There were thousands of domain names that were reported sold in 2010 and we are looking for what you was the best buy for the year.
Your choices are:
Sex.com for $13 Million. Although it was the highest price paid for just a pure domain purchase some believe the buyer got a bargain.
Slots.com $5.5 Million, one of the biggest gambling terms on the net.
Dating.com $1.75 Million, A category killer in a huge online industry.
Poker.org $1M was a record reported price for a .Org.
Ringtones.com $750,000, huge category
Jerusalem.com $570,000 the highest selling Geo domain of the year.
IPO.com $500,000 one of the biggest segments of the stock market.
Logo.com $500,000 another bang on category killer.
BoardGames.com $450,000 Games were HOT in 2010 and this is one of the best possible domains.
LongIsland.com $370,000 the second largest Geo purchase of the year.
ScreenSavers.com for $335,000 another category killer
Celebs.com $270,000 could be the next TMZ type site (BTW I hate the tag line “the Hollywood Poop).
Boating.com $250,000; MegaYachts.com sold for more than 2x this amount 2 years ago
ScienceFiction.com $175,000 purchase by the Chef
E.co $81,000, with O.co selling for $350K and i.Co expected to fetch that amount or more early next year this one looks cheap.
Cityville.com sold for $38,500 is now the hottest game on Facebook and owned by game giant Zynga.
D.Tv this is one of mine and what I consider to be my best buy of the year. I Bought for $18K and rejected $125K offer within 6 months.
Of course with thousands of domain purchases I’m sure you have plenty of other suggestions which you can leave in the comment section and you can place your votes on the right.
Due to the number of choices you can pick 2 must you must do it at the same time.
from what point of view?
the best to use for a site?
the best to resell with high profit?
the best for its web traffic?
Well those are all the factors you can weight in making your decision
however, I’ve voted e.co because its potential value can reach 100 times the buying price
also, “eco” is a term used worldwide and in many languages, then, a site based on e.co could have a big success
“Best Domain Buy”
=====
Buy ? Interesting concept… good luck with that “concept” in 2011
According to me its Logo.com
Dating.com for me is #1. There is so much money and it’s a clean industry, well compared to sex.com
Sex.com is the riskiest. Just to earn the inflation 3% it needs to make $1200 each day. Add the free porn risk, the .xxx, politicos going after pron and it’s a risky $13 Mil investment.
I feel dating.com is the best buy – this is a billion dollar business – and with such a great generic name its only a mattter of time before commercials start appearing. All they need to do is gain an upper hand on match.com and the other competitors and bam – they become the leader in dating.
I dont think celebs.com wil be the next TMZ – TMZ has far too much expoure and its own TV show.
“best buy” should mean that a domain can be resold at a price much higher the buy or the site can allow the owner to earn lots of money
well, a domain like sex.com isn’t a good buy since, next time it will be on sale, the selling price can be only a bit higher than $13M or (maybe) less than this figure
the best domain to resell someday at high price is e.co
but also D.Tv ScienceFiction.com Logo.com and Celebs.com have good chances to be resold at very high prices
personally, I’m a fan of ScreenSavers.com (sold for $335,000) because I own MANY similar domains based on LCD and OLED (then, with a potential higher price, since, now, all devices have an LCD screen rather than a CRT screen) but, so far, I haven’t sold them 🙁
I picked up Together.TV today for a song, but that wasn’t my best pick-up of the year.
I’d say my hand-reg’ing of Silly.TV was the best buy of the entire year…percentage wise, a better buy than any of the high-profile options of MHB’s list.
– TBC
Whatever Aron Meystedt paid for Tablets.com was the best domain buy of 2010.
I think all these will turn out to be good purchases when we look back. And Mike, if you’ll let me have the honor . Mr tv, I hope you are happy with your purchases but I regret to inform you that you are not in the same class as the names listed above. If you think silly.tv is the best buy of the year then need to hit the domaining 101 archives just a little harder.
LS
I don’t think the purchase price was disclosed so I didn’t include it in my list.
If you don’t know what the purchase price was I don’t see how you can opine on whether it was a good buy, great buy or overpriced
My favourite is Dating.com (2nd is e.co).
If pressed, I suppose I’d trade Silly DOT TV for Logo.com 🙂
– TBC
If you don’t know what the purchase price was I don’t see how you can opine on whether it was a good buy, great buy or overpriced
———————-
I’m willing to lean on the context clues and go out on a limb to say that whatever he paid, he stole it. He got way ahead of the curve on that one. 3-5 years from now, the gravity of that name will be a lot more obvious than it is today.
“Best Domain Buy”
===
The word “Best” used in proximity to “Buy” could imply… Best Bargain
The Best Bargain that came to light in 2010 was the domain…
32.IN-ADDR.ARPA
Market Value ? $1,800,000,000 (yes Billion)
What price did the company pay ICANN ? $0 ? (unknown)
At least one ICANN V.P. resigned
Was that [Asset] shown transferred from ICANN to the new “owner” ?
Is that [Asset] shown on the owner’s SEC Reports and Balance Sheet ?
The ICANN CFO resigned!!!
I think fiction.com was in the top two “best buys” but not on this list.
Hi Everyone,
I think “dating .com” really stands out (duh)…But I am going to make it my #2 pick.
1. I am going with a bit of an outsider: Best “Domain” from this group…from this day forward:
Jerusalem .com
2. Dating.com $1.75 Million, A category killer in a huge online industry
Nice poll Michael, and the views and perspectives in the comments area are interesting…
Best,
Dan
Have to agree with LS morgan, tablets.com was the best buy if under 500k. You will an average of 2 tablets per hh in about 5 years..
Other than that e.co was pretty good for the price.
Donny
also x.co has been a good buy since GoDaddy has used it for one of the shorter short-URL services around
Godaddy did not buy X.co it was given to them like T.co was given to Twitter
“Godaddy did not buy X.co”
so, at a price of only $0, it has been the absolute best buy of 2010 🙂
it wasn’t a sale
personally I like Long Island, lots of traffic, big money area and already developed site…the ROI would be pretty quick I assume.
I actually owned Tablets.com just last year. Computer products and accessories are such a difficult area. If you look at the margins for someone like NewEgg.com they are very very low, which is why so many people in this industry have failed. If you aren’t buying them there then you are buying direct from the manufacturer.
I actually tried to get MHB to buy Tablets.com from me 🙁
Dating.com is the best buy. Makeup.com would most likely be the best if the exact price was disclosed.
PJB
Yup I remember sitting right in front of you when you bought the domain at an auction I think in 2009.
Despite all those who think this domain was a great buy for anything under $500K if memory serves me your acquisition was for something like $25K and there was only 1 other person bidding against you at the auction and there was remote bidding available as well.
I really like Dating.com and Logo.com. Both really awesome domains that could return a lot of money on investment if developed.
anyhow, these domains can’t be compared
some (like E dot co and ScienceFiction dot com) have good chances to be resold many times the buying price
others (like Logo dot com and Slots dot com) can be used for very profitable websites
so, we should know what the domains owners want to do with them, to give our opinion about what’s the best buy
I like Dating.com for biggest upside.
I like D.TV for biggest bargain. HDTV and 3DTV are the present and future. You can cover both along with others with subdomains H.D.TV and 3.D.TV.
Yup I remember sitting right in front of you when you bought the domain at an auction I think in 2009.
Despite all those who think this domain was a great buy for anything under $500K if memory serves me your acquisition was for something like $25K and there was only 1 other person bidding against you at the auction and there was remote bidding available as well.
—————————–
So, the last time it sold (@25) was prior to the introduction of the IPAD?
And it’s subsequent sale to Meystedt was after the introduction of the IPAD?
I don’t need to tell you of all people that in tech, the entire paradigm can shift in the blink of an eye. On that keyword, it did.
I guess it all boils down to one, big bet on the future of personal computing and what role tablets will play in that, in light of the IPAD. I know where my money is. As far as monetizing a name like that, probably not a project for domain speculators moonlighting as project managers, but there should be some decent affiliate gold there.
BreastSurgeon.com 21k
Hands Down, oops
Logo.com, excellent domain for a good price. It could easily worth a lot more with right people to manage it and build it up.
Dating.com was, by far, the best deal.
Logo.com was the biggest joke. What a waste of a half a million!
There’s ceratainnly a lot of great & interesting names listed above…. although I feel the Purchases on the following names below are contenders for best “value” purchases of the year… my def of a great or best purchse is buying a great domain at a relatively low/bargain price which have distinct upside via development or resale.
Guns.com — $800,000 — worth taking a shot at at this price
CD.Net — $26,000
Angels.com — $200,000
StockPrices.com — $60,000
Valuable.com — $28,500
Regarding Tablets.com
You have everyone referring to them as tablets now. Expect for the ipad.
Back then the term barley existed now you have google trends/insights showing so many terms for tablets that it is going up very quickly.
Microsoft, samsung, google, and everyone else are referring to them as tablets as far as we can see. Don’t bet against the money. Tablets are here to stay and nothing will stop that.
As far as this name goes, you can’t make a name like that work if your just putting up a pay per click site and have no plan. It did not get any traffic before because nothing was being done on the site. No fresh content. Can’t get indexed with ppc ads.
I agree with Morgan this is going to be a huge winner for the owner.
Tablet names will far exceed anything else as far a price appreciation goes. Getting domain names that deal with insurance, loans, gaming, gambling, real estate etc are over with.
You have to be thinking 5 years out and that is what the tablet name is all about.
You ask 100 people if they know what a tablet is and maybe 5 will know.
Ask them 5 years from now and 90 of 100 will know. That is the type of growth you will see from tablet names. Just my opinion. Due your own DD
Everyone is always looking for the cheap short term buck. If your not long term now and not developing something your going to end up with nothing.
DonnyD
Dating.com was the best deal for the price by a wide margin IMO.
Brad
My vote goes to Guns.com at $800k.
“subdomains H.D.TV and 3.D.TV”
but I suppose that someone already owns the (better) HD.TV and 3D.TV domains
“Dating.com was the best deal”
hard to transform a good domain to a profitable site
the best buys are the domains that can be resold to big companies with big profits
“Guns.com”
but “guns” are not so popular today
ScienceFiction.com is WAY TOOOOO MUCH OVERPRICED!!!!!!
D.tv is huge bargain (Direct tv may want this) 🙂 But ScienceFiction.com is way too much overpriced!!
“D.tv is huge bargain (Direct tv may want this)”
yes, it’s a good domain for DirecTV (has, the domain’s owner, already proposed it to that company?) and for the Digital TV in general, but, also ScienceFiction is a good domain with a large potential audience, so, it’s not overpriced, its value depends very much from what CP will do with it
“Boating.com $250,000; MegaYachts.com sold for more than 2x this amount 2 years ago
”
MegaYachts.com sold for $150k a couple of years back according to dnjournal, not 500k+ (unless it was resold again ??)
Out of the list I think Dating.com & Logo.com were the best buys as long as they have a great plan for them.
I wrote an article on why I think Adam Strong’s Logo.com is
the best domain buy of 2010:
http://www.dotsauce.com/2010/12/13/best-domain-name-buy-of-2010/
Primarily because ‘Logo’ translates the same in over 35 different
languages.
I’m going with Dating.com. So many different industries can be tapped into from that one domain.
Logo.com > small revenue market
E.co > giant (and growing) market
that’s why my pick has been e.co
e.co can give big profits either if used for an eco-related domain than if resold
Hello Mike,
I would love for someone to leak all the unlisted sales to serious end users. As to whats best on the available list, I will say this, it all depends on a creative end user who seriously gets it.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider ( Metal Tiger )
Bwahahaha!!
I thing is for sure…all those who paid hundreds of 1000’s & even millions will have nothing more on it than a site that looks like they spent all of $500 on it from some developer in India.
‘Cos these domainer-wannabe-developer chumps spent all their money on the domain, with nothing left over for marketing, design, coding etc
Plus domainers are natural cheapskates.
Dating.com will be nothing more than a glorified affiliate site to (xyz)friendfinder.com
Give it 2 years & it will be put back on auction block again…doing the domain hot potato.
Oh they’ll mention “change of direction” or some sh1t.
And sell for less than $1.75M. Booyah!
For dating, it’s a day late, dollar short.
All the other long established sites have in their favor:
– early mover advantage
– massive network effects (massive membership attracts more members)
– marketing spend
As for LOGO.COM
Plus I laugh at all the chumps who picked Logo @ $500,000
Within 2 years & it will be put back on auction block again…doing the domain hot potato. And sell for less than $500,000…
Sorry, logo/web-design/development is a DYING business (at least for new startups in the western world) better suited for the 1990’s or early 2000 when webshops that knew HTML made a KILLING…eg Razorfish
REAL entrepreneurs go out & do it, they don’t need to wait until the “ideal” domain falls into their lap after waiting years…
Tough business to crack with TONS of better, stronger, established competition.
Plus logo/web-design/development is a lousy business that does NOT scale up well.
Tons of guys from India/Eastern Europe who can do it better, cheaper, faster
More experience, better/bigger client list etc
All that traffic you’re getting? Yeah – it’s for logotv – the gay channel… LOL
(these Logo.com guys are seemingly busy recruiting as we speak by the looks of the landing page. Talk about prepared. Haha..)
Happy New Year!! Booyah!
(mark this post, come back within 24 mths)
since english isn’t my mother language it would be good to have the opportunity to edit my comments to correct grammar
Domainers
I count 12 comments on a post about your pick as the best domain buy of the year.
That is a post that really requires just one comment.
“I pick …………. as the best buy of the year because …………..”
Your now up to 12 comments and complaining that some of them were deleted.
No Bueno
Dirt.com was the worst purchase. The owner’s trying to flip it on Flippa for millions.
I vote for Domainers Gate as the WORST poster of 2010.
And each post has a new spam title on the name. WTF?
@ DOMAINERS GATE
einstein called you out on the truth …
and your English sucks!
The top three Domain Buys of the year are as follows:
1. Boating.com $250k
2 Dirt.com 100k
3.Logo.com 500k.