1-800-Flowers Buys Plants.com for $450,000

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A Whois record update shows that 1-800-Flowers just acquired the Plants.com domain name. Dave Evanson (Senior Broker at Sedo) had been brokering the domain name this Summer. According to a tweet from Dave this morning, Plants.com was sold via Sedo, and the purchase price was $450,000:

Prior to the sale, Plants.com appears to have been owned and used by a company called Stokes Tropicals. From what I can see, this company had its web presence on StokesTropicals.Plants.com. At the time of publication, Plants.com

Duck.com Now Forwarding to DuckDuckGo (Updated)

Over the Summer, Cnet published an article about how Google owns the Duck.com domain name. It was notable because of a popular upstart competitor in the Internet search space called DuckDuckGo. I am sure DuckDuckGo would have loved to own Duck.com, and from the looks of it, the company may have acquired Duck.com.

If you visit Duck.com right now, you will be forwarded to DuckDuckGo.com.

Over the weekend, Jamie Zoch first reported that Duck.com may have been sold to DuckDuckGo because it transferred to Namecheap and the nameserver records are the same as DuckDuckGo. I also saw the transfer in my DomainTools monitor email, and I sent an email to the Google press relations office as well as the Investor Relations team to ask if Google sold Duck.com. I have not received a response to my query, but I will follow up should I receive on.

Google acquired Duck.com when

Elon Musk on What it Took to Acquire Tesla.com

How much did Tesla pay to buy The Tesla.com domain name? Elon Musk might have just revealed the price.

Tesla Motors operated its business in TeslaMotors.com for a number of years. In February of 2016, it was widely reported that the company bought the Tesla.com domain name. The purchase price of the domain name was not publicly announced though.

Late last night on Twitter, CEO Elon Musk commented about what it took to finally acquire the Tesla.com domain name:

It is unclear if the $11 million figure was the actual amount Tesla paid to buy Tesla.com or if that figure also includes additional costs or terms (such as legal fees or if this figure includes stock in the company which could fluctuate in value).

Now that Mr. Musk has publicly discussed the acquisition, it would be great if the Tesla Investor Relations team clarified the purchase price component a bit. It would likely be one of the largest domain name sales of all time.

Evergreen Introduces “The One” Domain Newsletter

Evergreen.com, the domain name consultancy and brokerage founded by Jen Sale and Adam Strong, introduced a new domain name newsletter today. Dubbed, The One, this domain name-focused newsletter will be solely devoted to one word .com domain names.

From the newsletter I received today:

We are happy to announce the launch of our newsletter – The One. As the name suggests, we will be focusing on ‘one’ word domain names, including new listings, sales, analytics, case studies, news and much more.

Our goal is to share something different, interesting and beneficial to our readers. We have chosen a monthly schedule to deliver content that is relevant and won’t contribute to the noise. We welcome any feedback and will continually aim to improve each issue.

We hope The One. will be a welcome addition to your inbox.

The newsletter combines one word .com domain name listings with news about one word .com domain names. There is also some intel about one word .com domain name sales that

Cover.com Was Acquired for $825,000

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In August of 2017, I wrote about how a company called Cover was able to buy its exact match Cover.com domain name. At the time of my article, the purchase price of Cover.com was unreported.

According to an article in the Entrepreneur’s Handbook publication on Medium, Cover.com was sold for $825,000. From what I can tell from the article and from historical Whois records at DomainTools, the domain name sold in 2017. Prior to the sale, the Cover.com domain name had been owned by Digimedia.

The article offers some interesting insight about why the startup decided to spend nearly seven figures to purchase Cover.com. Also interesting, one of the founders of Cover shared some information about the negotiation to buy Cover.com:

BuyDomains Offering Third Party Brokerage Service

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Last week, I received an email from BuyDomains asking if I was interested in buying a valuable one word .com domain name owned by a third party. BuyDomains is a division of Endurance International Group that owns and operates a domain portfolio with hundreds of thousands of domain names. The company’s focus has been on selling its own inventory of domain names, but it is now offering a third party broker service. Domain registrants are now able to work with BuyDomains and its brokers to sell their domain names.

Karen Dixon, Vice President of Marketing at BuyDomains, shared the following information about the new service offering:

“The BuyDomains brokerage service provides owners of premium domains exposure to our extensive marketing channels, our customer base containing over 350,000 contacts, and expert sales team to manage the sale of your domain quickly and effectively.  We provide a personal sales executive to handle all inbound and outbound leads, and ensure you will receive the personalized attention needed to quickly drive a sale, at the highest price possible.

We start with a marketing strategy tailored to your target audience that will drive traffic to a customized landing page. Using the optimized lead form on the landing page, we will ensure the capture and delivery of qualified leads and convert them into a successful sale. Our team will guarantee that your domain name is live and active in the marketplace within days, while actively optimizing on each channel to increase the number of incoming leads.  BuyDomains is able to utilize the other Endurance brands in marketing and cross share any relevant information through our social media profiles, expanding the market reach for the brokered name.”

People who are interested in working with BuyDomains to sell their domain names should