QuinStreet Paid $35.6 Million for Insurance.com

QuinStreet announces purchase price of $35.6 million for Insurance.com in earnings call

A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Allemann reported that QuinStreet was the buyer of Insurance.com, although the price was not revealed at the time of the news release.   In today’s Second Quarter earnings call with analysts and investors, the company reported that it paid $35,600,000 for Insurance.com. Although this includes the content, I believe the domain name was the primary asset that was acquired, and the content is good for search engine rankings.

A replay of today’s conference call will be available at 8pm EST until August 16, 2010. You can access the recording by calling (800) 406-7325 in the US and Canada, or by calling 1-303-590-3030 elsewhere in the world.   Use passcode 4328774 to access the call. In October of 2009, QuinStreet paid $16 million for Insure.com.

When I worked in one of the direct marketing groups at AIG, our group had millions of dollars to invest, and I recommended that we look into Insurance.com.   My thought was we could offer the insurance products we had access to (accident and health insurance products) while “selling” the other leads to other divisions for products we didn’t have (such as auto insurance).

Ultimately, an investment was made in other infrastructure and the Insurance.com acquisition was never really explored. My group was small-ish for AIG (9 figures in annual revenue), and it hadn’t really used the Internet for sales when I was there, so it would have been a considerable risk.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

15 COMMENTS

  1. Great to hear, Elliot. Thanks for the news. Very good news because yes, the domain name was so key in this purchase. It was the backbone that enabled them to build up a site that could be sold for 36.5 million.

    • @ Jeff

      It shows that big companies like QuinStreet understand the value top generic domain names like Insurance.com. I’ve heard through the grapevine that they’ve inquired about other great category defining domain names as well.

  2. That’s a great price. Take, say, $6 million for the content or links and you get $30 Million for the name. Still a great deal but assuming you get a loan for it, profit needs to be at least $2 Million a year just to pay interest.

    It isn’t easy

  3. *** Update,

    I accidentally posted $36.5 million but after reviewing the conference call, the price was actually $35.6 million.

    Thanks to George Kirkos for letting me know about the actual price. The conference call recording is now available.

  4. I agree that it is probably one of the best names in the world, but you guys are way off base on the valuation of the name versus the site.

    Quinstreet is all about the traffic…they know exactly how much is it worth and the type in traffic to this name is dwarfed by the seo/organic listings the name has.

    With their best in class monetization engine, they will be able to extract that much money in just a year or two.

    My guess, 15 for the name, 20+ for the rankings.

    Also, when they bought Surehits, they negotiated a very large earnout… The Surehits guys are driving these acquisitions so they can make their numbers.

  5. “My guess, 15 for the name, 20+ for the rankings.”

    How and how much does it take to get top rankings with a name like insurance.com????

  6. Great content yields great ranking; over-SEO damages ranking. A lighter touch means higher value. It must mean the digital reputation of Insurance.com isn’t botched with heavy SEO.

  7. AIG? You couldn’t possible want to mention them again, El!

    “nine figures’ was your investment… let’s build that out:

    $999,999,999.00

    That’s NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE MILLION, NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE THOUSAND, AND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE DOLLARS.

    And we needed to bail out AIG? Hmmm… you did seem to explode on the domain industry scene back in 2006 — did you, no, are you… oh my god.. you can’t be… are you… what? FRIENDS WITH GW BUSH AND DICK CHENEY AND THEIR FINANCIAL ADVISORS?!!!!

    Oh no… please say it’s not true! El, tell me you are just a guy who lost his job on Sesame Street when Jim Henson died. Don’t let me worry about those assumptions that make me sad…

    OK, I’ll say it.

    Are you the guy who resigned from AIG, had the scoop on their activities, and was paid off with NINE FIGURES? Go ahead, admit it if true, we all can … *cough* handle it.

    😉

  8. Thanks for the report. Insurance is big money in the states and insurance companies have alot of money to spend so no wonder they purchased for this amount. I reckon they can make their money back in no time.

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