"If they had wanted $5 million, I would have done it in a blink of an eye."

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/07/05/google-yahoo-pets-ent-manage-cx_ll_0705tabibi.html
[[.....]]
Entrepreneurs

Meet Noah Of The Internet
Lisa LaMotta, 07.05.07, 12:15 PM ET

Alex Tabibi’s business card features a dog, a horse, a bird, a ferret and a fish.

Call Tabibi, a former oncologist, the Noah of the Internet. His ark: a burgeoning online catalogue empire called UnRealEstate. Formed in 2002 with his brother Carlo, the company sells a slew of products through a collection of sites with generic yet specific URLs
--such as Bird.com and Ferret.com
--and splits the revenues with product suppliers.
[[.....]]
Snatch up the most-searched Web addresses in the right markets
--specifically, those with a younger, Web-savvy customer base and no clear leader serving their needs
--and you can't help but make money,
he says.
[[.....]]
A big key to this strategy is buying those Web addresses.
Staked with capital from a family real estate business in Los Angeles,
the Tabibi brothers bought their first URL
--Dog.com--for $500,000.
UnRealEstate now includes
Bird.com,
Fish.com,
Ferret.com,
Horse.com,
Bike.com,
Garden.com,
Wind.com and
Solar.com, among other names.
(Construction-equipment giant Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people ) wouldn't part with Cat.com.)

Some of the URLs cost just a few thousand dollars;
others, such as Fish.com, set Tabibi back about $1 million.
Two weeks ago, at a URL auction in Manhattan, he paid $95,000 for Fountain.com
--a good fit, he thinks, to go with his Garden.com and Greenhouse.com sites.
(The synergies between things like ferrets and fish are less clear;
any operating scale comes from sharing information technology functions like data warehousing
and search algorithms.)
Related Links:
The Most Expensive Web Addresses
Master The Domain Name Game
Marching Up The Search Stack
[[.....]]
While Tabibi admits bidding on URLs is as much art as science,
he and other masters of their domains do have a few strategic guidelines.

First,
and most obvious,
he wants names that are easily found by
Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ),
Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and other online search engines.

Next,
he looks for the singular form of a word--like Bike.com instead of Bikes.com.

Length is important too:
Even though a Web address can be 63 characters long,
people don't tend to remember or type in snake-length names.

Another variable is whether the name is a single word or a phrase.
Single words are worth more
-- Garden.com, for example,
will come up in searches for
garden,
garden tool,
garden hose,
garden tractors,
garden furniture and so forth,
making it more valuable than any one of those phrases.
"A simple name change can change conversion rates
dramatically,"
says Tabibi.
[[.....]]
"We got something for $150,000," says Tabibi, barely suppressing a chuckle.
"If they had wanted $5 million,
I would have done it in a blink of an eye."
[[.....]]

geodomain-prices-Macau.com

http://frankschilling.com/
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/macaucom_sale_f.html
[[.....]]

June 14, 2007
Macau.com Sale .. Flipped by Buyer?

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-13-2007/0004607160&EDATE=

Probably for millions too.

Joe sends link:
"Recall it was sold for $550k last year. I follow Macau pretty closely, and i can tell you that the group that bought it last year added little value in my opinion. As far as i can tell, they basically threw up some content that mostly came from the Macau tourism site, and added a third party hotel engine.
GoMacau.com seemed like
it had more orginial content
and was a much better site,
but of course didnt have the killer generic or the google ranking.
Now they do.
Would love to see how much they paid."
[[[[[[[[[ 'the edittor notes : :::::
its[it's] GoMacau.com who bought Macau.com in this case
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

Me too Joe! This looks like the classic flipper-upper.

I remember
back in 2000 when LasVegas.com sold for 1 million in cash before the bubble popped..
Then in 2006 it resold for 5million..
then
Vegas.com got recapitalized or sold for some 8 figure sum.
Names like these are absolutely priceless.

Macau.com is probably the biggest opportunity
any well funded domainer has missed in the last 5 years.
That name is going to be worth 10-15 million soon if it isn't already.
More in future.
It's the hotel reservations. Lead prices are astronomical.
Then there's the B Factor.
Huge huge on a name like this...
Sigh, cest la vie.

Posted at 09:57 PM in Domain Names (Domains) Permalink

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Comments

These guys should have paid...double what it sold for.
Melco PBL Entertainment (Macau) Limited
(MPEL) Stock Symbol
Just open one of the most exclusive Casinos in Macau and have two more Casinos in the works.
Peace,Dan

***FS***
I'm feeling sick to my stomach.. and it's not the Ceviche I had earlier :)

Posted by: Dan June 14, 2007 at 10:03 PM

[[.....]]

... also remember that Macau.com was only regged in 2002,
according to the story that came out when it first sold for 550k.
The original owner is probably kicking himself (at least a little)
[[[[[[[[[ 'the edittor notes : :::::
i.e.
Macau.com should have been let expired @round 2002
or even earlier by its originnal owner[s]
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

Posted by: Robb June 15, 2007 at 01:11 AM

[[.....]]

geodomain-prices

http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=280
[[.....]]
Rick Schwartz On Selling
Published July 5, 2007 in Domain Names.
[[.....]]

Steve Morsa
Jul 5th, 2007 at 10:53 am

Sahar,
Two quick personal examples I can give that also supports not selling unless you’ve got somewhere even better to put the proceeds to work:

A couple of years ago,
I had
a variable (1-3 year term w/increasing yearly strike prices) lease-option agreement to sell
the prime geo domain for my own home Conejo Valley community, ConejoValley.com, for;
if you can believe this;
less than $20k
(which I thought would be a great 2 year return since I’d picked it up on a hand reg for $25 or so).

Today; after watching sales like
[-] Branson.com going for $1 million and
[-] the owners of PalmSprings.com turning down a reported $5 mill for their operating site domain name,
I wouldn’t today let ConejoValley.com go for less than $250k
…and am thinking now of developing it myself, in which case I probably wouldn’t sell it at (most) any price.

[[.....]]

my 2p

following's my own 3-penny 4[for]
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/warren-buffet-q.html
+
http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=280

>oyes , My Dear Sir Sahar's right ,
>in 2003 or 2004 i sold
>2s[.com] +
>2z +
>2p for just only USD 5.000 a pop via AfterNic ,
>i knew that 2[too] clearly
>they being sold out 2[too] cheap !!
>but ,
>by then ,
>i did also know
>then[@-that-time]
>there were also a bunch of Indian-related generic domains
>being4sale[being-for-sale] ,
>thence ,
>i had n'o[no] 2nd thought
>n[and] forced by myself 2[to] sell out
>2z n[and] 2s n[and] 2p instantly ,
>particularrly ,
>2p[.com] ,
>its[it's] quite much about p2p ,
>but ,
>even
>by then , from 'the[that] very first moment ,
>i knew it also clearly that
>my decision's destined2b[destined-to-be]
>right , right4ever
>
>ThANKs2w

its[it's] 2[too] hard 4me2quote[for-me-to-quote] anything from
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/warren-buffet-q.html
or
http://www.conceptualist.com/?p=280 ,
indeed
indeep ,
each-n-every phrase therein 's a jewellery by itself ,
not just true 2b[to-be] must-read
4[for] domain investment , but also true
4[for] -e-a-c-h- investment