According to a press report the domain name HomeownersInsurance.com was just purchased fro $570,000 by HomeInsurance.com.
“HomeownersInsurance.com is our most recent step towards owning the top home insurance properties out there”, said Lagomarsino. “In addition to the two top home insurance domains in the industry, we have also attained almost all of the state-specific home insurance websites such as CaliforniaHomeInsurance.com and NewYorkHomeInsurance.com.”
Another huge insurance domain acquisition.
You have to wonder how much .insurance is going to fetch
As expected the insurance space is heating up even more. If I were in charge at a huge private equity firm I’d buy QuinStreet and spin off their insurance assets. Operate as an independent insurance provider, IPO that and keep the rest of Quinstreet private.
Lead gen isn’t such a great industry for a company to operate as a publicly traded stock. They’re very exposed to every dip the advertising industry takes. Quinstreet is trading at almost a 40 PE which is absurd but not when you consider how under monetized their assets are.
They’ve got the ability to be a top 5 insurance provider at least in terms of car insurance. Which is where everyone wants to be. So you’d need probably $1.2B to acquire Quinstreet (current market cap of $900M) and get the board to approve a sale and another $2B under management in order to have an operation that has the resources to grow.
So $3B….. Should we start passing the hat around or what? Or maybe this is a better way for Google to spend $3B instead of on GroupOn?
What’s interesting about this sale @ $570,000 is that it is almost equal to the CarInsurance.com deal if you place a monetary value on the monthly search volume. $50M / 1.4 Million Searches per month for “Car Insurance”.
$50M / 1.4M = $35 per search
$570k / 17,000 = $33 per search
Considering that CarInsurance.com is a thriving business with great organic rankings, millions in rev and lots of untapped potential and HomeOwnersInsurance.com is basically a domain sale I’d be inclined to say that QuinStreet got CarInsurance.com cheap.
Sean
Excellent analysis
thanks
Insurance and Casino/Poker will dominate the domain sales in future imo. These categories have cut throat competition and owning a good domain is way better than paying goog outrageous money for each visitor it sends.
This is no surprise.
Btw, Mike I know you own a bunch of good insurance domains. The reason I know: Because we both sold to 360 Quote LLC many insurance domains last year.
We still have about 1000 or so…..many of them state/city type.
RKB
“”because we both sold to 360 Quote LLC many insurance domains last year.””
Obviously way too cheap
I know, but no regrets.
Btw, I just checked and we have actually over 1600 insurance domains …. not bad.
Some of the ‘homeowner’ specific ones we have are:
CheapHomeownerInsurance.com
HomeownerInsuranceRate.com
HomeownerInsuranceRates.com
I am thinking of developing some leads’ sites.
You guys don’t understand this business. Insurance clicks are going for 30 per click in some cases. Did you see at boxcar they have state insurance such as nevadainsurance.com and missouriinsurance.com for 175k. I guranty you that those will be sold with in the next 30 days. You watch geico, nationwide or quinstreet will get word that they are for sell. If quinstreet even knew they where for sell they would probably buy.
This is shocking news to the insurance industry and domain insurance holders.
Do not sell your state insurance names if you have any knowledge of this business. Only state insurance names with two words are the most valuable. Their is 50 of them that is it. If you have 3 words with a state in them then your looking at a lot less. I would think that state insurance names are valued at around 125k to 500k.
Make these big companies pay for your names do not sell out cheap. Quinstreet pays about 20 bucks in click in some states. So what does mean the insurance companies are paying…
State health insurance names will be the next big market. With 2014 coming on health care reform and all the state health insurance exchange names coming in it is going to be big for anything that has to do with health insurance exchange names.
The biggest profit makers will be gambling, insurance and tablets. Does anyone care to disagree with me on this.
We have 21 state insurance domains with State in them such as TexasStateInsurance.com, CaliforniaStateInsurance.com etc. We get inquiries all the time even from insurance agents in those states.
But there are so many other kind of insurance domains that we have sold, especially the city, county type geo insurance domains. We have even sold ‘Insurance Finder’ domains with city and state in those such as CaliforniaInsuranceFinder.com etc.
We have even sold these domains for not just the keyword ‘insurance’, but also life insurance, home insurance, auto/car insurance, fire insurance, loss insurance, casualty insurance, liability insurance, health insurance, medical insurance, etc etc…….the list just goes on.
Again, most inquiries are from agents or small companies in those states/cities/counties.
Big companies are just waking up to this now.
Let’s see how it all unfolds.
“The biggest profit makers will be gambling, insurance and tablets. Does anyone care to disagree with me on this.”
Yes agree, but there are few other categories as well.
Btw, regarding health insurance domains…..I fully agree there.
We have seen a great increase in earnings as well as inquiries on one of our domain (LowIncomeInsurance.com) right after Obama passed the healthcare bill. I guess there is some kind of provision to this in bill but I am not sure. Google search shows many stats now have low income insurance initiatives.
I also believe that law/legal geo domains will be hot.
Praise the lord,
I own all the possible insurance.cctld domains for a country that matches a US state. My time will come, as it makes sense: think of it as homeinsurance.ny, if you’re from US /NY you know what NY is and don’t think that it may be an obscure country or island. Just need Goog to cooperate one day 😉 and since most insurance are state specific it’s perfect.
Joni,
Health care domains aren’t where people will profit, the exact opposite. In fact there’s a lot of small networks that are SEO’d and ranking well and pulling in anywhere from $50 to $5,000 a day and they can’t sell them for 4x rev. Insurance companies are pulling out of markets and certain types of health insurance. The lead gen part of that business is not doing well.
And unfortunately large companies (AllState, Farmers, StateFarm) won’t buy Geo domains because it’s too much work and in some cases they would be competing with their independent agents in those areas. The best you can hope for is that an agent who’s been succesfull will want to buy TampaHealthInsurance.com for $xx,xxx but that most likely won’t happen. The CPC and search volume isn’t high enough to warrant that kind of investment.
Geo domains are tough and big companies know that the real key is to buy one Tier1 huge search volume domain (CarInsurance.com) and put the money you would have to spend to SEO TampaCarInsurance.com on getting CarInsurance.com/tampa/carinsurance ranking instead. Which if you Google almost any city and car insurance, you’re going to see CarInsurance.com in the top three.
QuinStreet might have thought about doing a mass Geo play before, but since they now own Insurance.com, Insureme.com and now CarInsurance.com it’s not necessary.
They’re better off spending big money in other verticals where they don’t dominate.
My advice, build them out yourself or find a company to monetize them with that isn’t going to rely on parking, because you’ll never get ranked that way.
Top 10 Health Insurance Keywords, Position 1 CPC and Monthly Search Vol.
Keyword CPC Average vol.
health insurance 10.09 739400
affordable health insurance 9.19 54716
health insurance coverage 8.33 54716
buying individual health insurance 11.34 44734
health insurance quotes 15.25 44734
health insurance agency 8.33 36600
aarp health insurance 15.67 29946
cobra health insurance 11.37 24474
health insurance for individuals 12.89 24474
individual health insurance 12.89 24474
@Sean Patrick
Sean can you shed some light on CarOwnerInsurance.com , ppc is $10 per click, and $15 per click for CarInsurance.com.
I own CarOwnerInsurance.com which I believe is the next way to search after car insurance. Any ideas on how to develop this domain?
Cheers
Robert
Your average premium on a health insurance plan around $14,000 a year for a family, depending on which state you are in.
Your average car premium about $1100 per year for 1 car.
What do think agents make more on?
Not sure why car insurance clicks are that much. Either the term car insurance is overpriced or the term health insurance in underpriced.
RKB- Nice local geo sell.
Californiainsurancfinder was sold we believe for 6k, I could be wrong on that though it is only going to take the agent to sell 5 to 10 health insurance polices to make up that up. Great local name to sell in the geo market. This is a perfect example why geo names are going to increase over time.
People are getting tired of putting info into a site and having 10 agents call them about insurance. Those days are getting numbered just like parking your names with PPC. Local sites with content will always rank higher locally than any generic name.
It’s all about the local market now. Geo names are the way to go. People will put more trust in a local name than just a generic name. People want to buy local and not out of state.
Donny,
Just because something gets sold for more money doesn’t mean its going to mean more on your businesses bottom line. And if you look at the search volume, there’s a ton of people looking for car insurance online. Home owners insurance, not so much.
@ Donny
I agree with Sean Patrick because car insurance premiums while lower than heath insurance premiums actually misses the point.
The ultimate liability ensuing from car accidents can run into several thousands, depending on claims, injuries, damages etc…
Also I checked valuate.com and CarInsurance.com was valued at $35 Million and HomeInsurance.com valued at $4 Million , thats a huge valuation gap. I guess more people own cars than houses huh! Even though I never take appraisals seriously as they all contradict each other, I just thought it was interesting and probably explains why car insurance keywords command a much higher ppc.
Moniker.com DomainvermarkterForum, Hotel Sofitel Bayerpost Munich on September 2nd and 3rd, 201
lebensversicherungen.de = life insurance Guide 270.000 Euro
DID NOT SELL
Mainland European Insurance & Auto institutions are w-a-y behind the North American online models. This is where the bargain one /two word keywords com / country code brands possible = Turkey France Spain India (Hindi)
Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, made clear in his 2009 annual letter to shareholders that he is bullish on GEICO: “As we view GEICO’s current opportunities, Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere
Sean- Robert
Your average premium commission is around 700.00 a year just for 1 year on health. Car insurance only 250.00.
The only reason why car clicks are more is because you have more car insurance companies and less health insurance companies advertising. But that will all change in 2014. More competition is coming for health insurance and those type of clicks for health/medicare are rising fast.
It’s not about what the domain is worth it’s about what the insurance lead is worth because at the end the insurance agent is the one buying it. And in 2014 everyone will be required to have health insurance for the most part.
You will see a slow decline in these type of leads and ppc- It will all be based upon performance.
You only have a handful of names that are pure generic. Out of range for 99%.
But you have 400,000 insurance agents you can sell your local geo name to. So there is an opp to sell your local name for 5k to 10k.
Homeinsurance.com is an excellent buy. No many people advertise home insurance this guy has the market along with his geo’s
Donny,
If you’re going to tell me that health or home owners insurance is a better business to be in than car insurance, well I’m not going to bother arguing with you about it. (after the following, lol)
My cousins husband has a State Farm branch in Texas and I can tell you with 100% certainty that if he had to choose only one type of policy to write it would be for auto insurance. And the marketplace is the ultimate proving ground. If writing home owners policies was so lucrative there’s not a chance in hell that HomeOwnersInsurance.com would have sold for $600k compared to CarInsurance.com at $25Million let alone $50M (which is what it went for).
Additionally if you’re so bullish on health care domains / sites, I’ve got a site that’s doing about $40k a year on auto pilot. It’s all yours for $300k. Has great organic ranking and you literally just need to spend about $250 a month on top quality content, not $5 articles good content.
Moving off topic slightly… That’s the key to SEO, I know it gets beaten to death but its 100% true but content (mostly) is king. I contribute a blog over at http://www.DomainHoldings.com and soon will have it syndicated on my own site as well. MHB, I’ll be asking you to get a spot on your blog roll at some point : )
I’ll be sharing a lot of information with regard to SEO and best practices. Truthfully there really aren’t any secrets with regard to developing a site and getting it ranked. But there’s a ton of misinformation out there about how you can short cut things and think its going to fly.
And @ Robert with regard to CarOwnerInsurance.com, you could SEO it. But it’s a 2006′ reg date domain and its keyword match search volume is under 1,000 and if you came to me and said here’s $10k a month for 12 months please get this ranked, I’d help you buy another domain for $90k and then put $2,500 a month into that other domain. My point is, you’re wanting to compete in the arena of giants and the only way to do it (without spending an absolute fortune on SEO over 2+ years…. Bankaholic.com is a prime example) is to find a Tier 1 keyword matching domain.
Sean
If you think an agent that has 100 polices in force for auto makes more than an agent that has 100 polices for health insurance your crazy.
Auto aprox 25k in renewals a year
Health aprox 50k in renewals a year
It is about the search volume and cpc. Of course carinsurance is worth more more competition. But you don,t see geico selling home insurance do you. Less competition is in health and auto insurance.
That is why the cpc is lower. What I am saying is health will catch up because more players will be involved.
You mention that you can’t play with the big boys with the term car insurance, well that is why you go with florida car insurance or washington car insurance, those are geo names is which you can compete. The exact match it lower but it is a niche in which you can compete. You said it yourself you can’t compete with the big boys on the simple generic terms like car insurance.
You think kelsey would sell healthinsurance.com for 10 milllion , I doubt it.
Another thing you need to understand is that agents are not buying these 25 dollar clicks. Geico, progressive, 21st, unitran are the ones buying these.
You think that your local agent can afford a 25 dollar click. Do the math.
This is why local geo domain names will go up in value. That is all I am saying.
I think it is funny that you have a health insurance site that makes 40k a year on auto pilot. I thought no money existed in health care insurance(lol)
I
@Sean and @ Donny
I think you both have made some interesting points here.
Sean, I appreciate you kind feedback re carownerinsurance.com, certainly something to think about going forward.
The way I generally play the online game with a domain I think has potential, is to look for a clever point of organic entry and development through social media, as i am now doing with Leicestersquare.com, one of the most visited locations in the UK. With all the social tools available today, it is quite possible to come up with a creative way to create scale…
What i find interesting is the auto insurance market is massive and lucrative once you get to the point of critical mass. I’m going to openly share an example of what i mean here… check out Twiends.com for anyone who is interested in scaling through social media. You can steadily build a twitter following, facebook fan page following and most importantly get viral eyeballs to your website directly through twiends.com for a lot less than typical ppc.
Note, twiends.com is still quite new, however it’s already working wonders for one of my sites… I think i can do the same for CarOwnerInsurance.com once I figure out how it should work with whatever white label solution out there… just a hint. Sean let me know if you are aware of any auto insurance white label solutions.
Cheers!
@Sean..
How about setting CarOwnerinsurance.com as a group buying site for car insurance..lol! Just an idea of who almost any obvious domain can be potentially monetized. Hmmm… i just may want to do this!
Who would’nt want car insurance coupons? Guy’s check out GroupPrice.com, recently launched as a B2B groupon… looks interesting.