You just got to love the domain business.
A typo domain name, OnlineTelevison.com just sold for $2,206 on Bido.com after 44 bids so there were at least 2 bidders battling it out.
The Bido price was only $28.
The domain has no Alexa or Compete ranking and even Word Tracker only counts 2 people searching a month for the misspell.
Congrats to the Seller.
along those lines…
Currently at sedo : drogas.com it’s at auction…
it’s doesn’t translate to what most non-spanish speakers would think…
An accident waiting to happen.
Oops.
I bet the buyer did not even realize it was a typo=) I will be very surprised if Bido actually gets the payment on that one!
Lest others think I am only making fun of others, I have done it before. It did not cost me $2200 but was embarrassing all the same.
another person throwing their money down the drain.
Already paid according to Bido.
Again congrats to the seller
Televison.com might be worth a $59 backorder if it was dropping.
OnlineTelevison.com… Definitely makes me feel better about paying $2222 for Capon.com
Bid on it myself…and then panicked when I saw the typo! when the next bid came in at $90+ I felt a huge sense of relief.
Two bidders fighting it out. I wanted to advise as such but decided to sit back and watch, as I too, made the mistake – but caught the typo before I was trapped in the endowment effect…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
well, as P. T. Barnum once said…
Bido should indicate which ones are typos…..that would be nice.
This particular domain for some reason is hard to notice the typo.
Poor fellow……I mean the buyer. 🙂
If the owner of the correctly spelled version of the name were given an offered by email/phone the same amount of money paid for the typo, would he/she take it? hmmm…
Wow,
it HAD to be a mistake by the buyers.
Ouch…That hurts.
The payment went thru…seriously?
I have done it before too, luckily it cost me much less, but I have to tell you, whenever I list domains for sale there (bido) or anywhere if it is in fact a typo, I do label it as such. Now for…$2200…whoa, maybe I’m the idiot. lol
Have to agree MHB, Great sale for the seller!
I hope not.
OnlineTelevision.com is worth a lot more than $ 2,200.
BuyDomains has the .net for sale for $ 2,600.
It appears OnlineTV.com is for sale on Sedo.
Min. bid around $13K.
(none of the domains mentioned are mine.)
I was responding to John’s comment –
“If the owner of the correctly spelled version of the name were given an offered”
When I said – I hope not.
I’m pretty sure the buyer made a mistake. We’ve all been guilty of it. After a trip to Italy I noticed that Firenze.com (the Italian spelling for Florence) was for sale for only 3K. Still jet-lagged, I immediately bought it on-line not realizing that I had purchased the incorrect spelling Firenza.com (which is actually a type of car). Very embarrassing considering I’m 100% Italian-American, but it was my fault and still paid for it.
David
Of course in this case it was an auction and there were at least 2, possibly more bidders bidding for an hour on this domain
Should the seller receive congratulations in the circumstances documented in this post?Nearly all domains sold today are worthless whether misspelled or not. The domain industry business models rely on taking advantage of the domain name evaluations and sales patterns which are less than honest.
RL
The Seller put his domain up for auction with a reserve of $28.
What happened afterward was all market driven.
Don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that all domains are worthless whether misspelled or not.
If you feel that way send me your list of domains and I will tell you which ones I will take off your hands for $1 each.
Interesting RL so are all the .tv you are selling on Namepros worthless ?
I had two typos that happened to me. One from rushing to buy and the other which was actually correct but I THOUGHT it was a typo lol
Last year:
ePortugese.com (should be ePortuguese.com)
in 2007:
???????Attorneys.com (it was correct, but I thought the correct spelling would have been Attornies I was wrong – missed buying the name 1 day later when I went back) I don’t remember exactly what that name was….
@MHB – LOL, exactly!
@John,
That comment cannot be by the same RL, as on NamePros beause I know his portfolio, and it is pretty close to being priceless as opposed to worthless.
If it is the same RL, I am truly baffled by that statement, lol
Vito.
@the dot stop
Your comment was @John Beckwith
I must further confess…
not only did I bid on the typo in question – I emailed Rick and Toby @ Latonas Auctions giving them a heads up that this huge domain was up for grabs on Bido.
Being a newbie – I am often looking for financing to grow my portfollio and thank God
no one lent me money on this one!!
After I realized the typo – I followed it up with another email saying sorry guys – it ain’t worth the time to click on over to Bido.
As per the posts above – it seems as we all make a few mistakes here and there.
@John,
You’re right. I meant for my comment to be directed towards John Beckwith.
My Bad.
btw,
I went to your blog and tried commenting on your g”gun to your head” .tv or tv.com blog-post, then realized comments were closed and your Post is almost a year old….lol
Back on topic though…
I remember I made a very fast purchase/transfer for a typo of hemmerhoids and was as excited as a lunatic, only to find out I had the incorrect spelling. Why would that word even have a second “h” in there??? LOL
I stated: “Nearly all domains are worthless”. Millions are offered for sale. We only analyse very few “top sales” reported. Sophisticated portfolio holders would not register most of these top names or buy them on ebay even if they were listed there for less than the registration prices. Domain brokers and exchanges are incentivized by their commissions to inflate market valuations. ” Domain name appraisals are highly speculative. It is an estimate and an opinion, and can considerably vary depending upon the considered elements of the name and its extension. Traffic to and revenue from a web is not relevant to a domain, but to the web content. It is a common mistake to take web traffic and revenue into calculation of a domain.” – Wikipedia
MHB,
My question was – should the seller be congratulated?
RL
Its not easy to sell a completely worthless domain for $2,100
@RL:
“Traffic to and revenue from a web is not relevant to a domain, but to the web content.”
Really? Newsflash: It is quite relevant to both.
Seriously, this has to be one of the dopiest things ever written on Wikipedia. As someone who has made well over $10,000,000 from domain name advertising revenue (and, yes, many of the advertisers came aboard because of the names) I can tell you that Wikipedia has no idea what they’re writing about. For example, there are sites out there with more traffic and content than our PalmSprings.com, but having that brand 100% has a positive effect on attracting advertisers.
David J Castelo,
Take Geosign, for example: “Canadian company GeoSign took $160 million in funding in March 2007 in what Nick then described as “one of the largest private equity financings for an Internet company in recent history.” The company seemingly had it all, yet the whole company came crashing down in weeks due to a policy change from Google.” – Geosign had poor quality names with exception of few and millions in revenues.
@RL:
GeoSign as a word means nothing to people. I wouldn’t have spent $10 for it. However, intuitive brands we own like PalmSprings.com, Daycare.com, Nashville.com, Manicure.com, etc mean something to millions of people before development and are worth millions of dollars each as Geo and Generic brands/words. These names get a great combination of intuitive as well as search engine traffic. I can assure you that GeoSign received zero direct navigation. Can you make up a name and make millions? Of course. Google, Wikipedia and eBay are prime examples, but intuitive Goe and Generic brands have an intrinsic value even before you develop them and that is why we are in this business.
David J Castello,
Furrther to my last post, I believe that if I had registered the names you referred to by hand before anyone else did, these domains, without any further investments in the information and applications, parked at Fabulous.com, in my opinion would not pay for my registration costs.
@RL
Which names?
Thats a good post!!
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde.
Price is soley about perception. The equation becomes more concrete when there is only one available to buy… such as a domain name.
My two cents…
I was in the auction too.
Just logged into bido and couldn’t believe what I was seeing and with only two $28 prebids.
Bid on it till 270, would have gone higher if I hadn’t copied and pasted into a spell checker.
Then I couldn’t believe how high it went.
Don’t think the buyer is going to be too happy.
But glad he stuck by his word and the transaction is completed already, seller is a new domainer on NP who also can’t believe it sold for $2206.
“these domains, without any further investments in the information and applications, parked at Fabulous.com, in my opinion would not pay for my registration costs.”
What is this? 1999 again?
Ughhhhh. I had patients throughout the day today so some lucky person scored GasDryer.com for $334 on Pool.
Dropcaught at 6 PM and still was able to get
deerplaques.com
meshstorage.com
One of my best registrations ever was in 2000 when I hang-reg
ForclosedHomes.com. Did not even know it was spelled wrong until 3 months later. In fact, I worked in Real Estate and no other agents noticed the wrong spelling. It was my wife who pointed it out. 50% of people on the street spell it wrong without the “e”. However, it’s been a great steam of CPA income for years, 200-300 type-ins daily.
With all that being said, the buyer still might be OK with with OnlineTelevison.com. I am sure he made a mistake but can still capitalize on it.
Thanks, Jim
David J Costelo,
I have already mentioned in my previous post about owning “adventure.com” few years ago. It had zero unique visitors and zero clicks. When I discovered it accidentally I was thinking about “venture” and not “adventure”. I was registered by someone else, before I registered it. It had no traffic. It is alright for me to reveal this name, because it is no longer in my portfolio. Other “.com” names like this or of lesser value, say in the range of few thousand dollars, should remain the underfinanced portfolio holders best secrets, unlsess they can also register “.org”, “.net”, “.co.uk”, and multiple other extensions, before they publish the name of the one perceived to be valuable.
P.S. I would not recommend to the post readers to register the mispelled names. The seller had great luck. I would not hire him to sell my portfolio or recommend him because of these credentials. It’s very likely that he registered the name by mistake and found an ingenious way to get rid of it.
RL, are you transmitting to us via some exotic wormhole that connects to an alternate reality? Or is it just happy hour?
Adventure.com could easily sell for $50k+ to an enduser (e.g. travel related). I’d “venture” to say that most on this thread not only could easily afford 5-figures, but they’d do it immediately.
Or is there some deep, deep…DEEP point that my tiny brain is missing here?
Hello everyone, I was the seller of the domain. I was surprised as anyone else when I saw an email saying I have received a bid of $2k. My intentions were that I was going to get rid of domains I didnt want, and one of them was this name,and bido.com was the place. As some of you saw, I listed it at $28, and that was the price I hopefully could sell it. I did not imagine I could get $2k. I am new in the domaining business, and I hope I can improve finding more domains!
SL,
I am very sad to say that few years ago I lost “adventure.com” to my registrar, in the circumstances that it was on a relatively large list of names coming up for renewal and I had to trim the list beacuse of the low cash reserves I had then. I discovered later it was no longer in my account. This was several few years ago.
Keep in mind, that the point I tried to make is that this name had zero traffic then, and yet it was very valuable. I recently sold generic, but long tail names,12 names for $30000 with no traffic at all, directly to one strategic buyer with the agreement not to reveal the names, for the buye’rs strategic reasons (This is common: SEDO gets paid extra for the silence).
“I am new in the domaining business, and I hope I can improve finding more domains!”
Dziner,
Congratulations on the sale.
However, don’t expect lightning to strike twice on another typo.
Take the money and use it as seed money for better domains.
It was your lucky day.
🙂
Dzine Fusion,
This was my guess. See above:
“The seller had great luck. I would not hire him to sell my portfolio or recommend him because of these credentials. It’s very likely that he registered the name by mistake and found an ingenious way to get rid of it”
@ RL, “Adventure” does get good traffic on the Google keyword tool, but I am learning what you mean, because there are lots of highly appraised domains at BargainDomains which owners are trying to sell for a fraction of the appraisal value. You have to think, they’re worth only as much as the end user will invest. Like Clarinets.com is a great name, but the music industry – especially classical – famously operates in the red. How about Pathogen.com, recently listed on Latonas daily auctions? It’s a category-killer, but a search on “pathogen” doesn’t yield many adsense ads. (It sold for $2,401.)
It isn’t a total loss for the new owner. It looks like he could optimize it for “TV” and it should place well in Google, typo notwithstanding.
@Dziner
Congrats! There were two bidders who went back and forth, so it is not as if you posted a reserve or $2000 price point trying to lure a jetlagged or misinformed buyer.
From the getgo on Bido, your domain gathered many views, and was voted to auction quickly.
Count your blessings as it is rare. I am new to the industry too, and I have close to 30 mispelled domains in my pocket, and have trouble selling them fpr a ten spot let alone $2K.
Congrats and thank God I did not have too much money sitting on my credit card toherwise I may haev even pushed the price higher… as sometimes excitement overides due diligence.
Mike
Sorry for all the typos above :o)
Luise,
The domains with the qualities matching your examples are of interest to strategic buyers or sophisticated investors and/or the ones with deep pockets not the underfinanced speculators who buy now to sell tomorrow. They may argue that the domains have no value because of they do not have traffic or that they only buy for a small multiple of their traffic and yet they can tell that the name has enormous value just by seeing it. This post was about the typo domain. I recall seeing typosbought sold and resold for 6 figures ( e.g. with “download” keyword). If the onlinetelevision.com gets sold to an international media mogul, this typo may become valuable to that mogul> it would be interesting to learn what this name buyer may say. Somone may wish to follow up on this.
“The domains with the qualities matching your examples are of interest to strategic buyers or sophisticated investors and/or the ones with deep pockets not the underfinanced speculators who buy now to sell tomorrow. ”
Very nicely said, RL.
I am the one that got Pathogen.com for $2401. I also bought Capon.com for $2222 this week and other names like Precipitate.com for $1K in the past.
I love one-word noun dotcoms. I’ll collect them all day at $1-2K.
My gut feeling here is that Bido should be offering a refund and perhaps have some sort of rule that misspellings should be marked as such.
Snoopy,
The BIDO’s auction terms / conditions of sale should be reviewed. Misrepresentation happens when a seller deceives potential buyers by providing false information about the auctioned item. This can happen when a buyer offers a misspelled generic or descriptive domain name without explicitly stating so. That could amount to misrepresentation, but definitely not fair for the innocent party. Should the seller be congratulated? The seller was negligent because of not allerting the buyers. A buyer may refuse to pay for the domain or claim not getting the domain name paid for. The buyers can argue that misspelled generic or descriptive domain names such as the one at issue are worthless to them (regardless of traffic). Am I missing something?
@RL and @ snoopy
Wow – are you guys serious? No misrepresentation here.
The auction started at $28. That alone is a flag that the domain in question should be careful examined before bidding, especially when the estibot value shows $20K.
In addition, if the industry started to dispute transactions based on spelling, the conversion rate would fall to the point where no one would bid.
If the seller listed the item as online televison, but then proceeded to provide search or data about the online Television, that is misrepresentation.
Spelling is crucial to domains. WYSIWYG.
Now if the seller disclosed that this was a typo, he would be going the extra mile. And save alot of bidders like me some grief.
In no way did this seller, in my opinion, misrepresent.
‘Buyer beware’ is the basic rule with any auction.
(house, car, land, business, equipment, domain)
You want to start putting rules in place to totally protect a bidder?
There was no misrepresentation.
Do we know if the 2 bidders were confused?
Even so, what’s the big deal?
I can’t believe domain pro’s are suggesting they want to have
protection from a bad buy.
Maybe, the next time the 2 bidders will not use a small screen on a
smart phone to bid.
🙂
Mikey, thats funny.
We were both thinking along the same line of thought at the same time.
You beat me by a minute.
🙂
“Caveat emptor” No deception, no hiding, no fraud. What should happen is that BUYERS–the one’s putting their money at risk, are responsible for for making their own proper decisions and due diligence.
And you both be me by a minute as well. Oops! 🙂
I own vestbuy.ca I also own beastbuy.ca
I wrote a letter to BestBuy Inc asking if they wanted these domains to be transferred to them. All I asked for was the $7 bucks to transfer them.
They asked for a week to evaluate and then sent me a reply email, saying go ahead and keep them.
Now if I listed vestbuy.ca for sale, based on recents posts, I would have to refund the buyer due to mispelling, if the buyer though he or she was getting bestbuy, nestbuy, cestbuy or any other possibility.
I agree RL – that one should indicate upfront that this is a typo domain for sale.
My wife recently made on offer on a house. The home inspection showed a major defect in the foundation. The seller actually tried to hide the defect buy putting shelves, and toys near the affected area in the basement. To me that is misrepresentation or knowing something and not disclosing it. But can I ever prove that they tried to dupe us?
Buyer beware. There is no other alternative otherwise the domain industry will fall flat on its face.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin
Great post guys…
PS – Good Luck out there 😮
Mikey
Your comparison to buying a house to a domain is way off
Most states have clear laws requiring buyers to disclose any defects on houses, states generally have no such laws for the sale of say cars.
There were no representations made so there can’t be any misrepresentation.
The buyer didn’t make any statement on the domain or list anthing like “get one of the best names on the net” which you could then claim was misrepresentation.
Typo’s of Voyeur.com and mortgage.com have sold into the SIX figures at auction with all parties knowing that it was a missspell.
My opinion is the Seller did nothing wrong and it was a nice sale.
Good for him.
I agree. I was refering to @RL and @Snoopy who seem to think that the buyer should be entitled to a refund, as the seller or perhaps Bido was negligent in some manner
I agree – no misrepresentation whatsoever.
Anyone interested in buying misrepresentaton.com?
The question is one of reading words in their proper context. When technical words or phrases are made of, the strong presumption is that the seller intended to use them according to their correct technical meaning. In fact, we know that the seller knew his domain name was defective, as he failed to inspect the name prior to committing the name registration, and he achieved the undesirable result. He could reasonably expect that someone else can fall in a trap and anything of value he could get would be a compensation for his previous loss. He offered the defective name and he remained silent. And then I read that he has been congratulated many times for being successful in this sale. There was no warning for the typo, and it should be. Such warning would get attention of the “typosqatters” and not misslead the innocent buyers and unjustly enrich seller. See Wikipedia: “Typosquatting, relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users, should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website (owned by a … cybersquatter)”… “Generally, there is no ambiguity to justify individuals and organizations to own these sites”. The Internet is global and anyone in the world, not just domain industry professionals (not just the tiny fraction of the speculators relying on the “misspelled names resale business model”) can land on the Bido’s auction site, see the value in the real name (without the defect), see the frenzy of bidders, get excited … and fall into a trap. There are many possible scenarios. I respectfully disagree that the seller should be congratulated.
RL,
That argument might hold if it was the average internet surfer who bought the domain.
However, the majority of the bidders on Namejet, Snapnames, Bido, etc
are part-time or full-time domainers.
Earlier today, I was watching a steel worker walk along a beam
8 inches wide 30 ft above the ground.
(You wouldn’t get me doing that.)
Do you really think he needs signs placed all around the work site saying –
“Watch your step”.
Never sold a typo,
Economically speaking, the owner of the misspelled domain name, which is not a well known name yet, can only is benefiting from the goodwill and the reputation of the owners of the domain name worth developing. A seller of this kind of domain name can be inferred to have registered, used, sold, misled some unsuspecting buyers, and unjustly profited from the sale of the domain name in bad faith. There are associated issues of potential negligence, misrepresentation and liabilities affecting sellers and auction site owners.
@RL
I am in agreeance with you. I own several prominent typos. Hoogle, Yaoho and more. I have not profited one cent from these domains, in fact, I have trouble giving them away.
To profit at someone else’s expense is wrong – especially when it is intentionally done.
The problem with domains is that there are so many possible typos that can be construed. Take in case the guy who is being sue by Microsoft for having 24 typo domains using the word hotmail.
Personally I feel he should pay the fine.
I do disagree however with the notion that this particular seller misrepresented his domain name. Buyer beware and like me, what you ultimately do with that domain could be construed as bad faith.
Mikey
@RL
After re-reading your posts… you actually have change my direction in this domain name game. My guess is that you have been in this industy for a long time, have learned a few hard lesssons and now have chosen the straight and narrow path and I do respect your approach, mannerism and etiquette in posts.
Congrats to you rather.
Mikey (idealideas),
Special thanks for your review, and thanks to all!
Thank you RL and Mikey for the comments. I appreciate the advice you have given me. I did not think selling my domain would create such a buzz. Anyways, another thing that is surprising me is when I found out today onlinetelevison.net, and .org are on sale on bido.com, well then again, I think it was predicatable.
@Dzinerfusion
Yes – I saw this too. I watched for a bit hoping that no one would bid too high as in my opinion, this was simply auctioned in hopes of reaping profits. The seller actually registered the domain a few days ago, presuming to repeat your success.
Take care and I hope all goes well in domain land
Mikey
Looks like the .net did get a bidder and the .co.uk is now in the mix as well. I did post warning to potential bidders of the typo but too late for the .net bidder(s) Will watch as the .net auctions tomorrow.