When A Domainer Becomes A Developer: The Tale Of Offers.com

Offers.com officially launched this week.  A great domain, perfectly matched with an application.

What makes this story so interesting is that the developer is also a domainer and used both of his skills to launch the site.

Steve Schaffer, is the Founder & CEO of Vertive, Inc., a Leader in Performance Marketing & the creator and developer of Offers.com.

Steve was good enough to give me an exclusive interview on the launch of his site and plans for Offers.com.

Steve started registering domains all the way back in 1995, with plans to develop them including: DailyFun.com, BrainTeaser.com, LunchBreak.com (he still owns these domains today, but has focused his development on other sites.]

Steve started going to attending domain conferences in 2006 to specially hear and learn about development and acquiring quality domains.

Steve acquired domain offers.com, in 2006, in a private sale, subject to a NDA.

As a domainer, a major factor in his reluctance to launch the site immediately after acquisition was the fact that he could not secure the singular version of the domain, offer.com

As a developer he wanted to get the site launched as quickly as possible, but as a domainer, he felt that if he launched offers.com without first securing the domain offer.com, he would lose a lot of type in traffic to the singular and that the domain offer.com, might not be available after launch, for any price or an exorbitant one.

His efforts to privately acquire the domain offer.com, created more frustration, as the owner using privacy on his whois, could not be found.

Finally last year the domain came to auction.  First at TRAFFIC West in Las Vegas in February 2008, where Steve bid on the domain, but the reserve was not met.  Once the other person biding against Steve stopped so did he, as he did not want to simply bid against himself.

However, the following week, at the Affiliate Summit domain auction also run by Moniker.com,  the domain went up on the live auction and  Steve jumped on it,  purchasing it for $180,000.  The acquisition was purely defensive.  The domain offer.com had minimal type in traffic and could never stand alone as a site.  He acquired the domain and spent $180K just to re-direct the domain to Offers.com

Offers.com, is a searchable site containing thousands of specials, offered by over 1,000 partners, like Carbonite, Doubleday Book Club, eHealthInsurance.com, H&R Block TaxCut, Ice.com and Travelocity.

Offers.com is  organized by services and retail stores into over 150 categories, and classified by offer types including promos, coupon codes, deals, free trials, and more. Offers.com works with their partners to add the best new offers, which are then reviewed, rated, ranked and updated daily by the Offers.com editorial team.

From credit card offers to magazines subscription discounts, to travel deals, discounts on software to baby clothes, special coupons or discount codes are automatically applied when a visitor clicks on a link to make a purchase.

Users can track and manage offers, as well as preferred merchants, and receive alerts when offers are added or changed.

Offers.com also has an “offer of the day” a special deal degisned to have visitors coming back on a regular basis.

As a developer, and domainer Steve see’s tremendous opportunity ahead for offers.com for other domainers.  What if he can use the platform to develop verticals for domain holders having relevant domains as an alternative to parking?

We are talking to Steve and we will be trying this on some of our domains and reporting back with the results.

This is an additional case study of where the true value of domains lie: development and branding

We congratulate Steve on his newest endeavor.