Seems like one of the hottest games in the world is Draw Something.
It seems some 20 million people have already downloaded the App.
Yes 20 Million in only 5 weeks.
BusinessInsider.com has published two stories on the game today alone.
One highlighting that over 4.5 million people played the game in the same hour the previous night, and one showing the growth of the popularity of the game Vs. Zynga’s “Words with Friends”.
The name Draw Something sounded very familiar to me domain name wise, so I went back and checked TheDomains.com and was shocked to see that the exact match domain name DrawSomething.com just sold 2 weeks ago on Afternic.com for $3K
Yes $3K
But the story doesn’t end there.
The Seller was BuyDomains.com owned by the same company that owns Afternic.com.
BuyDomains.com which of course was started by Mike Mann, has one of the largest domain portfolio’s in the world.
I have spoken about pre-pricing domains and the danger of having BIN pricing.
The Internet and the domain market is constantly changing and BIN doesn’t allow you to take a look at the domain on a real time basis and see how that term is currently being used.
This domain was probably pre-priced a year or more ago before the App was released and I would guess bought as a BIN name.
The Story still doesn’t end there and the Seller isn’t the only one to call out.
It doesn’t appear the App developer OMGPOP was smart enough to go out to acquire this domain for $3K which works out to something like $.001 per downloaded app.
Instead the domain name DrawSomething.com, is currently under privacy at Godaddy.com, and calls itself “an unofficial fan site for “Draw Something Free”, and “Draw Something by OMGPOP”.” “We are in no way associated with omgpop.” Promo content provided courtesy of iTunes.”
The domain name has an Alexa Ranking of 431,000 in the US.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this domain sale.
I just fainted.
Ouch! Someone’s not been doing their job.
I don’t think it’s a big deal. Could NameMedia have gotten more money for it? Sure. But if it didn’t price its domains, it would sell significantly less than the $1M+ a week it sells. So maybe it missed $20k or something in revenue here, but it doesn’t mean the fixed price model is bad — especially for a company like NameMedia.
Buyer got a good deal, LOL.
Understatement.
Andrew
If I owned the domain It would have been priced into the six figures.
I think they left a LOT of money on the table.
Regardless of the number, I think they’re still better off with their current model.
And at six figures you might not have sold the domain… 🙂
Andrew
The domain would make more than the $3K selling price monetized
Andrew
And there is NO excuse for the App developer not to have bought the domain when it was there for the picking for $3K
Wow that’s unbelievable for the seller, but even more of a letdown by OMGPOP. I couldn’t disagree with Andrew more, this is for sure a big deal.
I agree the domain is worth more now, reminds me a bit of the Chat Roulette story. It is also a pretty generic term, so could probably be used in a way that doesn’t infringe on the app.
On the flipside, looks like the app has become amazingly popular WITHOUT owning the exact match .com domain, so that says something too!
The developer should have bought the domain, yes. Not disagreeing there. (granted, everyone buys the game on the app store instead of the web, but for further expansion it might be important).
Of course, look at your potential buyers:
OMGPOP or
someone who wants to take advantage of OMGPOP
The buyer of the domain has already made it clear that he bought it to take advantage of the game. He’s not monetizing it yet, but if he did he could find himself in hot water.
…and my comment about the pricing is that NameMedia shouldn’t change its entire business model just to take advantage of the occasional “big miss” like this (if you think it’s a big miss).
@ @Domains –
“On the flipside, looks like the app has become amazingly popular WITHOUT owning the exact match .com domain, so that says something too!”
Was having this discussion with an app developer the other day when he was trying to figure out how much to spend on his domain. I play Angry Birds a lot, but I’ve never been to their web site.
If there was not a popular app than DrawSomething.com for $3k is a good sale for the seller. Just because the name now has a popular meaning does not mean prior it was worth a ton.
BuyDomains is a volume game. You win on many and lose on few. Nothing wrong here. If they were calculating every name they wouldn’t have been able to have the turnover they do.
These stupid exchanges keep pushing BUY IT NOW, WELL LOOK PEOPLE!
It costs you money, that is a once in a lifetime deal, can make you or break you.
Don’t fall for these auction house traps, be in control of you domains, and pricing, it is all about having information at your fingertips, use it, don’t abuse it.
@Andrew
Namemedia has many underperforming domains which it carries in its books, as well a large staff, building costs etc… This is not your typical domainer working from home model, they have expenses beyond the norm, and they need to capitalize on every sale.
Zynga is talking with OMGPOP > http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/zynga-is-in-talks-to-buy-draw-something-maker-omgpop/
Does the DNF Blog look at TheDomains.com stories and rewrite them? This article came out and then a short while later the DNF Blog article comes out with same article.
I think so, seems to be repeat of every article, just creating clutter, kind of stupid.
Don not let one domain sale determine how you do business in the future.
If you want to sell more domains have a buy now price.
Many domain purchases are impulse buys. The extra time it would take to get in touch with the buyer and start a negotiation can easily cost you more in lost revenue then the profit from one sale.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/zynga-is-in-talks-to-buy-draw-something-maker-omgpop/
They can do what they’ve done on many other occasions- simply say “Oops! The domain was mispriced. Sale cancelled…”
They did that to me once, they’ve done it to several others.
Andrew
I’m just warning smaller domains against following the BIN pricing of Afternic without having 1 million domains.
BuyDomains.com by having so many domains, sells hundreds of thousands a week in volume, but for the average domainer, even myself with 75K domains, can’t afford to let these gems go for pennies on the dollar
I wonder if the “unofficial fan site” makes money on the referrals to get the app and if so, whether they could be UDRP’d for the name.
Either way, SOMEONE at BuyDomains surely should have clued in someone in pricing about the outdated price on that one. I agree that there’s a chance they left $100k+ on the table.
Hey, don’t worry about it…it is only money…
and best of all it is not your money.
TLD
Yeah I saw that pretty unusually for another blog to pick up an original story, one that’s not a PR or story posted on another publication and run with it.
At least they linked part of it back to us
Life’s too short to worry about the little things
Great story Mike, very good point to the story too.
Ron has said this above about maybe having a once in a lifetime chance of hitting big, thats also a great point, not everyone has MHB portfolios even more of a reason to make the most of chances when they come.
Anyone have an idea about the traffic stats say 6 months ago and now for this domain?
It does strike me as odd that they set up a fansite, especially with the generic nature of the term which lends itself to the creation of a competing, or similar site without the real possibilty of a UDRP.
Funny, I just deleted all my domains at Afternic the other day after poor sales on their platform (albeit I did not price the domains) and a total distaste for the attitude of the sales people there.
At Sedo, at the same time, I got rid of all fixed pricing and now it is Make Offer only.
It is time to stop feeding these houses cheap inventory at BIN prices. The market is tightening up and end users need to pay up if they want great domains now, and brokerage houses need to start working for top dollar for holders of great domains instead of beating us down over our reasonable prices.
As far as I’m concerned nobody rides for free anymore, including brokers of the likes of Afternic. Their churn-and-burn model may still work but it is looking more like a platform of dinosaur domain sales and quality domains won’t stay in that kind of model much longer as domain prices skyrocket.
Brokers and brokerage houses need to wake up and start working more for us instead of just making a sale at any cost. I’m sick of that crappy model and won’t deal with it anymore.
“can’t afford to let these gems go for pennies on the dollar”
If the annual maintenance of a .COM goes to $1,000 per year per domain (as projected)
people may not be able to afford to park (monetize) many domains.
At $25,000 per year per .COM it could get very interesting.
Something becoming THAT popular, in so short a timeframe,
is a difficult thing to keep track of.. or even know about (until
it’s too late).
Yes, they left some money ‘on the table’ here, but you can’t
cover all the bases when trading domain names…
It would be nice to here more about the rationale of moving away from the BIN pricing and about not switching the parking at Afternic and SEDO.
Interesting … Someone just registered the .me on the 14th…
http://www.dynadot.com/domain/whois.html?domain=drawsomething.me
Dollar
Where do you get that .com’s will go to $1K per year?
Verisign is under contract with a ICANN with presumptive renewal with a 7% increase in 4 out of every 6 years off the base rate.
Know Thy Customer
Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.
The developer of the app never saw the value in this domain, otherwise they’d have bought it long before now.
NameMedia sold it to someone else and got a higher than average selling price for a mediocre, two-word .com.
Congrats to the seller. And good luck to the buyer if they think they just picked up a six figure domain.
At least NameMedia (parent company of BuyDomains.com) made a sale. I don’t think the new owner will, unless it is to another speculator.
Bill
I have had a little experience with exact match .com app names. From what I have seen and been a part of except the creme de la creme apps, they don’t care. Should they, yes but will they more so moving forward is anyone;s guess. Money was left on the table here but one has to also weigh the potential uses and risks in order to get those funds back should they end user not care to pay you off.
I was able to hand register drewsomething.com last week … I am wondering what kind of value it has … I do have some thoughts about possibly developing it.
I bought GuitaristsReference.com for my iphone iPad app Guitarist’s Reference for $900 – This app has been downloaded 1M times since 2009
Unbelievable. Imagine what other gems could be lurking out there everyday right under our noses.
Draw Something now has 50 million downloads
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/04/omgpops-draw-something-surpasses-50-million-downloads/