Got To Love This Business: Typo OnlineTelevison.com Just Sold For $2,206 At Bido.com
2010 April 22
You just got to love the domain business.
A typo domain name, OnlineTelevison.com just sold for $2,206 on Bido.com after 44 bids so there were at least 2 bidders battling it out.
The Bido price was only $28.
The domain has no Alexa or Compete ranking and even Word Tracker only counts 2 people searching a month for the misspell.
Congrats to the Seller.
Loading ...
@RL and @ snoopy
Wow – are you guys serious? No misrepresentation here.
The auction started at $28. That alone is a flag that the domain in question should be careful examined before bidding, especially when the estibot value shows $20K.
In addition, if the industry started to dispute transactions based on spelling, the conversion rate would fall to the point where no one would bid.
If the seller listed the item as online televison, but then proceeded to provide search or data about the online Television, that is misrepresentation.
Spelling is crucial to domains. WYSIWYG.
Now if the seller disclosed that this was a typo, he would be going the extra mile. And save alot of bidders like me some grief.
In no way did this seller, in my opinion, misrepresent.
‘Buyer beware’ is the basic rule with any auction.
(house, car, land, business, equipment, domain)
You want to start putting rules in place to totally protect a bidder?
There was no misrepresentation.
Do we know if the 2 bidders were confused?
Even so, what’s the big deal?
I can’t believe domain pro’s are suggesting they want to have
protection from a bad buy.
Maybe, the next time the 2 bidders will not use a small screen on a
smart phone to bid.
Mikey, thats funny.
We were both thinking along the same line of thought at the same time.
You beat me by a minute.
“Caveat emptor” No deception, no hiding, no fraud. What should happen is that BUYERS–the one’s putting their money at risk, are responsible for for making their own proper decisions and due diligence.
And you both be me by a minute as well. Oops!
I own vestbuy.ca I also own beastbuy.ca
I wrote a letter to BestBuy Inc asking if they wanted these domains to be transferred to them. All I asked for was the $7 bucks to transfer them.
They asked for a week to evaluate and then sent me a reply email, saying go ahead and keep them.
Now if I listed vestbuy.ca for sale, based on recents posts, I would have to refund the buyer due to mispelling, if the buyer though he or she was getting bestbuy, nestbuy, cestbuy or any other possibility.
I agree RL – that one should indicate upfront that this is a typo domain for sale.
My wife recently made on offer on a house. The home inspection showed a major defect in the foundation. The seller actually tried to hide the defect buy putting shelves, and toys near the affected area in the basement. To me that is misrepresentation or knowing something and not disclosing it. But can I ever prove that they tried to dupe us?
Buyer beware. There is no other alternative otherwise the domain industry will fall flat on its face.
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin
Great post guys…
PS – Good Luck out there
Mikey
Your comparison to buying a house to a domain is way off
Most states have clear laws requiring buyers to disclose any defects on houses, states generally have no such laws for the sale of say cars.
There were no representations made so there can’t be any misrepresentation.
The buyer didn’t make any statement on the domain or list anthing like “get one of the best names on the net” which you could then claim was misrepresentation.
Typo’s of Voyeur.com and mortgage.com have sold into the SIX figures at auction with all parties knowing that it was a missspell.
My opinion is the Seller did nothing wrong and it was a nice sale.
Good for him.
I agree. I was refering to @RL and @Snoopy who seem to think that the buyer should be entitled to a refund, as the seller or perhaps Bido was negligent in some manner
I agree – no misrepresentation whatsoever.
Anyone interested in buying misrepresentaton.com?
The question is one of reading words in their proper context. When technical words or phrases are made of, the strong presumption is that the seller intended to use them according to their correct technical meaning. In fact, we know that the seller knew his domain name was defective, as he failed to inspect the name prior to committing the name registration, and he achieved the undesirable result. He could reasonably expect that someone else can fall in a trap and anything of value he could get would be a compensation for his previous loss. He offered the defective name and he remained silent. And then I read that he has been congratulated many times for being successful in this sale. There was no warning for the typo, and it should be. Such warning would get attention of the “typosqatters” and not misslead the innocent buyers and unjustly enrich seller. See Wikipedia: “Typosquatting, relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users, should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to an alternative website (owned by a … cybersquatter)”… “Generally, there is no ambiguity to justify individuals and organizations to own these sites”. The Internet is global and anyone in the world, not just domain industry professionals (not just the tiny fraction of the speculators relying on the “misspelled names resale business model”) can land on the Bido’s auction site, see the value in the real name (without the defect), see the frenzy of bidders, get excited … and fall into a trap. There are many possible scenarios. I respectfully disagree that the seller should be congratulated.
RL,
That argument might hold if it was the average internet surfer who bought the domain.
However, the majority of the bidders on Namejet, Snapnames, Bido, etc
are part-time or full-time domainers.
Earlier today, I was watching a steel worker walk along a beam
8 inches wide 30 ft above the ground.
(You wouldn’t get me doing that.)
Do you really think he needs signs placed all around the work site saying -
“Watch your step”.
Never sold a typo,
Economically speaking, the owner of the misspelled domain name, which is not a well known name yet, can only is benefiting from the goodwill and the reputation of the owners of the domain name worth developing. A seller of this kind of domain name can be inferred to have registered, used, sold, misled some unsuspecting buyers, and unjustly profited from the sale of the domain name in bad faith. There are associated issues of potential negligence, misrepresentation and liabilities affecting sellers and auction site owners.
@RL
I am in agreeance with you. I own several prominent typos. Hoogle, Yaoho and more. I have not profited one cent from these domains, in fact, I have trouble giving them away.
To profit at someone else’s expense is wrong – especially when it is intentionally done.
The problem with domains is that there are so many possible typos that can be construed. Take in case the guy who is being sue by Microsoft for having 24 typo domains using the word hotmail.
Personally I feel he should pay the fine.
I do disagree however with the notion that this particular seller misrepresented his domain name. Buyer beware and like me, what you ultimately do with that domain could be construed as bad faith.
Mikey
@RL
After re-reading your posts… you actually have change my direction in this domain name game. My guess is that you have been in this industy for a long time, have learned a few hard lesssons and now have chosen the straight and narrow path and I do respect your approach, mannerism and etiquette in posts.
Congrats to you rather.
Mikey (idealideas),
Special thanks for your review, and thanks to all!
Thank you RL and Mikey for the comments. I appreciate the advice you have given me. I did not think selling my domain would create such a buzz. Anyways, another thing that is surprising me is when I found out today onlinetelevison.net, and .org are on sale on bido.com, well then again, I think it was predicatable.
@Dzinerfusion
Yes – I saw this too. I watched for a bit hoping that no one would bid too high as in my opinion, this was simply auctioned in hopes of reaping profits. The seller actually registered the domain a few days ago, presuming to repeat your success.
Take care and I hope all goes well in domain land
Mikey
Looks like the .net did get a bidder and the .co.uk is now in the mix as well. I did post warning to potential bidders of the typo but too late for the .net bidder(s) Will watch as the .net auctions tomorrow.