Soon after NutsOnline.com rebranded to the shorter Nuts.com domain name, the company saw a major decrease in traffic. The New York Times published an article about the company’s rebranding and the impact it had on the business, and several other websites wrote about the issue faced by the company after it chose to rebrand. Many of the articles referenced this Google Webmasters Help forum thread started by the company after noticing ranking issues in Google.

With all of the publicity about the rebranding to Nuts.com and the search engine problems that seemed to follow, I did not see any coverage of the acquisition cost of the domain name. An article in the December / January edition of Inc. magazine reveals information about the negotiation and the purchase price.

According to the article, Jeff Braverman, the CEO of NutsOnline.com, spent quite a bit of time tracking down the owner of the Nuts.com domain name and negotiating with him. Two years after the initial failed negotiation, he saw that the domain name was listed for sale, and he bought it for

Because of the high value of two letter .com domain names and the fact that quite a few have changed hands for significant sums of money during the past two years, I monitor all 676 two letter .com domain names.  This morning, I received a DomainTools domain monitor alert for IQ.com indicating that something had recently changed in the Whois record. As of this morning, the registrant of IQ.com is now Salesforce.com, as you can see in the current Whois record screenshot  posted below.

If you visit IQ.com, you can see that the domain name currently forwards

Late last week, Forex Magnates  reported that the Invest.com domain name was recently sold for $5 million to a company called Singulariteam. I do not see a confirmation of the sale from the company on its website, so this sale is unconfirmed. In its article reporting the sale of Invest.com, Forex  Magnates reported that  “An Israeli serial technology entrepreneur has invested over $5 million to buy the website domain, invest.com, in order to penetrate the forex industry.”

Current Whois records seem to indicate that a deal for this domain name may be underway. The registrant of Invest.com is listed as Escrow.com, and I presume that indicates the company is facilitating a deal for this domain name. I would reach out to Brandon Abbey, President of Escrow.com, but the company has a policy of not commenting on transactions done using the company’s services. Previously, the domain name had been  registered under privacy since 2011.

DNJournal shows that Invest.com sold for

When I agree to buy a domain name in the aftermarket, I typically have a value in my mind for that domain name. This value assumes the right buyer wants (or needs) to buy it, and they will be willing to pay what I believe is a fair price for the domain name.

Oftentimes with my domain names, I will reach out to prospective buyers to gauge interest in an acquisition. In addition, when I receive an unsolicited offer for a domain name, I may  also reach out to prospective buyers to see if any other companies would be willing to pay more for the domain name.

The result of these sale efforts is sometimes a decent offer, but one that falls below what I think the domain name is worth. Offers that are decent but fall short of what I believe the value to be are difficult to accept.

On one hand, I have reached out to the most obvious prospective buyers for a particular domain name, and the offer I am contemplating is the best of what I received. On the other hand, another buyer could want the domain name in the future and they might be willing to pay much closer to what I believe the value is, especially because it can be more difficult to get an offer when I am essentially cold calling.

When I receive offers that aren’t all that close to what I believe the value is, but the offer is fair,  I