Buyer of Vacation.Rentals Does AMA

Donuts reported that it sold the Vacation.Rentals domain name for $500,300 in an all-cash deal. This sale was reportedly the largest new gTLD domain name sale to date. It was the second reported $500,000+ sale of a new gTLD domain name reported by Donuts this year.

Earlier today, I was alerted via Twitter and email that the buyer of Vacation.Rentals, Mike Kugler, did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the AMAFeed.com platform. In the AMA, there were quite a few questions posed about the domain name and the acquisition of the domain name.

Here are some of the more relevant domain name related questions that were posed:

“DOT rentals is very trusted and has a better ranking than many of the commonly known extensions like dot net, dot biz, etc
That statement sounds very odd to me since I can’t recall a single sale or site using a .Rentals. What makes .Rentals more credible/Trustworthy than other extensions then?”

“Do you know of any new domain extension success stories?”

“NameBio Has a record of six .Rentals sales, second being only US$ 1,584.00!

Why would you pay the crazy price they were asking as evidently there simply isn’t any demand for these types of names?”

“In 2015, Google said this about new GTLD’s

Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.

Do you think they changed their stance on this?”

“You mentioned you saw an alert for the domain but I don’t understand. It was owned by the registry since the beginning, never sold to anyone before. Always available basically via the registry. Why didn’t you approach them directly before?”

“How does a domain extension help a domain name rank better for search engine optimization?”

“In what ways will the costs of your domain purchase increase or decrease over time and what are the contributing factors to this value?”

To his credit, Mike seems to have answered the domain name related questions – even those that were a bit “tough.” If you want to learn more about why Mike paid over $500,000 to buy Vacation.Rentals, you should have a look at the AMA. There is also quite a bit of information about his business model and the platform for those who might find that interesting.

I am sure there are plenty of people who will be keeping an eye on Vacation.Rentals to see what kind of impact the platform has on the vacation rental space. We have used VRBO to rent homes and condos several times, and I would certainly check out the platform the next time we begin planning a trip.

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

19 COMMENTS

  1. firstly i would imagine the 500000 he paid was not his own personal money and though i am far from an expert i do believe keywords in a domain do count in google regardless of what they say

  2. If keyword and trust are a particular advantage in the rentals space then I must be sitting on a diamond mine if Vacation.Rentals is deserving of a $500,000. valuation.

    Rentals.org

    Keyword? Yep.
    Trusted gTLD? Surely a good bit more than .rentals.

    I remember the report of a low 6 figure .Mobi . . cough . . “sale”. (Flowers.mobi?) The “news” was like “Hey, man, it’s .Mobi!! It’s THE domain for the mobile generation! Soon everyone has to have one . . . Zzzzzzzzz”

    Anyone want to buy the world’s best, most trusted Rentals.org domain for the sensible price of $500,001.00?

    To sweeten the deal I’ll throw in my title to the Brooklyn Bridge.

    • That’s a great .org, but…

      Sometimes longer is better and more valuable than shorter. This is a great example of that especially since so many domainers including at the top of the (they treat it like a) zero sum game food chain have their head so far up their ass about this topic that you rarely see it admitted and it’s good when there’s a good example to show. Ergo, VacationRentals.com and VacationRentals.org trump Rentals.org, as does Vacation.Rentals. But as I said, Rentals.org is still a great domain.

  3. Hi there Elliot,

    I was just made aware of the blog from the AMA Feed and just wanted to swing by to say hello and thank you for the mention.

    Jeff, I think you have a great domain and it may very well do great for someone looking for that URL. For me – I wanted the “hook” for my venture. Since we are not “cars” or “motorcycles” or “billboards” I wanted the perfect left.right for myself which was Vacation.Rentals

    It perfectly conveys to the person visiting the site what it is and immediately lets them know that we don’t sell flannel shirts – or rent wedding halls or even houses for that matter (long term, leasing, etc)

    We are gaining success day by day and I will personally guarantee you that we will have more than 200 listings by the end of May and from there it is all wheels off and running.

    Have a great day and much respect,

    Mike Kugler
    CEO VacaRent, LLC

  4. I’m reminded of the rationale for Flowers.mobi’s inevitable success. It went something like “Everybody orders flowers online. The world is going mobile. Flowers.mobi is the puurrrrfect URL for ordering flowers in the .mobile world. Everyone will know if they want to order flowers on their smartphone that Flowers.mobi will be the place to trust and order from and so on and so on . . ”

    Your rationale sounds so familiar. Like those who, before the days of “One domain to rule the mobile world”, the days when some touted “One domain to rule the information portal world: .info!!”

    Sadly, after the initial speculative frenzy, the most rapid adoption of .info was generated by the sale of.info domains for $.99 / 99 cents/year . . which inevitably lead to them being the latest evil spawn for spammers, i.e., burn and churn, disposable domains.

    Good luck with your venture.

    • You are living in denial world by just not even understanding why and what are the basic differences between two naming model “flowers.mobi and Vacation.rentals!

      if you really want to compare two terms, Use Vacation.rentals and flower.delivery.

    • Nick,

      Excaclty!!!

      Flowers.mobi …. No thanks
      Flowers.com , net , org , online .com and .online are the best two
      Send.flowers
      Flower.delivery

      Are both great flower domains

  5. Mike , good luck I love the name , it looks good and clean makes sense . It won’t be confusing at least for very long. I’m sure you will do very well.

    We also wanted that name but as an investment , not as an end user so we could not justify the ask.

    But we did buy VacationHome.rentals early in the eap process .

  6. The manifest destiny, of domain driven success, is an idea that died a whimpering death with the downfall of Pets.com, Toys.com, .info, .mobi, .biz, etc.

    “denial world”? Tragically funny.

  7. Granted this guy has money and he may be a great domainer, but he clearly doesnt know SEO. Keywords are treated the same in search engines but Google gives .com .net .org priority…unless someone has done a hell of a job with SEO such is true with sold.domains and mostexpensivedomain.name. I dont know where he got .rentals rank higher than .net.

    The 2nd issue is your average internet users are still not use to gtlds and for businesses and companies .com is king. Besides the afformentioned domain names the only other gtld I came across during a search is magazine.store

    • “… but Google gives .com .net .org priority…”

      Patently and completely false – 100%

      Larry, we have been “live” since April 8th – 14 days ago. We already have 38 listings on the site with probably 200 in the pipeline – how do you explain that?

      We are currently #10 on Google for Vacation Rentals and was #8 about 4 days ago. No fee vacation rentals we are #6, #1, #1 on G, Y, B respectively. (And yes, this absolutely is a search term I am pursuing – heavily)

      My phone rings in the morning, noon and night from people who are either looking to list or people who are trying to understand what the deal is and why we don’t have more properties at the moment.

      We have shut down taking on new listings until we work through several issues and should be back to live next week.

      Trust me, we are doing just fine and everything is going well. Not according to plan, but well all the same.

      I will come back to this thread in 3 months to either eat crow or filet mignon. One thing is certain, we are most certainly going in the right direction at the moment and I believe it will only get better.

      Have a great one,
      Mike Kugler
      Vacation.Rentals

    • Google doesn’t explicitly say it but just look at the extensions during your searches. Now tell me what indicators you have that suggest .rentals rank better than .net? Doesn’t that make your statement completely false as well?

      Im not down playing the importance of the business, im stating .com is standard for business and companies. Thats a fact. I would also assume anyone with $500,000 to spend on a domain name has enough to purchase professional SEO services & press releases. Besides your own Vacation.rentals where are the rest of them?

      I search car rentals, home rentals, hotel rentals, apartment rentals, boat rentals

      All .com, .net and .org…no gtld in sight. And your average internet user are not use to gtlds, thats also a fact, not an opinion.

    • Google doesn’t explicitly say it but just look at the extensions during your searches. Now tell me what indicators you have that suggest .rentals rank better than .net? Doesn’t that make your statement completely false as well?

      Im not down playing the importance of the business, im stating .com is standard for business and companies. Thats a fact. I would also assume anyone with $500,000 to spend on a domain name has enough to purchase professional SEO services & press releases. Besides your own Vacation.rentals where are the rest of them?

      I search car rentals, home rentals, hotel rentals, apartment rentals, boat rentals

      All .com, .net and .org…no gtld in sight. And your average internet user are not use to gtlds, thats also a fact, not an opinion.

      But if you think its worth $500,000 more power to you.

  8. Google doesn’t explicitly say it but just look at the extensions during your searches. Now tell me what indicators you have that suggest .rentals rank better than .net? Doesn’t that make your statement completely false as well?

    Im not down playing the importance of the business, im stating .com is standard for business and companies. Thats a fact. I would also assume anyone with $500,000 to spend on a domain name has enough to purchase professional SEO services & press releases. Besides your own Vacation.rentals where are the rest of them?

    I search car rentals, home rentals, hotel rentals, apartment rentals, boat rentals

    All .com, .net and .org…no gtld in sight. And your average internet user are not use to gtlds, thats also a fact, not an opinion.

  9. When you spend $500K on a gtld you tend to see things that other people don’t, fast forward some time and that will be the sight of the $500k being flushed down a toilet. Stupidity is history repeating itself and there is a sucker born every minute. I mean the most basic of research shows the path has been taken and abandoned over and over again. Mind you the amount of fish in the sea willing to bite is getting smaller or so it seems.

    Good luck to them but its success will hinge not on the domain but how many millions it pumps into marketing at which point nearly any name would have done.

    $500k sounds like a lot but when it isn’t your money you think a gtld is a good idea.

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