PaidContent.org is reporting that just “three years after purchasing Business.com for $345 million, the owner, Dex One is shutting down the site”.
“In a statement, Dex One says the “Business.com operations are no longer viable and are not a part of our long-term plans” and it will instead focus on its other online operations, which include DexKnows.com.”
According to the post the site of Business.com will be phased out, “but the company is holding on—at least for now—to the Business.com brand name and the URL.”
It will be interesting to see what the domain will fetch if and when the current owner puts it back on the market
DexKnows.com has applied for the .jack ext so they can do a DexKnows.Jack site.
How stupid can they be? Business.com has the name, the gazillions of links and they just dump it???
Business as usual!
I can see why. The site looks like throw up.
Wow,
that’s really crummy news.
Tia – agreed.
You have to remember that Business.com is just another large site based around ppc arbitrage model. With adwords getting tougher with sites which basically provide no real value to their “users”, it’s tough to purchase traffic elsewhere.
I know of 2 other large ppc arbitrage companies having some serious problems. 1 of them happens to be a very large company with a multi-billion dollar investment firm backing them.
Another .COM headed to the TLD factory ?
://[yourdomain].BUSINESS
So much for the “awesome domain name = guaranteed profits” theory.
You still have to build a business folks….
“You still have to build a business folks…”
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With gTLDs and 100% Turn.Key vendors, some might claim they can now write a check to capitalize the “business” and then sit back and make money while they sleep.
They could also just buy stock and do the same thing. The gTLD Registry ROI may be much higher.
“So much for the “awesome domain name = guaranteed profits” theory.
You still have to build a business folks….”
That is true, but it also helps when you don’t pay 345 million dollars for it=)
It sounds an impressive name but isn’t focused to any specific product. It is no “business in a box” name.
Surprised they would have spent so much for a site which ends up being closed down though. Must have been a very weak business model.
“So much for the “awesome domain name = guaranteed profits” theory. ”
They are lots and lots of profits. Not enough to support a $345 Million valuation of course, but that was their problem.
Sex.com failed
Business.com failed
So much for direct navigation, one word, category killer, game changing, revolutionary, evolutionary, gold mine, can’t loose domain names.
That will help kill (quack) the so called new tdl’s coming out or domain experts flogging the emperors new clothes. How many of you every typed business or business. com into the search box?
if the domain will be on sale…could it break the $100 million selling price record?
Checking ://NEW.NET for BUSINESS and all TLDs
…
only ONE not registered
…
BUSINESS.XXX
Sex.com failed
Business.com failed
So much for direct navigation, one word, category killer, game changing, revolutionary, evolutionary, gold mine, can’t loose domain names.
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Only domainers think this way. No one else does.
People who actually make websites, build brands and market to customers know that a domain is merely a tool in the arsenal. Domainers have this hilariously off-kilter outlook that the domain itself is the end-all of an operating business. They think that owning a great domain is the objective itself and therein lies the finish line… Couldn’t be further from the truth.
If you don’t innovate, implement and execute a good idea, it doesn’t matter what domain you own. A great domain is line a fine violin. The only time the instrument itself even matters is when its being used by a talented musician. To everyone else, it might be impressive, it might ooze potential but it’s still nothing more than a hunk of wood until a firing human brain puts it to use… and as we’ve seen with any number of earth shattering ideas implemented on crappy domains, Itzhak Perlman can do more with a $99 K Mart Violin than a no-talent hack can do with a Stradivarius.
Great tool in the wrong hands!
Really bad news for the Industry
I have to agree with Tia & Aron. Any phone book looked better than Business.com.
Not all generic domains are descriptive, some are completely unfocused and this is where many company’s run into disaster. I am pretty sure George Pickering & Allan Dunn would agree that if you go horizontal in on-line business trying to present the World under one domain, then all you can do is be recognized as just another search engine or phone book.
Business.com , Sex.com are to much of broad generic to stay focused and capture the audience. The business models presented with these names where/are to much 1990’s thinking. The internet is moving forward by concentrating on local, niche, product and service focused. This is where the word “broad” does not match, because “focused” is the exact opposite of “broad”.
IMHO , Bloomberg or WSJ would be the perfect fit for the Business.com domain.
I was going to say what Duane said until I read his post. He is spot on.
Too broad — Business.com ? What about it? It’s unappealing really.
Sex.com ? C’mon — we all know we all have varied and quite different likes and dislikes in this category. Way too broad.
Both are great for big traffic, but that is about it. Some time down the road I suspect that these ultra-big generics will start to actually lose traffic to the niche generic domains.
After all, mulit-word Google/Yahoo/Bing searches of five or more words have been increasing the last two or three years. This is coming at the expense of the big categories.
Who just goes and types “business” or “sex” as a stand alone search anymore ? Once folks have been online for a spell they drill down b/c they don’t want to waste time or energy finding what they want. Expert surfers want their information and they want it now — they don’t want some broad, untargeted search result.
Business.com could be another Google big buy
none of our business 😀 😀
May be previous owner might be tempted to buy Business.com at much lower price than the price they got.
May be xx million dollars deal possible?
“Both are great for big traffic, but that is about it. Some time down the road I suspect that these ultra-big generics will start to actually lose traffic to the niche generic domains.”
This is when the broad domains start becoming aggregators/mashups of more focused/niched sites which can be a viable business model with some licensing/advertising involved.
other big buyers… Apple, IBM, Microsoft… a giant chinese bank…
Maybe the two owners should meet: SexBusiness.com or BusinessSex.com….
THE OWNERS OF BUSINESS.COM SOUND VERY VERY UNINTELLIGENT!!! THIS IS DEFINTIELY AN UNDERSTATEMENT FOR SURE!!! A BLIND DEAF MUTE COULD HAVE MADE MILLIONS WITH THIS DOMAIN AND FURTHERMORE WOULDN’T HAVE PAID A 1/6 OF BILLION FOR IT EITHER! DUMB ALL AROUND THE HORN!!!
1/2 BILLION TYPO SORYY! PERHAPS THEIR PURCHASE WAS A TYPO ALSO AND THEY MEANT 34 MILLION FOR THE DOMAIN AND NOT 345 MILLION TO LET IT GO UNDER! LOSERS FOR SURE!! FIRE EVERYONE AND THE OWNER SHOULD JUMP INTO THE DEEP DEEP SEA WHERE THEIR ARE KNOWN GREAT WHITE SHARKS REGULARLY AT!!!
$345 million did you say?? wow serves him right for being toooo speculative! Christ didn’t he see sex.com fall (bankrupt) propeller.com drop, insurance.com dead on wall st, ask.com struggling and flowers.mobi vaporise? gee how many canaries will Dex drop into the proverbial domain mine shaft to realize it’s not worth mining it?
“How many of you every typed business or business. com” Spot on! Interesting that over the past decade of collecting names myself, I’ve been priced out of the broad named domains but have aquired all I can within my industry of choice and several hundred geo specific names. I’m not taking this as “bad” news…. it’s a great lesson learned and confirmation that I’ve been doing “something” correct! 😉
Watching what Joe and Sathees wrote, I agree with both of you. I recently picked up Business.ht not because of the .ht extension but that the work Business gets 1 million hits per month as a search. How you can’t make money with that is amazing to me. The site should pay for itself and then some just from being a news site and possible a stock board site. I’m still on hold for what to really do with business.ht (Business Hot Topics) but I can tell you this. Without any real marketing, We’re tracking 30K in uniques and the site hasn’t been anything more then a whypark.com site for 4 weeks. Overflow from Business.com? Bad managament and bad businss plan on their part.
Fools. Though 345 mill was far too much to pay for what they got, in the right hands Business.com (like Sex.com) would (and may in the future still) be an internet juggernaut.
And in any case, the domain itself would still sell for 5-10 mill.
This isn’t the last we’ve seen of Business.com; not by a long shot.
Looks like they got the RIGHT domain but had the wrong business plan for it, a waste of time spending that much on ANY domain if you’re not going to spend a decent amount on developing it out to its FULL potential.
w w w . business.com/guides/choosing-the-right-domain-name-818/
…maybe they should have bought Business.pro and saved themselves a few hundred million in the process 🙂
It will be interesting to see how much Business.com sells for next time round, someone from the middle east or India may snap it up one day…????
Anon @ Ref: Sex.com failed / Sathees @ Ref: Great tool in the wrong hands! : )
I agree with most of the comments.
Like any other business you can’t overpay for your assets and you have to have a great business plan before you make the investment.
Sex.com did not have a great business plan before that group bought the domain, really any sort of plan.
Not sure of what Business.com plan was to recoup $345 million but appearently it wasn’t a good one.
The Human factor is 1000 times more important than the domain…
Thanks largely to excesses….Bubble 90’s part deux coming.
Anon
They also paid over 300 million for the domain.. It was hard to make it back. They bought this particular domain for a reason.. Are you more likely to remember Business.com in an ad campaign or ChucksBusiness.com DropShipBusiness.com
Thank God I didn’ t purchase a yahoo-ish $300 link in the Business.com directory!!!
“purchase a yahoo-ish $300 link in the Business.com”
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or $300 domain in DOT Business ?
@ CircleID
“Neustar’s new service offering will provide registrars with all of the registry services they need to apply for and become a registry for their own gTLDs. The service operated by Neustar includes the back end registry, whois, global DNS, DNSSEC and all of the other capabilities required to meet the ICANN requirements for new gTLDs. The service will be offered as a white-label offering, meaning registrars can brand the solution as their own. “
@Steve M. – “This isn’t the last we’ve seen of Business.com; not by a long shot.”
Very much agree. Business.com is no less a superb domain than it was 3-4 years ago. It’s how a domain gets used (or misused to be more accurate) that dictates whether it goes into an upward trajectory or a downward spiral.
The current Business.com site design has only been up for maybe a month. For several years it has looked just like any traditional search engine with no graphics, a search box at the top, and text search results listed down the page. As vanilla, one dimensional, and unimaginative as it gets.
No doubt, the PPC implosion was like a nuclear detonation in the middle of Business.com. 2007 PPC was stellar. 2008 went off a cliff, and in 2009 they apparently crashed into the ground below.
Business.com will most certainly rise again under new vision and new leadership.
Rupert Murdoch will swoop in with a lo-ball offer and show ’em how BUSINESS.COM gets done.
I can offer $345 for it, cash, no questions asked
Rumours of Business.com’s demise are much exaggerated; my understanding is that the directory and pay per click program will continue as before. I think PaidContent got it wrong.
It’s sad to see Business.com go, but this opens opportunities for others….
One has to be either making a lot of money to write off $345 million dollar investment of their large profits, or this venture has been loosing them more money on day-to-day bases, so they just need to keep afloat?
Is dexknows really making a Lot of money? How much of a future such business has…. Yellow/White pages, Wedding Directory… they sell some SEO and video making… may be some web design/hosting, what else? Print editions are almost out, sure some local businesses still use it, but very few pay big bucks….
What am I not seeing?
Face it the real world is fighting back against the internet! I can lease a commercial building for 1/3 of what I used to lease them for. Most people would rather buy stuff at a store then have to wait for it to be delivered. With leases coming down People can drop their prices to match the internet, who do you think is going to lose?
Social networking, advertising, and movies is here to stay but shopping is going back to the malls.
i am sure someone would make money from this baby !
maybe business.tv was a steal at $100,000
There has been very little change in Business.com over the last couple of years, and the fact that they are now shutting down tends toward lack of innovation.
This is one of the most premium domain names available… but what’s the point in paying over $300 000 000 with no working business model, or without management that plans to add to and expand the business model over time?
IMO this is very sad…
Regarding all this talk about generic keywords being a too unfocused to make a business or have longevity:
That’s the sign of a truly weak management team, badly researched concept & complete lack of creative drive. Sex.com may be slightly too generic as it is an act, not really a product – Porn.com would be more valuable in my opinion.
Business.com is an industry, not only a category killer but a category of its own, and the right team with the right innovation could’ve turned it into a revenue generating behemoth.
I would love to see what they plan to do with it – and if it goes up for auction I dont believe that there will be a lack of participants
Em-Bee,
This is a PERFECT example of “we bought it, but we don’t have the knowledge of how to advance it” thinking.
Let’s ask the first question for “DexKnows”. Let’s ask them if they DID THEIR HOMEWORK. If they didn’t, then their marketing director should be fired. Period.
1) Did you hire any domain investors and developers, such as Adam Strong, Elliot Silver, Rob Sequin and about five other professionals like myself to help you position this HUGE domain/website investment to grow? Did you use people who understand domain promotions and advertising? Did you hire companies in the domain industry to set up BUSINESS.COM to take advantage of the domain name and the type-in traffic it received? Did you study the analytics that designated who was interested in the products/services your domain promoted and then create a campaign to attack that demographic?
OF COURSE NOT? Because if they did, they wouldn’t be EMBARRASSING themselves for the failure of making this top level domain name from closing out the “business” sector online – basically FOREVER. Something went horribly wrong after this doman was purchased.
2) I don’t want to be the dick who points this out, but I know FOR A FACT there are at least 10 domain/website building experts who are SHOCKED that this purchase of Business.com is falling short of expectations for HUGE revenues
If my company had spent $345 mil on a purchase, I guarantee you that I would have hired the best domainerers to build out that site, showing how to protect it, and how to promote it. It’s a no brainer.
The problem seems to be in so many cases regarding domain name purchases: Too many domains sold to companies who don’t know or want to follow up IMMEDIATELY using domain name experts to “set up” their financial programs for the domain.
Am I wrong, or am I living in a dream world?
Great article, again.
1) Did you hire any domain investors and developers, such as Adam Strong, Elliot Silver, Rob Sequin and about five other professionals like myself to help you position this HUGE domain/website investment to grow? Did you use people who understand domain promotions and advertising?
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With all due respect, people spending this kind of money on a domain name need the opinions of ‘domainers’ about as much as Bach needs the opinion of Miley Cyrus.
Anon
I disagree with you.
Just because you spend a lot of money it doesn’t mean you know what you’re doing.
I think a LOT of companies in the Internet world and that buy or sell domains could desperately use the assistance of a domain expert.
Considering Ms. Cyrus made 100x more money by the time she was 12, taking into consideration time use of money, than Bach made in this entire life, he could have used some of her advice.
Spending a lot of money does not mean one knows what they’re doing, however, seeking council from the right people is important.
I completely fail to see what Eliot Silver, Rob Sequin, Stephen Douglass or Adam Strong has accomplished in the world of large scale development that might warrant seeking out their advice when making a purchase of a name like Business.com. What could they possibly have to offer? Regurgitating some keyword metrics? What is on their resume that makes them important here?
A name like that is a mile-wide marketing platform; a gigantic brand. There are a few marketing gurus and brand development geniuses I might want to talk to if I were buying a name like that, but domainers? LOL. Hugely deluded self-importance on that one.
My Bach metaphor was misstated… I should have said “With all due respect, people spending this kind of money on a domain name need the opinions of ‘domainers’ about as much as Bach needs the opinion of Miley Cyrus on how to write a symphony…”
Totally, totally outside the radar of “domaining” exists a relatively small group of people who understand how the internet works, how people consume, what garners eyeballs, what causes people to open their wallets. To them, the domain name is one piece in a 5000 piece jugsaw puzzle, even if its a really, really expensive one.
Domainers + development = FAIL
The idea that hiring Domainers to help build out the business.com domain name would have made a difference is one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.
Why not hire the guys who purchased cowboys.com they are some seasoned Domainers and just look at the fantastic job they’ve done with that domain.
What a joke.
@Anon (that brave person who believe what they say should be credited to who THEY are)
I can see the unsaid disagreement with my post about Business.com. It’s amazing that anyone would fail to see the value of having someone with years of experience in monetizing domains, either by flipping or developing them, or parking them, being on board to give advice.
We’re talking about a domain name/company costing $345 million closing? What? And you think not having someone who STARTED the value of the domain in a growth to what it is today not being able to make a difference? You’re making the argument that the Titanic sank, but to hell with having someone who helped “design” the ship on board who knew how to keep the “unsinkable” ship from sinking.
Having a domain investing professional would be important to a company (just for the purpose of this person’s extreme focus on a killer natural like Business.com), who wants to advance the growth of their expensive domain. That’s not saying that domain investors aren’t specifically development “experts”, but they KNOW how to understand the value of promoting the domain name and taking advantage of its built-in traffic, or branding. They certainly wouldn’t “turn their heads” as failing revenue was coming evident.
Personally, if I was involved with a company that owned Business.com, I would be a rabid dog watching the analytics of how this domain was being handled and promoted. It clearly seems that nobody on board for Business.com was watching the rising water level at the levee.
@Domain Newshound – The guys who own Cowboys.com are taking the revenue however they’re getting it. You’re not getting that revenue, too bad. The money isn’t going to you however it comes. Maybe they’re just waiting to flip it. When you own a domain like this, and have showed us all how you perfected the monetization method for your great domain, then you can make a comment without even knowing the intent of the domainers who own Cowboys.com.
Anon
My comment from yesterday was this:
“I disagree with you.
“I think a LOT of companies in the Internet world and that buy or sell domains could desperately use the assistance of a domain expert.”
Those were my words and I’m sticking to them.
Now personally I wasn’t talking about a domainer helping this company run the business.
I was really talking about this company and other large companies needing assistance from domainers in its acquisition and branding strategy.
So here is how this company could have benefited by having a domainer to teir team:
1. Valuation of the domain.
Maybe the consultant would have told them the domain, based on their business plan did not justify spending $345M on.
Maybe with that insight the buyer wouldn’t have offered $345M maybe only $250M or something in between.
Maybe with the input of a domain expert this company would have passed on the purchase at that level altogether.
2. Suggest Alternatives.
Maybe a consultant would have been able to help the develop a domain strategy again based on this company’s business plan, where they recommended picking up other domains, lets call them the second or third best domains in the space or domains better suited to their business plan.
A consultant may have not only saved these guys in this case a hundred million or more, but may have gotten them a better domain, or set of domains to better suited to the company’s business plan.
3. Those mentioned as consultants.
You seem to take exception with those people suggested by Mr. Douglas.
While I not going to endorse or discredit any of those suggestions, to be clear they were not my suggestions, they were Mr. Douglas suggestions. All I said was that:
“I think a LOT of companies in the Internet world and that buy or sell domains could desperately use the assistance of a domain expert.”
There universe of potential experts is larger than those mentioned and would include people who have been involved in the sale and purchase of hundreds of millions of dollars in domains.
Again those people would be of most benefit to a company during the acquisition phase of a domain or the development of a total domain strategy.
“I think a LOT of companies in the Internet world and that buy or sell domains could desperately use the assistance of a domain expert.”
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Many companies (and people) are reluctant to spend the $50,000 per DAY that “experts” charge. [plus travel and security – 2 body guard limit]
Jim
Experts in the domain field can be hired for $50K a month not $50K a day, and I don’t know anyone in the domain space that travels with bodyguards (unless your counting bandit)
)):
@MHB
Not sure the story is true: A domainer at an early conference happened to be on the elevator with Dr. Bob Parsons of GoDaddy fame and fortune. The domainer asked, “Yo, Bob, why do you have those two body guards with you?”.
…
Bob apparently, glibly replied…”to protect me from people like you…”
…
so the story goes…
@MHB
“Experts in the domain field can be hired for $50K a month not $50K a day”
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1. Google for: “Let me Google that for you”
2. Some only charge $45,000 per DAY
3. When traveling with Obama they have a .GOV discount
@MHB
://lmgtfy.com/
://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0322/6306250a_print.html