TechCrunch.com just covered a company that acquired the domain name Handy.com which quotes the buyer saying “it wasn’t cheap.”
The domain name was owned by Neue Medien GmbH of Germany. which may have been formerly known as Media Empire and Benjamin Pitzer as that was what the domain was registered under a couple of years ago and according to Screeshots.com the website hadn’t changed in years.
We have some thoughts about this sale and a lesson for domainer, but first here is the rest of the info that TechCrunch had:
“What’s in a name? As it turns out, a lot.
That’s the thinking behind Handybook’s decision to rebrand itself simply as “Handy.” The two-year old company, which provides on-demand home services via a web and mobile app, wants to become the definitive brand in the category… and it believes that when it comes to building a brand, shorter is better.
The company purchased it from a German entity, which owned the domain because apparently in that language “handy” is another word for mobile phone. It had actually been considering the purchase for a while before pulling the trigger on what would be a non-trivial expense for the company.
It was something that we went back and forth on as a board
He said the company had been talking about the purchase for about a year, but decided now was the right time to make an investment in its brand. That decision comes as Handy looks to expand into new markets and also into new service offerings.”
The takeaway for domain owners is something that a lot of us know already, if your trying to sell a big dollar domain to a big company sometime is can take quite a while.
Many Domainers by nature are impatient. If they have an interested buyer they want a sale and they want it quickly.
I can tell you that most of our six figure sales took place after months of back and forth including months of silence.
Yesterday we saw an equally good domain name Cabs.com sell for just $50K
We don’t know what Handy sold for but if you read between the lines of the TechCrunch story you can tell it was a six figure domain and I would guess at least in the $500K+ range, but that is just a guess.
The difference between a $50K sale and a sale for 10X more my just come down to time.
Time is Money.
Right said Michael, time is money and big sales don’t happen in a day!
i remember handy.com was a a well-developed mobile phone portal, so the sale amount could be into 7 figures territory.
Just love this quote: “The difference between a $50K sale and a sale for 10X more my just come down to time.”
$50,000 for cabs.com. Great deal for the buyer!
Its true! good domains never come for cheap but as experience say that a good sale of of any product or domain in this case simply depends on the buyer desperation to buy or the sellers desperation to sell.
time is money, Like that! 🙂