It was just announced that the domain name Ringtones.com has been sold for $750,000. Dave Evanson from Sedo was the domain broker for this transaction.
Prior to the sale, Ringtones.com was owned by Mobile Streams Ltd, a company trading publicly on the London Stock Exchange. Currently (now and prior to the sale), the domain name has been used as what appears to be an affiliate portal, allowing visitors to download ringtones to their mobile phones.
According to a news release on  Stock Market Wire, Mobile Streams’ CEO  Simon  Buckingham  commented that the company chose to sell Ringtones.com to use the proceeds for another line of business.  “We want to ensure that the company has the appropriate financial resources necessary to take full advantage of the rapidly growing apps market,” said Buckingham.
An old news release from Mobile Streams noted that  Ringtones.com was originally launched by the company in 1999.
The domain name is still in the Sedo escrow account, and the name of the buyer is not yet public.
looks like there is still money in ringtones after all
oops. Elliot i snafu’d on that last comment. can you please eliminate/not post. thanks.
just commenting that it looks like there is still money in ringtones after all
That’s the mystery of domains. It’s still a mystery to me.
That sounds a very low price, doesn’t sound like this is still a highly lucrative market to me for it to sell for that price.
It sounds low because it’s only 5x as much roughly as the .net. Now understanding the market (lead gen) for ringtones is crucial, it has died or better put, been cracked down on in both complaints and pay per lead. The most lucrative option as of2007-2008ish is tricking a person into getting charged $19-$29, spliting that with verisign for example and moving on. This payout has dropped for the most part and people caught on to the ” scam”. Obviously still enough morons in the world with a cc so the game continues. If the new owner used it for anything but I would be suprised since it isnt the most lucrative.
There’s far more potential in apps.com. If I were in a position to make a purchase, I think the Ringtones domain would not be a good investment. But, I understand the domain has been functioning as a ringtone download center.
The domain only generate 16,000 unique visitors a month. $750K is far too much to pay for the domain. It helps to own ringtones.com, but only if the new owner uses it to their advantage to market ringtones.
I agree with Jason. If I were in the position to purchase either, I would go with apps.com and put resources into developing it.
That said, it does appear that ringtones are still a viable industry segment.
I personally think it was a very good purchase for the buyer.
Thanks for a great blog. I only came across it a week ago but have read through a ton of past posts, very interesting.
I was wondering how you evaluate the difference between a .net and .org domain if both are available for purchase, assuming you don’t/can’t buy both. Perhaps it could be an idea for a post so others can offer thoughts on it. For me it’s always a bit of a dilemma as .net looks more commercial, but then .org has a certain credibility if used for the right project.
Also, it would be very interesting to run identical adwords ads using each in the url and to see which one is clicked on more frequently across different sectors.
@ Timothy
You should ask that question on DomainQuestions.com 🙂
Just resold on Namejet for $105,000. I guess it wasn’t such a good purchase. 🙂