A big market but a big price tag.
From a Covestor today comes this sales pitch for ETF.com.
Asking price: $9.5 million.
The domain is being brokered by a Seattle outfit called Broadmoor Associates. I’ve never heard of them before, and they don’t list any names on their web site, but apparently they’ve been the exclusive broker of some good names (and some rather poor names) in the past.
A Reuters blogger takes issue with the valuation methodology in the pitch deck, and I can see why. But hey, we all try to put our best foot forward when pitching a product. It’s up to the buyer to decide.
The site gets just over 100,000 visitors in 2010. 41% of that was direct type-in according to the pitch deck.
The brochure points out that $9.5 million price tag slots the domain nicely between Facebook’s $8.5 million purchase of FB.com (price not completely confirmed) and Fund.com’s $10 million sale. Neither of these are very relevant since FB.com was bought by Facebook and Fund.com was one of the dumbest purchases I’ve ever heard of, which still makes me doubt it actually happened as we’re told.
This isn’t to take anything away from ETF.com, which is a stellar domain name indeed. It’s been on the block before, at the Epik conference last year.
Snoopy says
Would say low 6 figures, they are wasting there time trying to get 7 figures for it. The price tag is absurd.
Gnanes says
Looks like SEM.com changed hands recently. It was up for auction at Latonas with low 7 figure starting bid.
Osama says
Snoopy, did you google etf? There’s gold in financials
Snoopy says
Osama,
I know what the term means.
jp says
I don’t know about $9.5M for ETF but for some reason this article cost me $24 a year.
DigitalBrokerages.com
IPBrokerages.com
IntellectualPropertyBrokerage.com
Mike Grant says
As it happens Broadmoor is a large well known Mental Hospital/Prison here in the UK. Maybe Broadmoor Associates are connected ?. I hypothesis only,lol.
domainerschoice.com says
there is no way this domain will sell at this price or anywhere close to it.
Andrew says
At the Epic auction about a year ago, I recall that it was listed for around 5m, now almost double?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Andrew – I looked up the reserve. It was “$5M+”, so this may have been the same price.
Trico says
“A Reuters blogger takes issue with the valuation methodology in the pitch deck, and I can see why. ”
Andrew, I don’t know if you saw the Update on the Reuter’s blog based on a comment left by Mick Weinstein of Covestor.
“Update: Weinstein leaves an important comment, explaining what the brochure means when they say the traffic “is valued at” a certain amount. The number isn’t the amount of money you’d receive by trying to monetize the traffic; instead, it’s the amount of money you’d need to buy that traffic, if you were using AdWords to drive traffic to your ETF site.”
Read Mick’s actual comment in it’s entirety in the Comment section.
—
By the way, your Reuter’s link goes to a
404 Page Not Found.
–
There is some html code in the link that doesn’t belong:
–
it’s between “the” and “day”.
the-day-etf-edition/
Here’s a short link:
http://snurl.com/ETFedition
Andrew Allemann says
@ Trico –
Thanks, link fixed.
Yeah, I think the Reuters blogger misunderstood the brochure, but the numbers still are quite optimistic. It’s using the top PPC prices. Not everyone pays the top prices.
bernard says
Why didn’t groupon.com start their business with coupon.com?
Joey Starkey says
Doesn’t matter what any of us think. As long as one person with $9.5 mil thinks they want it or need it bad enough.
I have one name I want $125K for. And it’s a hack at that. But I have been discussing the name and I am starting to see interest.
Sometime’s you have to sell the idea. Once the image that you are painting clicks in your customer’s head.
Once they get it…they get their checkbook.
Sometime a domain won’t sell itself, you actually have to sell.
Andrew Allemann says
So here’s an interesting question: Is ETF.com or ETFs.com better?
ETF says
I think around $1-$1.5 mil would be a fair price.
Trico says
“Is ETF.com or ETFs.com better?”
ETF, Andrew.
You wrote ETFs because you control the keyboard and can make the “s” lower case to indicate plural.
But there’s no way to understand that the plural of ETF is meant if the domain appears as etfs.com or ETFS.com.
Adding an “s” to the end of an acronym is not same as adding one to a noun.
Shoe vs Shoes
Domain vs Domains
Girl vs Girls
etc, etc….
Trico says
Also one can argue that ETF.com can mean
either Exchange Traded Fund or Exchange Traded Funds.
Coast Dwane says
$9.5 million? Are you kidding!! Though the domain is superb but there is no way it would be sold at that price.