have to advertise. That’s the reason why you see even the companies using domain names like cheaptickets.com, cheapflights.com or cheaptravel.com still need to advertise their products on various means of advertisement. But one thing is true. If you have a domain name that’s easy for people to remember and use it for a business you will have more advantage than those with domain name that are difficult for people to remember when advertsing. You have to advertise your business no matter what. Having an easy-to-remember name does mean a shit if you do not let people know what you are doing with that domain name. And you should know that Easy-to-remember domain names are and will always be abundant, they will never be gone, so I don’t see why someone would register or buy a difficult-to-remember domain name, or buy a good name from a speculator. People who made money domaining are those who were lucky to get into domaining business in the 90s, when people where naive, when people were thinking ohhh without a generic name or an easy-to-remember name you would never be able to make a business. That’s when they sold domain names for miilions, and most of them were sold to speculators, not end-users, because even at that time not many people were believing in paying so much money for domain names. Today is even harder to get those naive people, not even speculators, they already have understood that making money on domaining is a fallacy, a myth, bacuse at the end of the day no domain name would be bought by an end-user because they just don’t see the need to pay the kind of money domainers demand for the domains. End-users would prefer to create their own domain names and register them, that’s why you see the 2 well-known domain auction websites (sedo and afternic) are able to sell only 20 domain names a week where there are about 2 billions registered domain names on sale worldwide. If you are lucky to sell a domain to an end-user, all they can spend is 100 to 400 hundred on a domain name. Sedo and Afternic sometimes would list ficticious domain sales to give false impression to the public that they are really doing better. In fact expecting to make money on domainingg is just like hoping to win lottery one day.
My advice is this: if you have been domaining for more than 3 years and you never made money, then the best thing you have to do is invent a product, choose a domain name for that product and develop that domain name or you just quit domaining otherwise domaing will ruin your life. Why don’t you want to invent or innovate a product so that you can develop and use your domain name? Why do you just prefer to sell domain names than developing them? Is it because you think the people who would buy your domains names find it difficult to create a domain name than to invent or innovate a product to be sold online, and that’s why they need you to create a domain name for them? Think about the answer of this question, you will make a good decision. Someone who can innovate, invent or compete with people selling the same product most likely would also be able to create a good domain name for the product he came up with. Open your ears now and read this: the more domainers who expect to make money one day there are in the world the better for the domain registrars and domain conference organizers or domain auctions websites. They are making money on that ilusion. Domainers would register more new domain names, they would go to domain conferences paying $900 to attend, and would advertise their domain names on sedo or afternic for money. All of the above agents companies would make money except the domainers who never made noney. That’s why they create positive-sounding news about domain names business and send it to all domainers so that they can make them have hope that one day they will sell a domain and make money. They have to use peole like schwartz because of the influence ,