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Yahoo Sells MusicVideos.com, LookUp.com, and FreeComputers.com to True Magic

Elliot Silver
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Yahoo!In a $250,000 deal that took place on Sedo last week, Yahoo sold the domain name MusicVideos.com to Merlin Kauffman’s True Magic, LLC. According to some analytics that I have seen, MusicVideos.com gets considerable traffic – nearly 1,000 unique visitors a day according to Compete, despite the fact that it hasn’t been promoted in quite some time. In the week since acquiring the domain name, Kauffman’s company already completed another deal and re-sold it.

True Magic also recently bought LookUp.com from Yahoo for $17,500 and FreeComputers.com for $13,500. His company plans to develop LookUp.com into a resource for reverse phone lookups, people lookups, background checks, etc. This is the perfect domain for these plans. According to Kauffman, his company is “always on the lookout for opportunities to buy and broker premium domain names.”

From what I have heard through the grapevine, Yahoo is looking to sell other domain names as well. It’s a bit surprising that the publicly traded company (YHOO on Nasdaq) is selling great domain names like these, but I suppose if they have no plans for the domain names, they might as well raise some capital.   Sedo acted as the domain brokerage for these deals.

As you may recall, Yahoo also sold Contests.com for $380,000 at the Domain Roundtable conference auction in June of 2009. That domain name was acquired by National A-1 Advertising.

All of these names were registered to a company called DNStination, Inc at the time of sale. However, as the Whois history tool shows, Yahoo was the registrant – MusicVideos.com, Lookup.com, and FreeComputers.com. As an FYI, Oddpost.com is a domain name that was registered to Yahoo and then switched to DNStination, Inc at around the same time as the others, despite the fact that Yahoo bought the company.

Exclusive Domain Conference Being Held at The Palms on March 22-23

Elliot Silver
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1

Did you know there’s an exclusive domain conference being held at The Palms resort in Las Vegas on March 22-23? The Domain Madness 2 conference is being run by DomainConsultant.com, and it sold out within a few days. Most of the attendees are domain investors who attended last year, and a few others received personal invitations.

Last year, the conference was held in a private suite at The Palms, and I heard it was a great event. Like last year’s conference, there’s going to be a live domain auction held at the event. Bidders can bid on site or they can bid online using a platform that will be announced soon.

You are welcome to submit domain names for review, but they are looking for great domain names only. Visit the Domain Consultant website for more details on domain submissions.

Differences Between Domain Investing and Cybersquatting

Elliot Silver
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27

I had a conversation a few days ago with someone in the legal department of a large company, and we discussed cybersquatting and the importance of buying potential typo domain names before a product launch, especially when the product is targeting children.

In our conversation, I mentioned that I am a domain investor. He stopped me me mid-sentence, and said something to the effect of, “I’ve had conversations with cybersquatters before who all claimed to be domain investors. With all due respect, how does what you do differ from cybersquatting?” In my opinion, it’s a very reasonable question, and I hope to be able to offer some clarity here, especially for people who found this site by way of a Google search for “what’s the difference between a domain investor and a cybersquatter?”

Domain Investing Definition:
Domain investors acquire many different types of domain names, and they either re-sell them (hoping) for a profit or monetize them with pay per click links, affiliate marketing, or web development. Domain investors actively buy, sell, or trade domain names that have these qualities: generic terms or phrases, made up terms or phrases, or trademarked terms or phrases.

Cybersquatter Definition:
Cybersquatting is the act of profiting from and/or monetizing domain names that either contain the trademarks or are typos of trademarks of known brands or famous people. Contrary to what some might believe, cybersquatting isn’t always clear and concise. In fact, more often than not, cybersquatting is a gray area that can really only be determined by a court, especially when a common term is trademarked by more than one company (Apple for example), or a domain name happens to contain a trademark but is unrelated to the trademark – like FurnitureBay.com for example.

Differences between Domain Investors and Cybersquatters:
Simply because cybersquatters would identify themselves as domain investors does NOT mean all domain investors are cybersquatters. Most domain investors I know choose to buy, sell, develop, or monetize generic domain names.

The business of investing in generic domain names is akin to buying real estate. Some people choose to buy land in an area they think will be developed in the future, rendering it much more valuable. They are content waiting for months or even years before selling. Others will buy property and build homes/apartments, and they will either sell or lease these dwellings, building a residual revenue stream.

One of the primary advantages of investing in domain names instead of real estate is that the carrying costs are much more minimal for domain names. In addition, there isn’t a MLS price guide, so domain investors with market knowledge have a distinct advantage when buying domain names privately.

The next time you think of a domain investor, don’t just assume that he or she is a cybersquatter. Domain investing is a legitimate business, and as with all industries, there are people who operate in gray areas.

Sedo’s Domain Market Study: 2009 Overview and Outlook into 2010

Elliot Silver
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This is a guest post written by Simonetta Batteiger, Director of Sales Operations North America. The article discusses Sedo’s 2009 Market Study (that’s a link to the pdf file), which was recently released. The information in the study is valuable to domain investors and can be helpful in seeing market conditions and trends.

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Looking for some domain inspiration? Check out the latest Sedo Market Study to help you identify market trends and new opportunities! Our market study gives insights into overall marketplace activity, top domain sales and successful domain extensions. Sedo’s continued focus on innovations around our marketplace strategy resulted in a record number of 10,070 domain sales in Q4 and helped solidify our position as the most successful global marketplace for domains in the secondary market.

The 2009 Market Study shows Sedo’s strong growth in sales through our global platform in 2009, versus 2008. Sedo represented 64 percent of the top 100 public sales in the domain industry, with the next closest competitor coming in at 8 percent. This growth was also fueled by impressive quarter over quarter results, with a 5 percent increase in domain sales in Q4 of 2009. In addition, Sedo accounted for 11 of the top 20 biggest sales industry-wide, compared to only 5 of the top 20 sales in 2008. This included a surge in geographical and descriptive domains, including the sale of Fly.com for $1.6 million, Russia.com for $1.5 million, Call.com for $1.1 million, and Brazil.com for $500,000.

Which extensions are the most successful ones?

The study reveals that the .com extension continues to be the most popular generic top level domain (gTLD), accounting for 44 percent of all domain sales on the Sedo marketplace in 2009. In looking at its place among other gTLDs, the .com displays an even greater lead. The extension accounted for 72 percent of all Q4 2009 gTLD sales and 74 percent of 2009 gTLD sales. In contrast, the second most popular gTLD, the .net extension generated 11 percent of 2009 gTLD sales, and only 6 percent of all domains sold on the Sedo marketplace last year.

In terms of the best-performing extensions for average sales price, Sedo’s study saw the sharpest rise in .biz domains. This growth can be attributed in part to the growth in sales of one character .biz domains, which first became available through the .biz registrar in September 2009.

Fixed price names represent a strong growth sector of the market

We’ve seen a significant four percent growth in the number of fixed price domains changing hands in 2009, as compared with 2008. This figure will continue to grow this year, as domain owners apply fixed prices to appeal to more buyers.

What are the top selling categories?

The top selling domain categories of 2009 included software, employment, services, regions, country and cities, tobacco, insurance, three-character domains, hardware and casinos.

Read the complete 2009 Market Study

What’s coming up in 2010

Looking forward into 2010, we expect to see ongoing demand for premium virtual real estate, with geo, descriptive, .org and .com domains leading the charge. Sedo is unique in it’s ability to actively reach out to domain investors and more importantly to end user buyers representing organizations of all sizes to leverage domains to meet their business goals. Our ongoing monthly GreatDomains auctions, our monthly changing Industry Spotlight features (check out sedo.com/tech) and our quarterly vertical promotions and auctions (see sedo.com/travel) will help us push these numbers even higher in 2010. If you want to be a part of these, feel free to reach out to me anytime!

If you have any questions, feel free to email Simonetta – simonetta at sedo.com.

Chat Roulette: Everybody’s Doing It

Elliot Silver
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13

Apparently, ChatRoulette.com has become an Internet sensation, visited by millions of people in the last few weeks. There have been plenty of stories in the mainstream media covering it, and one of the funniest was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (clip embedded below).

One way to know a website is a hit is to see all the typos that have been recently registered:

  • ChatRoullette.com
  • CatRoulette.com
  • CatRoullette.com
  • ChaRoulette.com
  • ChatRulet.com
  • ChatRoulet.com
  • ChatRowlette.com

There are hundreds of other typos that are registered, too. The real reason for this post is to share the funny video. Enjoy.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Tech-Talch – Chatroulette
www.thedailyshow.com

You Can Still Win a Snapnames Auction if You Are Bidder #2

Elliot Silver
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I sometimes place bids on Snapnames auctions that have other bids, even if I am not interested in buying the domain name. Generally, if a domain name has a bid already and you place a bid, you are considered the losing bidder when it goes to auction, as the person who places the first bid takes the lead.

I recently found out that this isn’t always the case. I placed a bid on a domain name shortly before it was scheduled to go to auction after I saw it in a list of names with bids. I was curious to see how the name would perform in auction, but I wasn’t sure entirely sure I wanted the name. I was surprised when it went to auction and it showed me as the high bidder (of 2 bidders).

Apparently, someone had placed a back order on the domain name a long time ago, and their credit card on file had lapsed or something else happened to their account between the time they placed the back order and the time it went to auction. As a result, I was the top bidder, and I ended up winning the auction without placing an additional bid.

I am not upset that I won because I like the name, but it’s something to be mindful about if you place bids on auctions that already have bids thinking you aren’t going.

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