After 6 Figure Acquisition, I-Newswire.com Rebrands as Newswire.com

I-Newswire.com is a popular press release distribution service, and the company rebranded yesterday as Newswire.com. Obviously, this is a major upgrade for the company, and it came at a fairly steep price.

According to Michael Santiago, Partner at Newswire.com, the company pursued the domain name for quite some time before turning to Domain Holdings to act as a buyers’ broker. Michael told me the domain name was purchased last week after more than a year of negotiations. The company paid in the “six figure range” to acquire this domain name.

I asked Michael to share some additional insight into the acquisition to learn what motivated the company to spend six figures on this domain name, and here’s what he had to say:

“For several years we experienced growth and rode the trend of the “i” era. However, we felt it was getting old and didn’t like the fact that we had a dash in our domain name. My business partner and I are both domainers so we always had an eye for the non-dashed version of I-Newswire.com, iNewswire.com.

So a few years ago we had the opportunity to buy iNewswire.com and we did. Though we never did a full transfer over to that domain because, while it was an upgrade, we felt it wasn’t worth the risk of losing our rankings and traffic.

Fast forward to today, we were fortunate enough to finally acquire the best name for our company, Newswire.com. That name was so strong we figured it was worth the “calculated” risk with our traffic and rankings.

I say calculated because we first consulted a few professional SEO’s to make sure we did the move the right way and do whatever we could to mitigate lost rankings as much as possible.

It’s early on but we’re confident we did the right thing. Hopefully a year from now we can say it was well worth the investment.”

Newswire.com was owned by a Massachusetts company for many years. I searched Archive.org and Screenshots.com and could not find an archived website on Newswire.com, so I am unsure if the domain name was previously used.

Although the rebrand from i-Newswire.com to Newswire.com was a minor change, I think it makes the company look like more of an authority. As Michael alluded to, the “i” was a bit dated, and rebranding makes sense.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. While I don’t think “i” names are completely outdated, you gotta wonder why Apple decided to name their latest smart watch “Apple Watch” vs “iWatch”

  2. 3 86109097 LIVEWELL BY IWATCH TSDR LIVE
    4 86109071 IWATCH LIVEWELL TSDR LIVE
    5 86009820 IWATCH TSDR DEAD
    6 85445319 IWATCH EEKLY TSDR DEAD
    7 85951867 IWATCH TSDR LIVE

    LOTS of trademarks already for iWatch

  3. If I’m not mistaken there were trademarks on “iPad” and “iPod” as well and it didn’t stop them from using “i”. But yea could’ve still been a factor.

  4. “Although the rebrand from i-Newswire.com to Newswire.com was a minor change”

    I would say this is much much more than a minor change. It’s the difference between looking like you run your business from your garage to looking like you run it from some massive corporate headquarters. It’s a huge change.

  5. I used to own the i-newswire.com site many years ago, although I did not create it. After running it for a few years I sold it to Michael. I hope he does well with the domain upgrade.

  6. CX.com to ampX2 is a bad move. It sounds like an energy drink, penis enlargement pills or a fast pair of snow skis. You can tell a branding agency wasn’t involved with this process at all. Their marketing team failed in my opinion with this new name. Here is the elevator pitch below from your article. If you called their marketing team and asked them to explain the new name I can promise you no one there will be able to repeat this pitch below. Why in the world would you sell a million dollar domain and replace it with a 8 dollar hand registration. This is failure on the ultimate level. IMO

    “Amp = Amplify + X = Revenue, Retention, Brand Relevance or Customer Lifetime Value + 2 (squared) = Quantifiable Results.”

  7. As the gtlds continue to painfully crash and burn, “I” think we will see more of such stepup transactions in the .com realm from those smart enough to take their domain name seriously.

  8. Thanks for the great write up Elliot!

    Eric, good to see you here. It’s been awhile, hope all is well.

    I always advise my coaching students that the fastest way to generate revenue online is to buy an existing online business making money.

    So yea, I’m glad I stumbled across your “inventory sale” nearly a decade ago. Thank you!

  9. Hi Elliot,

    I have a few “i-” domains. Are these names worth anything?
    i-coding(.)com
    i-positive(.)com
    i-webmasters(.)com
    i-multimedia(.)com

    Thanks!

    • I think they did just that. Search Domain Broker on Google and Sedo is #1, Godaddy is #2 and Domain Holdings is #3. If I were to place a bet I would say that this is the way they found one. They went with the first real domain broker from a Google search.

    • Michael contacted me because he and I did a deal a long time ago and he said he regularly reads my blog. His sharing that info leads me to believe he is familiar with the domain space.

      Chad Folkening’s response below offers more info.

  10. Some “i” domains are great; “i – hyphen” domains are junk. “Newswire*” is a major upgrade, well worth 6 figures. “i-newswire” was junk, and embarrassment. “iNewswire” would have been a million times better.

  11. Elliot, have you put me on “awaiting moderation” status now? It’s got my post “awaiting moderation.” If so, what did I do? 🙂

  12. Great Job Mike! I am glad you finally made it.

    Newswire.com is certainly lot better and would prove to be a great investment.
    I am not sure if you would get the same PR like you have for i-newswire.com, considering the fact that Google might not update PR anymore now.

    I wish you and you’re partner Mike, all the best. 🙂

    Aishwin

  13. Thanks Aishwin! You may be right about the pagerank. But as long as we maintain traffic and rankings, I think we’ll be ok.

    The name exudes professionalism and with our growing team of talented PR pros, we are poised to take on the biggest players in this space.

  14. They found us by referral from another happy client. The seo takes care of itself verses others trying to manipulate the results, like others we know. Most of our $31 million in transaction last year were basically all referrals. . It was a great move for them and small cost for such a move in value positioning. Another happy client of Domain Holdings.

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