MostWantedDomains.com Brokers The Sale Of Meet.Me For A World Record Price Of $450,000
I’m proud to announce that MostWantedDomains.com has successfully brokered the sale of the domain name Meet.Me for $450,000 in what we believe is a world record price for a .Me domain name.
The Domain was jointly owned by My company, Worldwide Media, Inc., Rick Schwartz and Ammar Kubba.
The domain name was acquired at the silent portion of a TRAFFIC auction for $5,890 back just over three years ago.
The domain will become the 7th highest sale of the year on DnJournal.com YTD chart and the 3rd highest non-.com sale of the year.
Beyond the money, there are some other important takeaways from the sale.
1. It’s a recent transaction.
Some of us older domainers (and it pretty hard to find domainers older than myself and Rick, although it should be noted that Rick is MUCH older) get tired of hearing that we are only successful because we got started back in the day, usually meaning the mid to late 1990′s and are riding out all of those hand registered domains all these years later.
Here is a domain that was purchased just a few years ago in an auction opened to all and for a pretty modest sum.
I believe there was only one other bidder in this auction and the reserve was set at $5K.
The domain name was bought from the Registry who at the same auction sold date.me and marry.me which we as a group also purchased.
As a personal note being involved in a sale with Mr. Schwartz is quite an education even for an old domainer like myself and the power of the word “no” that Rick frequently chats about cannot be underestimated.
2. The buyer is a big boy
There is another line of reasoning that I see in many comments that buyers of a non-com are uninformed or simply can’t afford the .com.
They buyer is a public company and owned the matching .com meetme.com but still felt it important enough, $450,000 important enough, to get the matching .me domain.
In actuality the buyer got a great deal.
With this .com they have locked up the space and is in a position to take there online conferencing business to the next level.
3. The bar has been raised on .Me domain name values, especially the domains with verbs, call to action type of domains as well as other bang on domain in other right of the dot extensions other than .com.
I have spoken about the expansion of the domain space for a few years and people have accused me on on other blogs & forums that I’m shilling for new extensions.
I guess they have ignored that I have actually invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, putting my money where my mouth is.
The only reason we sold the domain at this level was to raise the bar on valuations of other .Me domain names which we jointly and individually own.
Of course it also raises the value of .Me domains owned by a lot of domain investors.
Great domains for the extension, just got a huge boost.
No it doesn’t make a crappy .Me worth more but domain names like date.me, marry.me, love.me that we own jointly as well as domains I own like use.me and text.me are worth more now.
Yes I see opportunities in the right of the dot extensions.
At the most recent TRAFFIC Conference auction we once again were a buyer of a new extension this time .XXX.
Don’t be surprised to see a similar story to this one in a few years announcing the sale of one of those domain names.
Yesterday we saw a .ly sell for $100K
The domain space has an is going to continue to expand.
It’s just not a 100% .com world any more.
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Holy crap, that is an amazing sale. Sweeeet
Congrats to you all
TLD
The company that purchased the domain is not called meetme.com they just own the domain.
In general as a domain holder it would serve you well to know as much about the person/company inquiring or who is most likely to be inquiring about your domain as you can.
Brian/Todaro
Domain names are by nature all about marketing.
Did you see this story also from today:
“”"Any.DO is backed by $1 million in angel funding from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Blumberg Capital, Genesis Partners, Palantir (Joe Lonsdale), Felicis Ventures (Aydin Senkut) and Brian Koo and includes Erick Tseng, head of mobile products at Facebook, and Elad Gil, Director of Corporate Strategy at Twitter, as advisors.”"
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/10/any-do-launches-a-social-to-do-list-app-with-1-million-in-funding/
The thing is that you seem to want to ignore is that the market values marketable domains whether or not then end in .com.
When I say the market I’m talking about the bigger picture, the VC money, public company’s money, big money.
Look not only at the money but the people backing the any.do
not suckers
All have made 1000X’s more than all of us will ever make
Combined
So if you want to save your money and buy more “grilled cheese sandwiches” please do.
The domain name game like any other business, industry and investment is in constant change.
Adapt
They are throwing millions into marketable domains.
You can ignore all of it, hell better off for me if you guys do.
However as long as I blog I’m going to give the best advice as I can.
I started this thing to give back to the domain community.
Now I’m making a few bucks in ads but I’m not doing it for the ad revenue
Mike, Ammar, Rick – Congrats on the sale. Definitely a strong play for the .me space.
my prediction
.com will be dead ext. in a few years
I remember
just 2 years ago
when country code tld was a rare oddity.
maybe 1 or couple sales reported.
now they make up more than half the sales.
I believe .com was a mistake from the beginning and people are
only beginning to realize this.
.Co
is the upgrade that people are making now.
no one ever meant to say mystore.commercial
everyone meant to say mystore.company
besides company is searched 20x times more than commercial.
Congrats Mike, Ammar and Rick!
It’s always great news to see the domain market expand with solid sales like these.
Aggro:
It’s Castello, not Costello, punk
@Michael,
“Domain names are by nature all about marketing”
You are 100% correct – but .com’s also are about one small additional thing – called “Brand” – that is my only claim – regardless, that kind of sale is very huge news for all domain investors.
@David – missed you and your brother Michael at the TRAFFIC show this year.
BTW – When you wake up every day do you open up a little note pad window that says:
“It’s Castello, not Costello, punk”
Brian
and its my point that we aren’t the one’s who decides what is valuable or marketable
That is the big money guys and you can see that for them all things that make sense are on the table
Congrats on the sale. Well done!
@Michael,
Here comes the broken record again – I am just a realist – I do not make the rules – I play by them ….
How many UDRP and ACPA cases have there been where the TM Holder goes after a non.com when they do NOT own the .com already – very few, in fact Switch.net appears to one of those rare few.
All the countless millions of dollars of venture money collectively does not even represent a fraction of the cost involved in overturning how the consumer has been programmed by lawyers, courts, ACPA and UDRP that the .com is the only one on the shelf.
My opinion is worthless – its the courts opinions that are gold.
A $450K sale is huge – but my reality check says much more the exception than reality
Big Congrats!
Awesome job
Rick , mike would love more discussion on negotiations process.
Congratulations
Just wondering… When you arrive at the post tax cut, how does the sale stack up relative to your entire investment in the .me extension?
I’d imagine you guys are well to the black, but has .me roci outperformed, relative to the same amount invested in a random basket of premium .com?
Brian
Actually as someone that gets the email everyday there are quite a few UDRP filed on non.com’s
this weeks decisions include
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DLI2011-0001
swiss-casino.li
swisscasino.li
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DAU2011-0021
pelican.com.au
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2011-1416
oakleys.uk.com
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2011-1413
legostarwarsvideogame.info
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DME2011-0008
marie-claire.me
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DCH2011-0016
jako.ch
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2011-1545
almaylipstick.net
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2011-1512
bankamatik.net
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2011-1322
ibarclays.info
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DPH2011-0005
youtube.com.ph
> Transfer
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=DNL2011-0058
scotchsoda.nl
> Transfer
LS
This sale represents about 4x more our entire investment in the .Me space.
That’s pretty awesome.
Goes to show that quality is what pays.
@ Robert Cline
Please stay on topic.
This post has everything to do with the sale of Meet.me, and nothing to do with .CO
Brad
so cool. I bought several .me’s including vegans.me, rubs.me and cashloan.me along with several others.
@Michael,
You have reinforced the reality I am emphasising – tm holders go after the stray non.com or variants to protect the marketing of their .com brand – with the reverse rarely occuring:
SwissCasion.li – Complainant already owns SwissCasino.com
Pelican.com.au – Complainant already owns Pelican.com
Oakleys.uk.com – Complainant already owns Oakleys.com
legostarwarsvideogame.info – Complainant already owns Lego.com
marie-claire.me – Complainant already owns MarieClaire.com
almaylipstick.net – Complainant already owns Almay.com
ibarclays.info – Complainant already owns Barclays.com
youtube.com.ph – Complainant already owns YouTube.com
The only one that could be an exception is:
bankamatik.net
and something they are going after bankamatik.com next.
As far as the generics :
scotchsoda.nl – What Scotch & Soda carries a TM in UDRP ?
jako.ch – looks like Heinz JAKOwitsch owns Jako.com
Is it all cash?
Congrats!
@professionaldomains
This is the point of the exception vs. reality.
Regularily you here someone say “Meet Me” at 5pm or whatever.
But no one says “Rubs Me” and CashLoans Me” – no offense but your email provides concrete eveidence that .ME is unbelievably limited. When someone sees “Meet.Me” on a billboard – they will type in:
Meet.Me.Com
or
MeetMe.com
And as far as our friend R.cOBERT .CoLINE – compete site analytics does not provide very conclusive evidence of the success of .co – in fact horribly dissappointing.
This is a huge sale in the non.com – do not get me wrong – its the followers the read this stuff that will get smoked.
Josh
All cash and in the bank
Excellent, with todays economy and markets, cash is king… or gold but you follow me heehee
Josh
couldn’t agree more
cashisking.com
Lol! You own that domain!
one way to look at this is the .me is simply a “domain hack” (as that term is defined by the nerds) on a .com they own. but unlike many domain hacks it separates cleanly on word boundaries and maybe that’s worth something.
maybe the idea that the dots might start shifting right or left in the user’s mind if new gtld’s become reality is a factor in this decision to buy a .me?
the buyer is in the conference business. were they represented at the recent palm springs conference mhb attended?
this buyer owns plenty of generic names. they do not have all their eggs in the tm basket by any stretch.
and let’s say domain hacks might be appealing to this buyer. so you do a diligent search in the tm databases and elsewhere and nothing turns up.
confpl.us is available.
“world record”?
how do we know there’s not an unreported sale that surpasses this?
it might be hard for some web fanatics to believe but there’s a lot that goes on in the world that is not documented anywhere on the web. not to mention there is a lot of non-english content to be accounted for. and it will probably be that way for many more decades to come.
“(english-speaking) web record” is probably more accurate.
Congratulations on the sale
Nice sale! And congrats to Michael Berkens,
Rick Schwartz, Ammar Kubba and buyer!
Nice sale! And congrats to Michael Berkens,
Rick Schwartz, Ammar Kubba and buyer!
the fact of the matter is
there has/is been plethora of signs/evidence that
cctlds have/is been exploding.
just this week we see sales like:
BEK.Co $1500 SEDO
UND.Co $900 SEDO
news just out today
Founder Institute Rebrands to FI.CO
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/11/prweb8947608.htm
If you want to follow what you see in your rear view mirror you profess .com is the coming of the anti-christ
If you want to look make money as a domain investor, you start looking at the right of the dot.
this is where 99% of the money will be, especially I dare mention
.Co
Mike,
What is the problem with being lucky? In the final analysis, we are all lucky or unlucky in one form or another. If someone is kind enough to say that we are lucky, we should just say thank you. I’d say having a little bit of luck really helps in this domain business. Maybe more so than most.
Domain sales and records are based on reported sales.
Ron Jackson has been the “official record keeper of domain sales”
In his own words:
“”"Including sales for which the actual price in unknown, someone’s best guess, results from a ouija board, fortune cookie, divining rod, etc. would make any ranking of sales meaningless. These big sales for which the actual price is unknown are widely publicized so people know they occurred, but if they are not announced publicly they can’t be included in rankings of publicly announced sales.”"
@Poor Uncle
I my world no one is lucky – we all create our own luck.
Life is not about winning – it is all about mitigating our losses – i.e. policing our territory – and there is a lot of policing in the domain investing business.
Success is based solely on limiting your exposure
a
fuc*in bomb blew up in many
readers here
today.
This is the kind of shock and awe that
shake you to the core and make you do
a 180 degree turn.
This is the kind of shake up
that makes you look at
the right of the dot
There are domain hacks, and there are catchy jingly domain names. The differences is, among other things, in price.
For more formal definition, see http://brands-and-jingles.com/glossary/
@MHB
don’t know if it matters but you may want to inform your friends at Meet.Me or MeetMe.com, that doing a whois on domain tools says that MeetMe.com is still for sale, at Sedo (and of course the same searching sedo), and when I went to http://www.meetme.com in my browser it tried to take me to a moniker marketplace auction for the domain although the page never seemed to finish loading. I’m guessing it’s not really for sale.
I’d say having a little bit of luck really helps in this domain business. Maybe more so than most.
—————
This sale didn’t come from luck. They deliberately positioned themselves to own this domain, anticipating that this exact outcome may occur.
I’ll pull a number out of my ass and guess there are probably 100-200 words that, when coupled with a .me, make for an intuitive brand. This was one of them. Meet.me, see.me, kiss.me, date.me, love.me, fuck.me,… These are the kinds of names they bought, while domain forum denizens spend their money on InterestOnlyMortgageRefinancing.me and wonder why they aren’t making any money.
What happened to MHB, did he get promoted or reborn ?
2. The buyer is a big boy
Did BT buy the name?
@BrianWick
Great to see that you have such an opinion on the matter. If meet.me could never stand up without having meetme.com in the line then can you please explain to me how about.me has managed to stand on its own? If you go to about.com or aboutme.com none of these domain names redirect users to the about.me website. In my honest opinion and not that it matters there is no problem with registering a .me domain name and building a brand on it. Your speculative comments are unwarranted and about.me completely defeats anything negative you could say in regards to this matter. This is the new world of domain my friend, its time to save that negative energy for making money and turning profits not for speculating.
“Meet.Me is a marketing gimmick – the consumer will still be typing in MeetMe.com – no matter what they see on the billboard – i that regard I am in Todero’s camp.
And Yes – the top 3000 – 5000 non.com’s will always sell fine – but will never stand on their own – i.e. MeetMe.com is needed.
The losses mount with the suckers buying the next millions of domain s after the first 5000 have been gobbled up.”
the fact of the matter is
there has/is been plethora of signs/evidence that
cctlds have/is been exploding.
just this week we see sales like:
BEK.Co $1500 SEDO
UND.Co $900 SEDO
news just out today
Founder Institute Rebrands to FI.CO
If you want to follow what you see in your rear view mirror you profess .com is the coming of the anti-christ
If you want to look make money as a domain investor, you start looking at the right of the dot.
this is where 99% of the money will be, especially I dare mention
.Co
(i) somehow the sale tag in the news is correlated with the number of comments in the post
(ii) f-ck.me is still held by the registry – one can buy wank.me instead, cheap.ly.
to be clear, it would be spurious to suggest this is not a monumental sale or that there is a bigger sale that has not been reported to a certain domainer who attempts to keep records of sales.
the point is that “news” can be presented via the web (where anyone can publish anything) in a way where hype and hyperbole are used very generously. and it will have an effect on some readers. this is true in general. but in domaining, it’s especially relevant.
and further, there is the idea that someone or something can become “famous on the web” far more easily than becoming famous in the real world. the former type of “fame” is far more circumspect. only those who are fully tuned in to the web will be privy to it. however, again using the web, people or things can be presented in such a way, using hype and hyperbole, that makes their notoriety appear to be a reflection what’s true in the real world. but for those not living behind a keyboard, it might not be.
“world record” seemed a bit over the top.
instead of something like: highest reported sale to certain domainer who attempts to document sales.
why does it matter? because hype can affect a market differently than unadorned factual information.
as a commenter above said, some people might get smoked.
I guess they should do that with sports records as well
Mr. Bolt is the fastest runner on the earth “to certain runners who attempts to document times”
Yes there could be a person somewhere on earth that has clocked themselves at a faster 100 then Mr. Bolt but for myself I will respect the records.
@The domain name was acquired at the silent portion of a TRAFFIC auction for $5,890 back just over three years ago.
Reading what I’m reading, I would hate to be the previous owner of that domain name!!!
Congrats boys! That’s a return of about 2,547% per year for three years.
Alan
The domain was sold by the registry prior to the launch of the extension.
There was no previous owner
Dave
Thinks that beats the stock market just slightly
@MHB
in all fairness
we must tell the full story.
as good as this story is
there is a flip side that MHB must tell and that is that
his expenses are probably in the neighborhood of
$1,000,000 in annual registration fees, right MHB ?
so in all fairness he needs a few of these sales just to keep up with
the renewal fees before he can count anything as money in his pocket.
so the story is not as rosy as it may seem at first blush.
Robert,
MHB is very open about this, http://www.thedomains.com/2011/01/01/its-january-1-we-are-750000-in-the-hole/
Businesses have expenses. Why is it not still a rosy story?
Amazing how small minded people can be or how jealously can show in every comment.