Sex.com .. No, A Much Bigger Sale has Happened
By Alan on Mar 4, 2010 in Domain Sales
Forget about sex.com – some of the most valuable domains in this world surround lead generation. Ask any developer and you will get the most common 5-10 categories as the most valuable.
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.
Esa | Mar 4, 2010 | Reply
Estibot valuation: $ 22,470,000 USD
One hell of a domain name.
I agree with you 100%, lead generation is the thing.
The parking revenue will pale in comparison to what can be done with this domain name in the right hands.
Alan | Mar 4, 2010 | Reply
Esa,
even if the buyer paid Estibots Value of $22M+ for this domain it was a deal imo.
Would have sold my soul for this one
Alan
Kevin | Mar 4, 2010 | Reply
That domain is priceless! What a gem!
Congrats to the new owner!
Shane | Mar 4, 2010 | Reply
Great find and easily the biggest sale of the year.
Robbie | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
P Gordon owns some of the best Generic domains in the world.
It would have been great to hear what price it sold for but I too agree between $5-10mm USD
Congrats to both parties.
Rob
Sreve | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
Al,
Great post….$40k monthly – fantastic. I wonder how much sex.com makes monthly. actually a few of us are putting a couple of dollars together(with Domain capitals help) and heading to the auciotn on March 18 right here in the city for sex.com. if we buy or someone else buys i will cover the story on DD with pictures and video if they allow it….
Mike | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
It is interesting domain sale and AutoInsurance.com is really big business domain and I would also think it was sold for some million dollars.
What a great acquisition?
John | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
Can anyone help me out on this? I own CARINSURANCEPITTSBURGH.COM According to Estibot.com my Domain is worth a little over $1,000 and my average cost per click is $32.00. Carinsurance.com is worth $16 million and the average cost per click is only $15.00 How can a lower valued domain have a higher cost per click?
Alan | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
John — Many times a GEO targeted keyword for high value categories such as Car Insurance have much higher CPC cost purely becuase these leads are deemed more targeted than those associated with the general term “car insurance”
Advertisers compete fiercely for the large geo markets and its not odd to see these geo targeted ads cost more than the generic term itself.
Jason | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
Hello all,
I have many domains which have a good appraisal value. PursesCoach.com values at $20,000 with a $2.18 cost per click. Sedo recommends having it priced at $5500.
Many times I feel that Estibot’s appraisals are too high. My CanyonGrand.com is valued at $33,000.
I’m not sure whether I can trust these appraisals. I have a few more domains that appraise for more than $10K. Any thought how I can increase interest on selling my domains? If I order an appraisal, will that help me to attach a realistic value?
I have about 300 domains. Many target specific jobs, travel places, art, and much more. I think my collection is good. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Jason
Jeff | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
Hey Jason, not to piss you off or anything, but in my opinion, your domains canyongrand.com and pursescoach.com are worthless. Who would want to purchase the domain canyongrand? And the pursescoach.com is a trademark issue, so if you put up a site about coach purses, you could get sued.
Don’t believe what you see on Estibot use your head to come up with your own valuation.
Alan | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
Jeff is right – both those domains are worthless imo also. The biggest question I ask myself when buying a domain to resell is .. “If I was in the particular sector the keywords of the domain suggest would I buy this name?”
pretty sure you wouldn’t buy these if they were offered to you for sale.
Estibot’s value is 95% in the data it provides – valuable data mind you – but automated $$ appraisals should never be used to estimate your own domain. Too many intangible factors exist that can never be put into a dataset for a database.
I could probably register 200 names right now that all have a $5,000 value according to Estibot and other automated systems but that does not mean i just got a million dollar portfolio of domains.
You have to understand how to use the other data Estibot provides and relate it to (a) domainers, (b) developers and (c) endusers to get a price range depending on who the potential buyer is.
joe domains saladino | Mar 5, 2010 | Reply
HUH??? I see Compete Rank: #776,204 with 1,403 U.S. visitors per month Not that hits alone make the domain. However, 22 million?? Did you bang your head badly!?”?” My estimate is whatever someone wants to pay or if I was interested I can envision about $5 million.
Alan | Mar 6, 2010 | Reply
Joe,
I said my guess was between 5 and 10M but $20m would stil be fair. Lets put it in perspective
GEICO spends $600 million a year advertising.
AllState and State Farm spend close to that.
AutoInsurance is arguably the most profitable lead generation online.
$40,000 a month in parking can easily mean $200,000 a month to an end user.
A super bowl add costs 1.6 million for 30 seconds and another $500k or more to produce.
CarInsurance.com after being developed with nothing more than generic content gets almost 200,000 people a month
AutoInsurance can do the same – In fact, its a higher searched term than car insurance.
There are many names worth $20m or more such as mortgage.com, carinsurance.com, autoinsurance.com, healthinsurance.com, weightloss.com and others to the right buyer.
I didn’t bang my head.
Rashid Mahmood | Mar 6, 2010 | Reply
The auction process is fairly automated, and it doesn’t take them hours to process any domain unless it is a five figure domain or more. I wouldn’t expect anyone to spend time “individually” promoting a domain name to an end user, they should do “themed” auctions, or pick several themes, group the domains and then contact the end user market relevant to the themes of the auction. That way, if they were selling domains all having to do with “contractor supplies”, then they accept domains into that group for the auction category, and contact an industry related publication and take out an ad. That way many end users who can select from the group have a nice large pool of domains to choose from. Why am I posting my ideas here for free? Dang!
Bob | Mar 7, 2010 | Reply
Have to agree with Alan here – AutoInsurance.com is one of the best deals that we won’t ever get our domainer hands on! I’d consider sacrificing a nut for that one too!
Well, maybe not really!
The only other one that I think was better in the last 12 months was Jets.com (@375K-RU F’ing kidding me!) – and yeah, I’d readily sacrifice one of the highly valued cajones for that one!
BladeMaster | Mar 8, 2010 | Reply
Totaly Agree. Good example is http://www.CreditCards.com
How you think they earn by refering for debit cards etc
IMHO, It must be a big ammount
Therefore i feel autoinsurance.com is alose a BIG FISH
Alan | Mar 8, 2010 | Reply
BladeMaster
CreditCards.com was sold in 2004 for $2.75 million
then 2 years later the owners cashed out for $100M +
http://domainnamewire.com/2007/08/10/creditcardscom-files-for-ipo/
CreditReport.com … not sure if the sale price is public but I know the price when it was sold a few years back and you could not touch this name for less than $50m today imo – 4 million visitors a month for credit reports, a sector where subscription fees go alongside of one time orders .. very much unlike credit cards, paydayloans and even auto insurance.
AutoInsurance.com was a monster catch.
Jason | Mar 10, 2010 | Reply
Alan, Jef and all,
I have done plenty of research. I bought those domains when I was still learning. I pay attention to what the numbers actually mean, and have now put together a good collection. I won a decent domain in an auction a few months ago – Venezia-abc.com. It was once a website before. Estibot values it at $50, but it was appraised at more than $2k. If you assess the domain, it has many outgoing and incoming links, is ranked on Alexa, and also pulls up some other good stats, as well.
I also purchased some good domains targeting specific jobs – Loanjobs.net, pastrychefjobs.net, grantwritingjobs.com and many other jobs. I did snooze on a domain which I kept in my box for a little too long – carsalesjobs.net.
I discovered this domain a few weeks ago, but was struggling a bit to purchase a few domains I had sitting in my box. I spent a lot on domains in the past month, so it was kind to hard to juggle bills and domains.
Carsalesjobs.net was sitting in my box since March 1. Someone finally claimed it on March 5. Essentially, I ended up losing that domain to another because I waited on making the purchase. The individual who bought the domain seemed to have better use for it than I did. I won’t look at it as a loss. However, It will be best to forget about that domain.
I do understand how to determine the value of domains. Any person looking at websiteoutlook.com would lose a fortune. Autoinsurance.com is only valued at $2001.00 on that domain. I’ve seen hdmicables.com sell for $12,000. On webasiteoutlook, it is valued at $484, whereas estibot appraised it at $185,000. I don’t believe many of the appraisals because sedo also values some of my domains for the same price.
At a recent Sedo auction, pet.net sold for around $20K. It was valued at $35k on estibot and $350K on websiteoutlook. I figured know what numbers to assess now. If a Canyon Grand is established in the near future, the domain will be live up to its value. They have a Canyon Country city near my hometown. PursesCoach is not violating anything because it could suggest that one can teach another to buy purchases.
I can see if it were coachpurses.com. No way there would be any lawsuits. Purchasescoach.com does pull up more than 500,000+ searches and 4500+ monthly keyword searches. The domain coaches women to buy purses. Towersears.com was deemed a trademark sensitive domain. I know what to look for now. It takes trial and error to learn. Many experts on this board have experience.
Thanks for the feedback. Websitelook.com need to revise the value of autoinsurance.com. It is only worth $2000 there. I understand that anything with loans and insurance will produce high cpc values.
jame | Mar 21, 2010 | Reply
I’m anxious to see how autoinsurance will be developed. Currently there is no “orbitz type” site for auto insurance where the consumer can get multiple quotes by entering his information once, and buying the policy. You and I can go to individual insurance company websites, get a quote, and buy, but the companies won’t “share” their rates, etc. in an orbitz type format. Maybe they can pull it off. I’ve noticed several stateinsurance.com url’s for sale, for what seems to be reasonable prices. missouri, tennessee, utah, and illinois (i think). Some of these can be had for under $100,000. If autoinsurance.com sold for $10,00,000 or so, aren’t these state specific url’s underpriced? I realize that autoinsurance can sell in all states, and a state-specific wouldn’t draw as well. The state name opens up other types of insurance though. Any comments or information on prior state sales would be appreciated.
semmy | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
nice .. this is a very good ..
Book Printing | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
another domain sales record~~~
wonder they’ll use this domain to build website or sale it again????