According to a news report  just published in the Financial Times  (FT), Amazon is shutting down Quidsi and its website brands. As you may recall, Quidsi operates websites on fantastic exact match .com domain names such as Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, YoYo.com, Casa.com, and others. Amazon acquired Quidsi several years ago.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the FT article:

“Amazon said on Wednesday that it was shutting down Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com and Soap.com that it acquired for $545m less than seven years ago, after failing to make the websites profitable.”

I don’t see any information about how Amazon will utilize these domain names once the brands are shut down. It looks like the company previously shut down Vine Market, which operated on Vine.com, as that domain name now forwards to Soap.com. Perhaps Amazon will do something similar and simply forward these domain names to the relevant sections on its own website.

Using DomainIQ, I did a quick search to see some of the most valuable domain names owned by Quidsi, and here’s what I found:

Ever since I was a kid, my Mom bought sweet Vidalia onions for cooking. Because of my familiarity with this type of onion,  I was a bidder in the NameJet auction for VidaliaOnions.com in 2014. Luckily for Peter Askew, I  was the underbidder when Peter  bought  the domain name  for $2,200. This sale now looks like a great bargain.

Shortly after acquiring the domain name, Peter set out to build a business on it. He partnered up with a local farm renown for its Vidalia onions, and the business is growing. In fact, VidaliaOnions.com is now taking orders for its Spring crop, with shipping scheduled to begin on May 1, 2017. As the domain name and branding suggests, the company specializes in the sale of vidalia onions.

I asked Peter about how VidaliaOnions.com went from domain auction win to fully operational business, and here’s what he told me:

On the home page of Boston.com, it looks like the publication is advertising a parked domain name. Under the “Most Popular” heading on the right side of the home page, there is a headline that says “Love Letters.com.” Not only is LoveLetters.com a domain name parked with Uniregistry, but the publication doesn’t even own this domain name either. This makes no sense to me.

When visitors click on the sidebar link, they are taken to a feature section called Love Letters. Interestingly, when hovering over the LoveLetters logo at the top of the page below the masthead, the alt text is “Love Letters .com.” According to the About page, “Love Letters is a daily dispatch of advice for the lovelorn that launched on Boston.com in 2009.” It doesn’t seem to make sense to promote this as LoveLetters.com.  

According to an article in the New York Post today, “Caitlyn Jenner has picked a name for her upcoming memoir: ‘The Secrets of My Life.’ Out of curiosity, I checked the Whois records, and it appears that the exact match TheSecretsOfMyLife.com domain name was registered. The registrant appears to be affiliated with her publishing company. The domain name was created approximately two weeks ago, and it currently forwards to Jenner’s website.

As you may recall, Jamie Zoch originally registered the CaitlynJenner.com domain name shortly after Bruce Jenner announced the name change. Luckily for Jenner, Jamie was very generous and offered her the domain name for free. As you can see, Jenner now uses CaitlynJenner.com for her primary website. It would have been wise to secure the domain name prior to the name change becoming public.

Whether Jenner or her publisher is responsible for registering the domain name, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that Jenner’s team controls this domain name, and it will prevent someone else from using it (either nefariously or as a means of generating revenue via affiliate channels). This could avoid