If you remember 360 Quote LLC purchased a number of car insurance domains last year including CarInsuranceComparison.com and a string of GEO related insurance names.

Joel Ohman, founder of Domain Superstar, runs 360 Quote LLC and is one of the few domainers we love to see acquire names since they actually get built with relevant content worthy of the money spent.

Congrats !

and no … this was not over priced. A fair deal for both the buyer and seller.

Media Options was responsible for brokering the sale.

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

According to compete these 2 sites have over 2,000,000 unique visitors a month in the lucrative financial and insurance industries.

The breakdown was:

$205 million for NetQuote

$145 million for CreditCards.com

So – you still want to park your domains?

There is lots of money around if you build. Maybe not $350 million but surely a few if you do it right. This news is a month old – from June 24th – and I totally missed this being reported anywhere. Congrats!

Personally I think creditcards.com is worth a lot more than $145 million

More here:

Bloomberg Article -  WSJ online edition (must be a subscriber)

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Insurance, Mortgage, Weight Loss, Finance, Debt and others.

One of the biggest domains sought after by hordes of people over the years has seemed to quietly move to a new owner for a sum that was substantial I’m sure.

If you think I’m kidding lets put it in a parking perspective for domainers. Over $40,000 a month in parking revenue from my sources.

Well, in December the domain autoinsurance.com changed hands from long time owner P Gordon of London, England to what seems to be the owners of OnlineAutoInsurance.com -- InsuranceBroker.com LLC located in Miami Beach, Florida (according to DomainTools and obvious from the DNS change)

This is by far the best domain acquired over the past year in my opinion for a number of reasons – many developers would have sold their soul, their spouse and possibly their pets for this domain.

Congrats and check out the videos.  Looks like they are copying the freecreditreport.com theme for advertising but regardless this is a monster domain and one that will never be available again I’m sure.

My guess – well over $5 million – possibly $10 million if this was a sale and not a partnership.

A drop in the bucket for Allstate, Geico or anyone else but hey – why not spend your money on ads instead of buying your traffic (sarcasm)

Best move of the year to buy this domain imo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxBuXTS5nE0

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

According to Quinstreet’s SEC filing

“In February 2008, we acquired ReliableRemodeler.com, Inc., or ReliableRemodeler, an Oregon-based company specializing in online home renovation and contractor referrals for $17.5 million in cash
and $8.0 million in non-interest-bearing, unsecured promissory notes, in an effort to increase our presence within our home services vertical.

Have to love it.

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

CardRatings.com – a site with just under 100,000 visitors a month (not an enormous amount of traffic by any measure) was sold for $10.2 million in an all cash deal.

Read more here

Congrats!

PS. Don’t think your word+ratings.com is worth any more. This is development pure and simple.

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Oh my.

Its taken me a few days to even put my thoughts together on this.

The purchase of Jets.com was a steal.

Yes – the buyer basically robbed the bank without any heavy artillery needed.

To quote Andrew’s piece on domainnamewire.com the new owner said ..

“Justifying the $375,000 price tag for the domain wasn’t too difficult. The previous owners were getting 48,000 unique visitors a month, Klinger explained. “If we took 1% of that, that’s 480 people that would possibly fly private,” he said. That may be an unrealistic conversion rate, so he keeps dividing it in half. “If we can get 30 clients a month by having jets.com as a domain name, the ROI would pay us back in a month or two.”

ROI back in a month or two?

15 years since symbolics.com was registered and people can’t see the light.

But wait – I’m not talking about main street.

I’m talking about the domain brokers in this industry.

Before you sold domain names what did you do?  Sell photocopy paper at escalated prices or sell shoes always upgrading customers with that useless shoe polish for $19. If you can do either of these things you surely can sell an asset at a value much more than 2 months ROI ?

You think you know how to sell since you made a sale for $375,000.

Not a chance.

You failed and failed miserably.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how right these guys were but it does take a good salesman to sell this information to clients.

When an end-user can sit down and essentially mock about how cheap the price was by doing simple math and saying hey – we’ll get our money back in 60 days then I’m sorry – but I wouldn’t give you my grandmothers coffee table to sell.

Furthermore I know of 3 serious buyers who submitted offers in the six figure range or inquired directly with SEDO (buyers who could easily be qualified by doing a Google search on the name) and SEDO came back with a minimum offer of over a $1 million.

So what happens next.

Someone – the seller I can only presume decides hey, we have to move this name so let’s drop the reserve.

Reserve is dropped by over 60%

No one I spoke with ever heard from SEDO now that there was a substantial reduction in price.

A 60% drop on one of the key names in our entire industry and not a peep.

No press release – no showcase – no push to auction.

Absolute rubbish.

Reminds me of a used car salesman who wants to meet a quota this month and has no idea how to extract real value – even a fair discounted value for an asset.

What happens next … you know the story … a charter jet company steals the name, laughs how great the purchase was and people have something to blog about.

Wow – a $375,000 sale people say.

Me.  I say it was a terrible job of brokering such a great domain.

End users are not hard to find – obvious by the continued increase in sales.

Whats hard is to find brokers who understand how to deal with more than one.

Finding an end-user creates a sale.

Finding end-users (plural) creates a market.

Think about it.

15 years in to this thing and even our brokers need help.

Granted SEDO does have some good sales but a scorecard of ZERO on this.

Congrats to the buyer – Concord Private Jets -  you just secured a domain which will forever change the course of your business – at nothing less than the price of a gumball.

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

We have our own black book of buyers and only a few people actually know how much business we do (yes, the numbers would shock most of you) but I started this blog to get more involved in the community (or at least have an outlet to rant every now and then) so today I want to provide some more facts to help find end users.

First, many of us speak about how much traditional media costs and how one can blow $100,000 on an ad in the New York Times but I think some of us are just numb to those numbers because it doesn’t seem real.  How can a company drop $100,000 for a Sunday and and still have a hard time paying $20,000 for a domain?

Logically … there is no logic here but to find end users you need data also. So…

Every day you drive around and see those billboards owned by ClearChannel (doesn’t matter what country – I’ve been everywhere and its one of the few things I always look for – to see who owns the signs – more often than not its ClearChannel – rest are owned by Viacom).  Well, my peeps, your end users are sitting right in front of you.

Take a look at this page – http://www.clearchanneloutdoor.com/rates/

It’s ClearChannel’s standard rates for billboard avdertising.  Remember, this is NOT the New York Times – this is a billboard where most people are buying a BRANDING presence which means the money spent is part of a bigger plan and I can promise you these companies have money to spend.

Take for example the following input:

Division:  Miami / Fort Lauderdale
Market: Fort Lauderdale
Media: Poster
Ethnicity: General market

$4,500 – $49,600 a Month !!!  – That is $54,000 to $595,200 a year for eyeballs looking at your sign – not targeted visitors – just people driving by.  Additionally, most of the time these companies are local business who still do not even have a memorable web address.

Drive around – sit and wait for the signs to change (as many signs share advertisers) – then move to the next one.  In 10 hours you will have a short list of the companies who spend awful amounts of money locally and are probably willing to chat more than you think.

Parts of our “black book” were put together this way and I can tell you it works.  It took me a few days to do the research a couple years back but we have made more money from this experience than you could imagine.

Need more examples of how traditional media is just ridiculously expensive compared to what you would sell your domain(s) for…

How about $59,875 for a ONE TIME quarter-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times Automotive Section!

or $34,608 for ONE TIME full page ad in the Time’s Real Estate Luxury Homes & Estates section

Simply view 2008 rates for the New York Time’s here…

http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/mediakit/newspaper/rates/ad_rates.php

Want to find local rates simply search for the name of your local newspaper + advertise

For example, in Fort Lauderdale the main newspaper is the Sun-Sentinel.

Go to Google and type in “Sun-Sentinel Advertise” – your paper’s ad rates should be in the top results.

This type of data can help you figure out who is paying how much.  The jewelry store around your corner may have a bigger budget than you think.

Enjoy….

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Is this really a valid exit strategy?

It certainly sounds great but it’s also the elusive dream for many domain owners as portfolio buyers are few and far between – at least those that want to pay a fair price.

Keep your head out of the clouds (visit every now and then) and spend time developing a real exit strategy – one which is deeper than simply finding the right buyer. Remember, if you can’t find someone to pay $100,000 for your portfolio today what makes you think you have a better chance of selling a bigger portfolio for $2,000,000 (using the same logic) down the road. Sure, it’s possible but money gets harder to find the higher you go.

Develop an exit plan that contains multiple exit points. Build a smaller portfolio with some great names, have some developed sites, create a brand within a specific sector. So many options but each one will be an exit point in your overall exit plan.

All kinds of exit strategies exist but the question is – do you have one?

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Not a chance.

When a large portfolio owner announces the sale of 100,000 names it sounds like jumping ship but it’s not like that – in any way, shape or form.

As I said in an earlier post:

“Over 98% of the portfolio just added to Afternic by iReit is JUNK! – Complete and useless domains your blind grandmother would not register nor be able to spell if Bob Barker was promising a gold house behind door number 3. It’s simply a collection of tens of thousands of typos, possible trademark problematic names, unbrandable words, hypens, meaningless phrases and utter junk with a few good names thrown in to help with a press release”

Quite frankly I have no idea why anybody announced this – it certainly does not help iReit in selling the names. All it does is verify big players are selling their junk and trimming portfolios to only include premium names. It’s no longer about quantity but quality – wait … that is exactly the way it should be.

So I ask, iReit dropped a few hundred (not 100,000) good names in the marketplace – what’s the big freaking deal?

You want real names – watch the featured domains on the homepage of SnapNames, search NameJet daily & read the blogs for private sales.  The deals are out there – this market was not just flooded with great names.

Take a look at some of the “killer” iReit portfolio names listed for sale below. My Amex is ready – Where do I sign up

12-1.com
122122.net
12-25.com
1-mood-disorders-light-therapy-circadian-rhythms.com
1-obsessive-compulsive-disorder.com
1-website-promotion-webmaster-resources.com
4-albuquerque-real-estate.com
4always-n-forever.com
desi-india.com
design-wap.com
dgtop1.com
dgs-fxp.com
d-guo.com
dgw3.com
dgxinc.com
duda-messer.com
ebook007.net
ebook-bay.com
e-clas.com
ec-leao.com

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“it may suggest that both companies are seeing major drops in revenue and are cleaning house and changing monetization strategies”

I really like Namebio so proper credit is given for reporting on this but now (in good fun) we must disagree that any such move is suggesting a major drop in revenue. These moves (in our opinion) are a better way to maximine revenue hence you are probably right in assuming both companies could be changing monetization strategies.

However, this change is not new – its simply time for large portfolio owners to take advantage of a market that is finally moving away from domainer to domainer sales.

Elliot posted a story about AmericanFlags.com– a true internet success story. The simple math tells us that in order to get corporate end users (the ones with really big wallets) we must first battle the war to obtaining approval from small business dreamers and owners on how much domain names are worth. AmericanFlags.com is a true example of this. How one name bought for $2,500 changed a mans life forever.

People are realizing this so it’s now time for iReit and others to sell assets which may never get $100,000 but will certainly get $2,3 or 5,000 because real buyers (not domainer to domainer sales) are starting to come.

It’s smart for iReit to cash in from the sale of domains which may not meet their development goals. I’m not sure if Afternic or BuyDomains was the right choice but the move was right for sure.

As for Dark Blue Sea – not Dark Deep Blue, all in good fun namebio , they have been selling names through GoDaddy for quite some time. Many of the names most domainers would not buy (even in a drop) while many more are simply great names at fair prices. I think the magic here is finding the right target prices for end users… there, I said it. End users, small business owners, vanity names for people with extra cash – that’s why this deal is great for both parties. GoDaddy has the end users – Dark Blue has the domains. Finally, a portfolio owner smart enough to go to the source (thumbs up Dark Blue).

Selling from domainer to domainer is a never ending moody circle of price swings. Oh, the world is ending, PPC is going down – why would I ever pay that much.

Let’s skip these people and go straight to the buyers who actually have development plans. Plans that involve a lot more than sitting home waiting for someone to click on your ads and then crying wolf when the company somebody else worked their butt off to build doesn’t pay you more. Lazy Domainers…. Let’s bypass them all!!

All I can say is it costs $6 to register a name for a year so you (as a domain owner) are essentially stealing property from the candy jar (it’s cheaper than a 12-inch sub) – If you decide to sell a good name for a couple hundred bucks than another domainer is stealing from your candy jar!

Hell with the candy jar robbers – let’s find the people who buy the candy. Next year we will find the people who make the candy.

Dark Blue has secured the system soooo many of us wish we had!!

One suggestion – if GoDaddy or Dark Blue are listening – can you release the sales information to DN Journal weekly.  More reporting, greater values will come.

If you’re in this for the long run then this is your opportunity to pick up some great names. We were privy to viewing much of iReit’s portfolio a little while ago and there are a few good names at FAIR prices….Remember, I said FAIR, not firesale.

As for 100,000 good names?

NOT A CHANCE.

Over 98% of the portfolio just added to Afternic by iReit is JUNK! – Complete and useless domains your blind grandmother would not register nor be able to spell if Bob Barker was promising a gold house behind door number 3. It’s simply a collection of tens of thousands of typos, possible trademark problematic names, unbrandable words, hypens, meaningless phrases and utter junk with a few good names thrown in to help with a press release.

So, iReit dropped a couple hundred good names in the marketplace – what’s the big freaking deal?

In a nutshell, these moves by various portfolio owners only strengthen what we have always believed. Traditional methods of valuating names simply based on PPC earnings is going away – Large portfolio holders are once again opting to sell based on the keyword value of the name.

The world is not ending – it’s simply shifting in the right direction.

©2012 Newfound Names LLC. All Rights Reserved.