Generic Domain Names

I-Newswire.com is a popular press release distribution service, and the company rebranded yesterday as Newswire.com. Obviously, this is a major upgrade for the company, and it came at a fairly steep price.

According to Michael Santiago, Partner at Newswire.com, the company pursued the domain name for quite some time before turning to Domain Holdings to act as a buyers’ broker. Michael told me the domain name was purchased last week after more than a year of negotiations. The company paid in the “six figure range” to acquire this domain name.

I asked Michael to share some additional insight into the acquisition to learn what motivated the company to spend six figures on this domain name, and here’s what he had to say:

In a press release earlier this week, OnDeck, a small business lender, announced the launch of “their Small Business Credit Education Initiative to educate and engage business owners on business financing and credit.” Wisely, they are using the exact match keyword  BusinessLoans.com domain name for the website.

I am unsure of when OnDeck acquired this domain name, but my guess is that the acquisition was fairly recent because the Archive.org history shows an unrelated website last year. Interestingly, the singular BusinessLoan.com domain name sold for $70,000 via GoDaddy Auctions, as reported on OnlineDomain.com.

I checked my Gmail history, and in February of 2013, BusinessLoan.com and BusinessLoans.com were listed for sale in Toby Clements’ domain brokerage newsletter. I don’t know if they sold then (or at any  point), although the singular BusinessLoan.com domain name is not currently resolving. Both domain names are privately registered.

Here’s the press release in its entirety with additional information about the domain name and branding initiative:

When my wife and I lived in New York City, attending concerts and performances at Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) was one of our favorite things to do. We lived 13 blocks from the Time Warner Center, and one of my friends dated someone that worked there. Until this morning, I didn’t know that the JALC website had been moved to the keyword Jazz.org domain name, which JALC seems to have owned for several years.

Interestingly, this change apparently caused some discontent, according to an article on TheJazzLine.com. The article cites a Change.org petition that was started by a former Vice President of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The Change.org petition says,