One of the best group of law/legal related domains I’ve seen in recent years sold this weekend at Sedo.com without any fanfare or any special marketing.
bankruptcylawyers.com
trademarklawyer.com
immigrationattorney.com
criminalattorneys.com
duilawyers.com
taxattorneys.com
bankruptcylawyers.net
All the domains are owned by webdolphins.com.
BankruptcyLawyers.com let the pack at $77K.
DuiAttorneys.com came in at $55K
TaxAttorneys.com sold for $20K
Criminalattorneys.com sold for $16,500
ImmigrationAttorney.com sold for $15,550
TrademarkLawyer.com sold for $10K
I don’t have the sales final sales price of the .net., but it was over 5K.
All and all it seems like a $200K sale.
Yet I have to wonder why the Sedo did not hold a special auction for this set of domains & market it to the domain and to the legal community.
Maybe the Seller didn’t ask for one, but I think this set of domains deserved at lot more attention than it got.
a lot of “DEALS” this days… 🙂 Great Names…
Arbel
The problem with legal domains(and I own a lot of them) is that they have fairly small traffic volumes so they don’t make a lot parked, and attorneys really haven’t gotten “domains” so you may have to wait years and years to resell them.
They all went for over 2x what I was willing to pay. I think the best deal of the bunch was CriminalAttorneys.com. I now feel a tinge of remorse for not bidding that higher. CriminalLawyers.com sold for $195,000 a couple years ago.
Sedo didn’t promote them because they resulted from the usual offer-pushed to auction process plus they’re probably too segmented to know how HUGE these domains were. Good for the bidders but I think the seller got very good returns for these names regardless.
Congrats to both seller and buyers.
I think you are right Mike. These should have been promoted better. I’ve had contact with buyers looking for this sort of domain
Just noticed, the same name (michael bileak) and email appears to be on the whois record from awhile ago on at least a few of these names that I checked. Maybe they haven’t changed hands yet ?
http://domain-history.domaintools.com/?page=details&domain=bankruptcylawyers.com&date=2010-01-15
This looks like a steal for several reasons.
The lawyer names make great directory sites. I know 5 lawyers in Houston that spend between 50K-125K per month on PPC ads. This would be HUGE potential for those targeted directories.
Factor in that Internet Brands recently bought:
The ExpertHub network includes dozens of websites that are leaders in their specific niches, such as CriminalDefenseLawyer.com, BankruptcyLawFirms.com, and LawFirms.com.
This seems like someone did not explore all the possibilities with these names.
Very nice domains, pure keywords. Great quality.
Hello Mike,
I could not agree with you more,on your comment about SEDOs marketing approach or lack of it. Many times any clearing house for secondary domains may have a preferred buyers list of clients waiting for their offerings. Get The Picture??
This is why any experienced domainer should shun secondary auctioneers like the plague. If you are looking for a fair shake do your homework as Rick Schwartz would say!
Gratefully,
Jeff
Adam
Same guy
just used the corporate name instead
sadly bankruptcylawyers.com seems an “hot domain” for these days… 😐
I received an email about this auction too late to bid. All these domains sold WAY under priced. A few years ago, I offered $75k for DUIlawyers.com (I already own DUIattorneys.com). I also offered far more than $16,500 for Criminalattorneys.com. What a steal! If I would have known about this auction, and based on these final bids, I would have purchased 3 0r 4 of these domains. Damn!
This buyer was definitely smarter than the seller. Those are ALL great names – top of the food chain in their niches! Hard to believe that they weren’t marketed to any end users. I’ve paid more for lesser legal names, and been very happy about it! Just goes to show that there’s STILL opportunities out there, and ways to leverage the ‘knowledge disparity’ on domains….
TaxAttorneys.com at 20K – very nice! CriminalAttorneys at 16.5K? Smokin’ hot! TrademarkLawyer.com for 10K?! Are you kidding me? An UFB trifecta for less than 5oK! They REALLY missed the mark on this one:
http://www.inta.org/
I feel your pain Braden! Would have loved to see you get a few of these gems!
@ Em-Bee
To the contrary, I’ve been selling attorney and legal related domains like they’re on fire. In the last three months, I’ve sold over 10 legal domains and pocketed $$$$. It seems there IS a specialized market for these domains, and they seem to know what they’re doing.
I agree with you on your questions of SEDO on why they didn’t do a “theme” auction or promotion of their legal domains. There’s a lot more people out there, especially attorneys, who are starting to “get it” about domains. I’m seeing this personally.
keep it up!
cheers
I was the one that bought TrademarkLawyer.com for 10K
FYI this set of auctions was a total waste of time and tied up cash. Seller did not transfer any of the domains sold and had my cash tied up at SEDO for two weeks.
JPG
I understand the Seller up to this point has refused to transfer the domains.
I won one of the domains, still have my money at Sedo.com, waiting for them to put him formerly in default then planning on pursuing my legal options.
Why would you throw in the towel and ask for your money back and allow the seller to get away with it?
MHB, I am not happy with it believe me but I won both the big .com’s and had over $100k sitting over at SEDO the last two weeks when I can put that cash to work on other legitimate domain buys. I told SEDO if they get the domains in their possession I would be happy to re wire the cash just seems like a real long shot at this point.
JPG
But are you just going to walk away, your not going to sue the guy to make him perform under his contract with Sedo.com?
I’m for going after the guy, I know one of the other winning bidders and was hoping we would all team up, hire counsel and sue.
Under Sedo contract we would be entitled to recoup our attorney fees.
Thoughts?
Sounds like a lot of work 🙂 MHB, please email me if you get a chance, thanks!
@Em-Bee and JPG
This is why it’s best to have the auction house control the domains that are up for sale when the domain is at a reserve of 5 figures or more. If a seller wants their domain to sell, and they get a pre-bid, the auction house should request a holding registrar for the seller to transfer the domain if the bidder met the reserve. That way, the domain name is NAILED when the price as agreed is reached. No hunting down the buyer, lawsuits, etc etc. All auction houses should use some sort of system that guarantees the top bidder wins the domain. You never hear about Sotheby’s reporting “well, someone bid $3mill on this Picasso, but the seller decided not to give up the painting.” Sotheby’s already has the painting.
What really should be done, and I’ve advised one particular client about these repercussions (who quickly agreed) — If you CHEAT OUT (or what we used to call “welch”) on a domain auction and don’t honor your transaction, then your personal name, your company, everything about you, should be posted on the “Can’t be trusted, Domain sales not honored, CAUTION”
Imagine if there was a website that featured the names, contact info and as much info as possible on every domain buyer/seller who never followed through on sale made honestly. Give the welcher a chance to explain WHY they didn’t either PAY for the domain or RELEASE the domain and accept the bid. This type of information is invaluable to all domain investors to look into the minds of people who sell/buy domains but don’t follow through. PLUS, it searches out and reveals the flakes and frauds in the business.
I’d never buy or sell to someone who appeared on this “Domainer Blacklist” and I’d advise my clients and readers not to buy either, if they didn’t write a clear and logical reason to why they dropped out of the sale.
Am I too harsh?
Stephen
You make some good suggestions but in the case of these domains for example, they did not have high reserves so I’m not sure what could have been done by Sedo to secure the domains prior.
Sedo is huge
It has millions of listings and they aren’t going to want nor can they practically take control of millions of domain the vast majority of which aren’t going to sell.
This is why I think its important once a default is declared that the winning bidders sue to enforce their rights, so it will be that much less of a chance of it happening again
Quote –
“This is why I think its important once a default is declared that the winning bidders sue to enforce their rights, so it will be that much less of a chance of it happening again”
That would be a waste of time and energy unless you are buying the domain for a steal like Sex, com for $ 500K. It is not worth it for a $ 5K transaction. I also get caught up with the “principle of the thing”.
However, anyone that has been involved with a court proceedings knows how mentally draining it is. Plus, how much it disrupts your business activities for months.
It would have to be done in federal court in Northern VA. to be effective. Not all domainers have the option of suing in federal court without incurring lawyer and court fees and traveling time and expenses (if you want to be present for each motion). And, you know it could drag on for years if the seller has good counsel.
I’m not saying “just roll over and play dead”. But, you have to think it through if it is worth fighting for a marginal domain.
Wed
That is exactly why this kind of thing happens
@Em-Bee
I understand the “huge volume” of domains that SEDO controls, but we’re talking about a system that can easily be implemented by their coders that push any domain name that is bid on for over, let’s say, $3,000 – into a forced domain transfer by the seller to the Auction site’s “holding registrar”. The reason for this is obvious, which makes it even more important for SEDO to address. Moniker/Snapnames has realized this and makes it pretty easy. Now if Moniker by itself would force this on its private or extended auctions, then they would complete that “confidence” needed for buyers. I had a client that needed to complete a Moniker auction purchase where the seller wouldn’t give up the name. I made a few calls, emails, and found out some inside issues to satisfy both parties… and the domain was released. But my time was paid for, and although that’s good for me, it shouldn’t be required for someone who buys a domain at an auction with good intent, and gets ripped. You should TRUST that the auction site has your back. Period.
Why leave the onus of obtaining a domain you bid on, with YOUR money, and agreeing to SEDO’s sale TOS, (where they get a % of the sale) but get no warranties or guarantees in the deal? SEDO should protect THEIR business model of “selling domains by auction or listing” if they want to get that 10,15, 20% commission.
What’s getting tiring is seeing all the domain selling websites and services, including live auctions, NOT doing anything to “categorize” or seriously market the domains they are brokering. Where’s their work to justify their refcomm?
If anything, SEDO and the rest, Afternic, Snapnames, TDNAM (what the hell is that?) should GUARANTEE that if a domain name is bid on by their customers, that domain name WILL BE OBTAINED for the highest bidder.
Yeah, we have a long way to go to reach truly “professional” systems for doing big business domain sales. I think that anytime when a company wants to sell domains, and if they’re main business is doing this (not talking about a simple newsletter listing of domains for sale), then these businesses should secure the domains that reach a certain “price point”.
Yes?
MHB:
remember when you posted about your first sedo auction?
and the comments about dead beats? you were quite skeptical…
their system is quite faulty, yeah… and all other auction houses but you will be suprised (or not) on Sedo ratio on non-payers..
Domo
I think there is only so much an auction house can do if a seller won’t sell.
One thing they can do and I expect them to do is sue for their commission.
Another thing they can do is bar them for life from their system, which I’m told is being done.
I am curious to see if you do sue and the final recourse …
That way, the domain name is NAILED when the price as agreed is reached. No hunting down the buyer, lawsuits, etc etc. All auction houses should use some sort of system that guarantees the top bidder wins the domain. You never hear about Sotheby’s reporting “well, someone bid $3mill on this Picasso, but the seller decided not to give up the painting.” Sotheby’s already has the painting.
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@Tanygeo
Thanks for repeating my May 26 comment here and agreeing with it.