Earlier this afternoon, I published an article about the $100,000 sale of Autism.Rocks, which was reported by Sedo. I used the DomainTools Whois history tool to find out who sold the domain name, and I reached out to the seller (Chris Wilson) to see if he could provide some comments on the sale.
Wilson’s comments offer some insight into why he acquired the Autism.Rocks domain name and why he was able to achieve such a large price for the domain name in such a short period of time.
Unfortunately, it seems that Wilson is not happy with Sedo following the sale. One thing I would have recommended is to use an escrow service like Escrow.com for a transaction like this (ie no broker or brokerage). Sedo has a great brokerage and robust marketplace, but there are less expensive options for escrow services. Escrow.com would have charged a fee of $890 for a $100k transaction. (I don’t know if there were other reasons for using Sedo that I am not considering.)
Yes, I recently sold the autism.rocks domain. We Rock for Autism is a nonprofit that raises money to provide children with autism with music therapy.
I purchased Autism.rocks as a separate entity to help promote music performed or inspired by autism. I was approached by Autism Rocks (autismrocks.com) to sell it.
Then, I contacted Sedo and let them know that I had an agreement in place for the sale and was in need of assistance of setting up an account. I followed their instructions and sold it. Only later to find out that I should have been instructed to set my account up in a way that would have reduced the Sedo commission. I followed up after the sale and they said it was too late, that I should have set up my account in a way showing an agreed price in place and they would do nothing to help me.
I am happy for the sale, and will be donating a portion of it to We Rock for Autism. The buyer was great to deal with. But, I am very disappointed in the high commission kept by Sedo based on my asking for help and them not providing me with the option to set up an account that would have allowed for a larger percentage to go to me as the buyer, which in turn would have gone directly to the nonprofit.
Should Sedo agree to release just $12,000 of what they kept to me or donate that money directly to We Rock for Autism www.werockforautism.org I would have restored faith in their business practices.
6/25 Update: Sedo responded
i thought this price would never be achieved by a domainer since the seller also had an autism charity (or helped run one) but i am not skeptical. “a portion” could mean anything from 100-80,000 but it doesn’t sound like got this price as a donation.
$12,000 + as a brokerage fee? Why so excessive?
sedo gave the guy bad advice (perhaps on purpose) instead of using their escrow service it seems he listed the domain for sale.
Would be fair to list a name of Sedo’s broker who was the seller in contact with.
A nice review for Sedo. 🙁 yikes
What the cut was for someone to just hand them that six figure sale. 15% ?
Running a business like SEDO costs money. The emphasis from the comments I am reading once again bias towards the BIG bad business. No doubt a reflection of the freemium services aka social media sites that have spoiled John Q public to the point of feeling more than a bit imperialistic IMO.
Any comment about what the seller made for an ROI? Any?
Every coin has two sides.
Sedo has lost great reputation within the domainer community in the prior years. Times that they used to favor “certain” domainers with bad domains in their auctions to their absolute unjustified fee structure. Now tho they are not the only game in town.
The most amazing part is that he sold the domain for $100,000, which is 10 times what AutismRocks.com recently sold for.
It seems like a scummy move by Sedo if they did that on purpose, but on the other hand the seller should have known better. Once they saw the $12,000 potential fee, all they had do was Google “how to sell a domain” and within 2 minutes they would have read about domain escrow services, including Sedo’s escrow service, and how much they cost.
Can smell a lawsuit coming for bad unethical business transaction.
Another black eye for the domain industry.
Agree 100%
This comes as no surprise really, Many domainers (NOT all) still to this day try to profit off anything they can, no matter how repulsive it is, they profit off dead celebrities, tragedies like 911 or other random acts of violence, So let’s raise the bar even more and try to profit off children with Autism, maybe take a photo of a child who is deformed and use it on a “Domain For Sale” page.
The way I look at it, a lot of Autistic children got robbed out of $100,000.00, it was INTENDED for children with Autism, NOT a ***king domain name!
Shame on the seller and shame on the charity itself!.. Who are more than likely working together as one poster points out.
If he can negotiate the sale of that domain for $100k, he should be able to figure out how to sell it without that high of a fee.
I might feel bad for him if he was donating all of the proceeds to charity, instead of “a portion”, which could be anything. That’s kind of sleazy and seems even more so with his personal connections to autism.
And yet he wants Sedo to return their commission to donate to his cause? Really?!
I’m pretty surprised that the domain sold for so much…
It sold for higher than the .COM version?
Also, it appears that the seller is in the same line of business as the buyer..
All around weird.
AutismRocks.com sold for $9,500 last year. So, this went for 10x the .COM version.
How to promote .rocks? Well, autism is a good topic, but how to make it viral? Some faux pas is needed. Let’s setup a sale using Sedo escrow service, but and do it as a brokerage. Then to complain about fees via domaining blogs, so the community will get it. That’s it! Let’s do it… Done.
Spot on Mike, lots of naïve people in this biz actually considering this as a legitimate sale. Go figure.
..Lots of them naive people that actually ‘don’t’ consider this a legitimate sale too, even though money has changed hands. yep,..go figure..
Something is amiss at the Circle K. Sounds not these two were not arms length tranactors but rather two dolts who had no clue that gtlds are completely worthless.
More details of transaction leaking. Seems this is not a domain investor end user event but rather a transaction between two people with connection to and interest in Autism. This story illustrates the lack of understanding of the domain acquisition sales process by John Q. public and need (even after 20 years) for education by domain industry representatives to the market.
Here’s hoping the issues between buyer seller and SEDO are ironed out to all parties satisfaction.
Perhaps creating a higher value for the donation for tax purposes.
Sedo responded: https://www.domaininvesting.com/autism-rocks-sale-sedo-responds-to-comments/