Domain investor Brian Wick has sold the domain name, Minus.com for $115,000.
Brian said he acquired the domain in January 2007 at a Network Solution pre-drop auction for $8,100.
So basically a 15x return in just 4 years, in a horrible economy.
The buyer according to Mr. Wick is the buyer is a “math educational non-profit startup” but the whois record has the domain under privacy.
In any event its a nice price for that domain and a hell of a return.
Congrats to the Brian and the Buyer.
Hi,
A “Plus” 😉
Very nice indeed!
Peace!
‘D’
Awesome sale! Congratulations!
He really “multiplied” his investment.
so, a “math educational non-profit startup” starts its “non-profit” activity burning $115k only to buy a domain?
it looks like they are not so expert in “non-profit” … or in math … 🙂
Very nice ROI, indeed. This is why I hang on for decent returns on solid keyword names.
Great story, good for him.
nice sale indeed…he got very lucky…
you non-domainers out there reading this need to know that:
this does NOT happen on every domain name…you probably will not even get your investment money back on a domain name these days…
so dont go registering BS domains and thinking that you will hold on to that BS domain and flip it for double the price a year later…NOT going to happen unless you get very very lucky!
good luck!
unfortunately in the .com space
for every one of these there is probably
250 people who are losing money like me
I paid $10,000 for 1200 .com domains and sold, drum roll please,
zip
so this year I am dropping half these at least.
It’s a big casino
you here the cha-chings of the casino, but what you don’t hear are hundreds of people quietly losing their shirt.
Congrats Brian. However it happened-luck…sales savvy…some combo…enjoy it.
Oh…and do it again!
@Robert Cline:
Plenty of days I wake up feeling like you. Been at it for 5 years now.Have made an avg. of 2 sales a year.Made NONE in 2010…then 3 this year.No homeruns.(6-7 figures)…just solid singles off the infield.(low mid 4 figures).That may be more torturous than making no sales at all…because you get a little taste.Just enough to make you think “THE BIG SALE” is right around the corner.While I’m not giving up just yet-my eye is wandering for some way to diversify that has similarly low barrier to entry.Hang tough fella.
Robert,
I can see now why you rave on about .com. Somehow though I don’t think the solution is registering a whole lot of .co’s. I think you’ll just be adding to losses with that strategy.
Score, Brian!
That’s a very positive sale from a negative domain and you made out far better than even = $$$,$$$ Great sale 😉
Congrats Brian, very well done 🙂
Well done Brian!
-Peter
We create our own “Luck” in our domain business by continually diversifying our revenue sources – in my case businesses at CheapHomes.com, CheapLawyers.com and CheapDrugs.com – CheapApartments.com(August 2011) and CapitolHill.com(end of 2011) – so we don’t have to sell a domain for a lower number.
According to this thread – it appears as if I did not leave too much on the table – thanks
Great profit on that one and a great buy in 2007. Congrats to the seller!
nice going brian!
@anunt: unfortunately it is that mistaken belief that today drives a large part of the “domain business”. it creates a pool of buyers who only buy with the intent to resell. and there are some who have based (i.e. expanded) their business around that pool. $69 minus $8 equals…
He could’ve spent that 8K registering .mobis, “3d Domains”, .co’s or whatever the domainer cash-furnace-du-jour that the newbies are shoveling their money in to… but instead, he chose to spend wisely.
There’s dumb luck, then there’s luck that results from carefully planning for a statistically favorable expectation, over time. This wasn’t dumb luck.
Nice sale.
@LS Morgan
you are dumb shit.
yeah like you can pick and predict the next lotto numbers
these forums and threads need to have stories of people losing money.
I want to see stories here headlined, “Another 300 people lose over $10,000 this month”
I guarantee you for every lotto winner there are 1000s of people losing money; unfortunately, silently, because all these stories are all one sided, choosing only to show the lotto winners.
Great sale.
I look at it this way – instead of spending thousands of dollars on mid-to-semi-ok names, I’d spend 5 figures on one .com name and develop it. Not only does it save you a lot of money, but if you’re consistent about the project you’re up for a win/win situation.
“I want to see stories here headlined, “Another 300 people lose over $10,000 this month”
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Robert, that is *your story*.
Now most people do lose in domains but those people usually move onto something else, something they are good at hopefully, that is life. Can’t blame an extension for their mistakes.
To put in in perspective why would you even spend $10k on reg fees without making a sale? That makes no sense.
Seed Co. launches their corporate website.
http://www.seedco.co/
Domain name COLD COLD COLD!
Sell domain NOW!
Must act FAST before time run out!
People LOSE MONEY on domain name!
I spend tens of thousand registering domain. I lose all the money!
I buy ping-pong table.
That how I occupy time now. Play ping pong against wall.
Soon, I be world famous ping pong player and will LAUGH at domainer!
Ping Pong HOT HOT!
PING PONG SOON TO REPLACE FOOTBALL IN UNITED STATES!
Ping Pong MORE POPULAR than basketball, baseball and hockey COMBINED!
Must act fast before time run out! No ping-pong table to be had!
Ping Pong the FUTURE!
Robert
In everything in life there are winners and losers, stockmarket, commodities markets, housing, domain investing.
Its called domain investing because like all other investing like those mentioned above you have to do you research, understand the market and make good decisions.
If you do that consistently month after month year after year like Brian has for many years you invest your money wisely in quality domains that are under valued.
Also you take your losses, not carry them on the books forever.
While timing and some luck is important
domaining is not the lottery.
You don’t buy a domain hoping to hit the lottery when someone comes calling and offers a lot of money for a crappy domain.
That is not how you run a business.
You invest in a domain you know is worth, or will be worth a lot more than your paying for it in the coming years.
You don’t buy a domain and pray.
I think this would make a good post on its own
Mhb,
I think that is an excellent post. Buying reg fee names is one of the highest risk ways to invest in names, especially for beginners because despite people’s best intentions the vast majority of those names will never sell.
@MHB
I do appreciate your posts.
You are one of the more intelligent posters here.
One thing is that most people, me included, feel that we missed the .com
The thing I like about the .Co s are that it is very easy on the eyes and it looks good, even better than the .com s in my opinion because it is for businesses and can mean Company, Corporation, Commerical, etc. This is one of the reasons why I think .Co s are going to skyrocket.
Many people, me included, missed the .com s and the .Co s are a great opportunity to invest right now IMHO.
I was able to renew 2/3 of my .Co s before time ran out last night for the 1and1 promotions.
Do you know of any current or upcoming .Co renewal promotions right now for this month. I have 3 weeks basically to find a home for my remaining 1/3 of my .Co s. You mentioned that there was a .Co renewal promotion that was going to be coming out, I think, the beginning of this week. If you do, can you let us know here, because I am in desperate need of renewal promotion pricing. Every dollar at this point counts.
If I can get a .Co renewal promotion, I have a big news I would like to share with everyone on this board that is as big of a news as this thread story has been.
Stay tuned.
Robert
With all due respect how can you say you “missed the .com’s” when I’m still registering dropping .com’s and bidding in drop .com auctions?
Brian sold a name he bought 4 years ago not 20 years ago
In 4 years you will be reading about domain people bought this year for $8K which will sell for $115K.
I missed the chance to register domains like toys.com for $70 too but the opportunity to obtain a good .com is still there today, right now, you just have to make a wise decision and invest in the right property at the right price
@MHB
ok, I get you, so what do you think about, for example,
CheapLobsters.com
I dropped this earlier this week. Now someone else owns it. Do you think this domain name has any value?
I dropped it because no one offered to buy it for the whole last year.
Robert
I like cheaplobster.com better
But your whole philosophy my friend is off.
You don’t register or buy a domain with thoughts of I’m going to sell it in the next year or drop it
I personally figure on holding a domain 5 years anytime I acquire one.
If your business plan is a one hold for one year and if it doesn’t sell I drop it, is not a good business plan in my book
Robert
“”You mentioned that there was a .Co renewal promotion that was going to be coming out, I think, the beginning of this week. “”
I don’t think I did.
Actually I don’t think I wrote a story on .Co for a few weeks now
I don’t know of any and not heard about any renewal promotions.
Hate to tell you but I was told by the registry there would be no promotions coming out for renewal period on their end, but registrars are always free to charge what they want.
Robert
You also may want to check out:
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-newbie-parlayed-45k-investment-into.html
my money is in ping pong domains.
3d ping pong domains.
3d ping pong .co domains.
shorter than com.
i’m also collecting pong ping domains because i think they’re cool. you know, pong like the 80’s game.
also i’ve cornered the market on ding gong domains (in case anyone mistypes ping pong).
i will not sell for less than what i deserve!
price going up, up, up!
shall i post my awesome list of ping pong domains so you can tell me what you think??
i’m a domainer. yippee!
There is a pretty stiff curve to this game; we all went through it. In the year 2011, staying black in domain speculating requires quite a bit of talent and naturally, some people are more talented at it than others. Some people will succeed big, others moderately, others barely, some people just completely lack the needed talent and will eventually move on.
It’s all made much more difficult since the ‘industry’ is so heavily contaminated by shitty advice, liars, groupthink, zero-credibility bloggers, motivated industry entities that profit from the large-scale poor decisions made by new domainers, etc.
“Profitable Domainer” is a pretty unusual intelligence type- where one can look at a word and from that alone, infer a much broader and deeper meaning, how it all relates to certain parties who might want to buy it. It’s just so much more than the adwords keyword tool and search volume. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there are a lot of lawyers in domaining. That same kind of right brained, qualitative, ‘street wise’ salesman intelligence comes from the same gray matter that innately and intuitively comprehends a good domain name.
Clay Aiken.
If you immediately knew he was gay, you stand a chance at understanding the intangible stuff that goes into a good domain name. If you needed to wait for the official announcement, this game isn’t for you.
“I dropped it because no one offered to buy it for the whole last year.”
////////////////////
The average name that is worth something won’t get an offer every year. Even highly valuable names rarely get more than a few inquiries a year unless they are being actively marketed. If it does get multiple inquires each year without marketing that is a red hot name in my view. Many domain sellers (like buydomains) sell about 1% of inventory a year, so that is 50 years to sell the “average” name.
The key thing is to look at things on a portfolio basis, what revenue did the portfolio generate last year and how does that compare to holding costs, that is the first consideration, it gives an answer to whether the portfolio is worth anything in your hands. Then it will require some judgement calls on what to keep and what to drop based on sales, knowledge, stats etc.
But if domainers dropped a name because it got no offers in a year then even the better domainers wouldn’t own much, and they wouldn’t make much money either.
Robert Cline,
When you announced a link to the seedco.co launch did you check with the http://www.seedco.com people to see how their traffic increased due to any advertising of that launch?
Way to go Brian … Great sale.
I don’t believe the true buyer was a non-profit. It’s far more likely that the buyer was the current owner of min.us, who is trading up to minus.com. Here’s the reasoning:
(1) in the WHOIS history of minus.com, it showed a “Yujun Sheng” with a phone number of 1.7184595589 on June 28:
http://www.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/?page=details&domain=minus.com&date=2011-06-28
(2) if you Google that phone number, you’ll find a reference to Cirtex.com:
http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/donations/2009-April/003838.html
(3) the WHOIS history of min.us shows a reference to Cirtex.com:
http://www.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/?page=details&domain=min.us&date=2010-09-25
(4) the co-founder of Minus, namely John Xie, from that WHOIS history of min.us, has a LinkedIn profile that shows him as President of Cirtex:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnxie
(5) they have a TM application for “minus”, see:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=85176794
So, folks shouldn’t be so gullible as to buy the story of the “non-profit” or “college student”, etc. these days. They’re #2 in a search for “minus” in Google, using the min.us domain, so it shouldn’t have been hard to realize they were interested.
@George Kirikos
We concluded the same Min.us liklihood as well – if that is the case a pretty good indication of how non-brandable non.com’s are.
Aslo Budgets can be pulled and you end up with nothing – in this case we feel we got 90% of the grail by being practical – and not being greedy.
And as far as the non-profit, startup stroke – your point should be taken well and serious by all of us.
Go figure the kind of non-profit shoestring startup nonsense in my little world is being thrown out for Carville.com, Allred.com and MCloud.com( instead of whatever company starts with “M” that is into cloud computing)
Glad it worked out for you, Brian. Folks that are less experienced or less savvy might have been fooled by them.
Maybe Mike should start a new thread/article about “stories” that buyers invent, to try to get a deal? 🙂
Registering a good domain is like get a treasure. When selling at a high price, it’s just like hitting a lottery.
From DomainNameWire –
“The seller originally stated that the buyer was a “math educational non-profit startup” according to the story on The Domains, but if that’s the impression he was under then he got spun a web of bull. Minus.com is a file sharing service for social networks.”
There is no honor in coming up with a BS story and lying to acquire a domain. The buyer should be ashamed of themselves.
I am so sick of people having no problem openly lying for personal gain.
Brad
“There is no honor in coming up with a BS story and lying to acquire a domain. The buyer should be ashamed of themselves.
I am so sick of people having no problem openly lying for personal gain.”
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@Brad,
A big buyer like that is not going to tell the domainer owner what they are going to do with the name for the simple reason that domain owners often like thinking up different pricing depending on who the buyer is. I like doing this as well but it doesn’t mean buyers should just go along with it.
Nothing wrong with what they have done in my view. If someone approaches me and tells me they are a college student and it ends out being Microsoft I don’t care. I may not believe it or take them very seriously but I don’t really care, it is all part of negotiating.
The only reason why this would effect a seller is if they are pricing according to the buyer rather than according to the name so the game starts with sellers and buyers respond to that game. Imagine if you went into the furniture store and they told you everything was priced according to your occupation?
@ Snoop
No one forced them to disclose their plans. Instead, they decided to lie about their uses. That is their choice.
I think that is a shady practice and I would not want anything to do with a company that is so cavalier about lying.
I have had plenty of people contact me with BS stories. If someone openly tells you their plans for a domain, it is almost always a lie.
Brad
“No one forced them to disclose their plans. Instead, they decided to lie about their uses. That is their choice.”
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@ Brad – It is quite possible that the domainer did by asking or not giving out a price right from the start.
“I think that is a shady practice and I would not want anything to do with a company that is so cavalier about lying.
I have had plenty of people contact me with BS stories. If someone openly tells you their plans for a domain, it is almost always a lie.”
//////////
@ Brad – So when someone approaches you and tells you their plans for acquiring a domain you almost always refuse to deal with them do you?
@ Snoop
Sure. If I have caught someone in a lie, many times I have refused to deal with them.
I have also never tried to acquire a domain through these tactics.
I guess it just comes down to ethics.
I would rather fail legitimately, then succeed by being a lying @sshole I guess.
Brad
“Sure. If I have caught someone in a lie, many times I have refused to deal with them.”
////////////
Brad, that wasn’t the question. You said you wouldn’t deal with a buyer who lies to you but also that most people who tell you a reason for buying a domain are lying. What I am asking is that in most cases do you break off negotiations because you think they are lying?
@ Snoop.
I said this –
“If someone openly tells you their plans for a domain, it is almost always a lie.”
I have found that to be the case over thousands of total inquiries.
I will never ask anyone their plans for a domain, as it puts them on the spot and is a bad negotiating tactic.
So, when someone just openly explains their use it is almost always BS.
So I guess the answer to your question is yes. I have refused to deal with people that I thought were full of BS many times in the past.
I would not feed BS to someone else, so I don’t appreciate it when they feed it to me.
Brad
Any person in this business knows that most inquiries are tire kickers full of B.S.
The smart ones know that the price is the same whether the end user is a girl scout troop or a major corporation.
Our research was the same as George Kirikos – but the fundamentals of the sale did not change – college student, startup, girl scouts, non-profit or fortune 1000 company.
We found it entertaining that a 24 year old guy could wing around over $100K as “grant money” from Japan /US – the dead give away was they could not wait to buy more domains from me as soon as this one went thru – that is when they had around 50 on the table and I was getting my jollies off the brand new bidet Roy Flanders (DotComCatalog) had just sent me.
At the end of the day – these guys mayby had probably 10 – 20 – but being greedy and ending up with nothing was not my objective in a deal that took several months – and as MHB points out a 15x return
Fundamentals of Real Estate 101 – if you can reinvest money on the table into another property at 50 cents on the dollar – i will not trip over a nickel trying to save a penny – ANd I did not trip.
“Fundamentals of Real Estate 101 – if you can reinvest money on the table into another property at 50 cents on the dollar – i will not trip over a nickel trying to save a penny – ANd I did not trip.”
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It is an excellent price for the name, no doubt about it.