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

Dave Evanson Brokers Sale of Kush.com for $500,000

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Sedo broker Dave Evanson announced that he successfully brokered the sale of the Kush.com domain name for $500,000. Dave announced the sale this afternoon via Twitter:

According to Wikipedia, “Kush is a strain of Cannabis indica.” Kush is a popular term in the marijuana trade, and I think the sale price reflects that popularity.

I don’t always know what the asking price of a domain name was before it sells, but in this case I do: $3 million. An article in Merry Jane published in October of 2017 discussed the value of Kush.com. It appears that Dave reached out to the publication (or someone associated with the publication) and offered the domain name for sale. When he was asked the price, Dave reportedly responded,

GDPR Making It Harder to Research Inbound Offers

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A couple of weeks ago, I closed a deal with a buyer who resides in the UK. The domain name I sold was not particularly valuable, but I still like to do some research on the buyer and prospective usage of the domain name before agreeing to a deal.

Shortly after the offer was submitted via my landing page, I could not find a whole lot of information about the buyer. I did several Google searches for the buyer’s name and the email address. Unfortunately, the name was fairly common and the email address did not yield much helpful information. I also searched similar domain names to see

The buyer and I ended up agreeing to a deal that was slightly below the listed asking price, so it worked out in the end because there was no commission involved. The deal closed and all was fine.

Yesterday afternoon, I was curious to see if the domain name was