OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
It was reported today by the domainincite.com that the New gTLD domain name Net.Work was sold for $100,000.
The buyer was Bearingpoint IP Holding B.V. from bearingpoint.com.
It was sold by the .work registry that is Minds + Machines that also decided as part of the deal what the renewal fee would be.
Kevin Murphy said that the renewal price was not revealed but I asked around and the lowest I could find it was north of $5,000. The domain name was registered at Mark Monitor that is one of the most expensive registrars. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the renewal fee is more than $6,000 or even $7,000.
So in about 15 year the buyer will pay another $100k in renewals. Great deal for the registry. Not so sure about the buyer!
Sold.Domains has the Net.Work sale as the 9th 6-figure New gTLD domain name sale of all time. It is also the 6th 6-figure sale in 2015. So far there have been 6 $100k+ sales in the first half of 2015 while there were 3 in the whole 2014. First New gTLDs came out in January 2014.
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Absolutely nonsense decision made by buyer. Simply crazy!
looks like an ugly hack
Yes, I forgot to say the domain is simply a hack. Hacks are not so valuable.
This is what gTLD registries will do. They will hold the good domains that end users want. Then charge ridiculous amounts for everything else of which only 0.01% of which domainers will be able to find an interested end user for.
The best deal around in retrospect was the $185k application fee period. This one domain will eventually cover that entire fee.
I kinda disagree.
I mean you could see it as a hack but not in the sa.me way we have all co.me to see them.
Net.work is two complete words spanning the dot. If we choose to see it as a hack then maybe it’s not worth $100K + renewals.
But, if we choose to see it as two distinct words then it takes on a whole different meaning like
net work: “work we do on the net”
or
like the site using the phrase “net at work” as their url.
It really depends on how you look at it.
I am not really a big fun of .work. It is ok but there are a lot of great extensions.
I do agree with you on that, K. It doesn’t “work” much for me either.
But home.work, yard.work, school.work, etc… would.
still dont like it
I think a company is much more interested in buying for example network.solutions with about 165k google search volume instead of net.work
Let’s look at the buyer’s profile, BearingPoint, shall we.
Offices in 20 countries around the globe, and emerging markets.
Almost 3500 employees worldwide.
Revenue (2014) in euro: 558.2 million, and 81.2 million in equity (profitable!)
From the 2014 annual report at http://www.bearingpoint.com/en-other/download/BearingPoint_Annual_Report_2014-digital.pdf
I don’t know about you, but $100k + $5k /year is a reasonable number for a company of this size, that intends to utilize a domain as the base of their operating brand.
Don’t forget such cost is an operating expense and is thus written off.
Escape the domainer mentality.
The problem is that spending has to be according to market value.
Even when IBM buys a car they can’t spend $1M for a $20,000 car.
I don’t think that this domain is worth that much. Even to this company.
I could be wrong.
And a lot of domains go unused…
Kosta, I’m simply looking at the buyer’s financials. Since the argument is the annual cost of renewal, I see no reason the asking price is unreasonable. It’s the same reason you sell a .com for more to a more wealthy buyer.
At least this is a buyer that spends money on domains. It is not a 5000 people company with a $1,500 budget.
I think whats more interesting that companies are willing to spend this sort of money and seeing as investment. A good sign for the industry. I also agree 100k for a company like that is chump change if they think they can get even a bit of value. If they use it at all, that would be worth it for them.
That is what is called costly
I don’t believe what written on the net esp in the domain industry.
Somebody on the company is related to the company and their arrangement could be “under the table”
Poor decision by the management reflects the reputation of the company- and a big loss$ to the shareholders.
So what new in Greece?
Konstantinos- you should go live with Acro in sunny Florida .
Maybe I should.
Not a crazy transaction, in my opinion.
First of all, it’s a very attractive domain:
Net.Work
Succinct. Strong symmetry. Divides 1 real word into 2 other words so that 3 interdependent meanings reinforce one another visibly.
Domain hacks that produce 3 relevant words are not common. This item, which is more than the sum of its parts, cannot be lumped with something like Retra.in, for example, which divides a single word arbitrarily in the middle and produces nothing new.
In any case, domain hacks do sell better than some domainers may imagine. A phrase such as Check.in sold for $55k back in 2011. A split noun like Pock.et went for $7.5k a year and a half ago. This year I’ve seen several in DNJournal, and I’ve spoken to people privately (end users) who bought hacks in the lower $xx,xxx.
With sales like those, Net.Work wouldn’t find itself alone in the $xx,xxx range. Given the trifold meaning – Net + Work = Network – I think it ought to command a premium price.
Also, as Acro points out, this is a very well funded company. What might have strained another buyer in the low to mid $xx,xxx range wouldn’t cause them to blink at $100k. That’s $30 per employee, and they probably spend more than that annually on ink jet cartridges for their printers.
Moreover, this is one of the registry’s prize possessions. They only have a few such assets to dispose of for any keyword nTLD. So BearingPoint ought to expect them to give up an asset like that only at a significant price. We’re used to this, aren’t we? When 1 well funded company buys from another well funded company, any domain will tend to sell for more than it would (on average) if privately held by you or me.
Net.Work is a load-bearing brand name. Provided BearingPoint puts some marketing weight
on it, the domain will hold up for years to come. And they’ll get their money’s worth out of it with consumer recognition. If, on the other hand, they sit on the domain, merely stockpiling it, then it’s money misspent. So we’ll see what they actually do.
I am not saying that hacks don’t sell.
Many people have been bothering me for a .us domain name hack I sold years ago and the buyer never changed whois.
“When 1 well funded company buys from another well funded company, any domain will tend to sell for more than it would (on average) if privately held by you or me.”
This sadly is true. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it is our fault not selling at higher prices.
“This sadly is true. But maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it is our fault not selling at higher prices.”
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It is the common case of one sale in isolation though.
They’ve hired a “sales team” of people to sell these premium names. People could hire staff and prices domains higher, they’d get bigger sales but a lower conversion rate by pricing like that. Minds + Machines isn’t making money aside from revenue from lost auctions so I don’t think their model looks like a good one.
The only thing to conclude is that the buyer decides the price he wants to pay 🙂 Just like with some paintings where some could have been done by a monkey sell for 7 figures.
@K, hope you’re doing well despite what is going on in Greece !
I am as ok as I can be. I don’t have a money problem. Yet.
But I am a lot concerned of what is going to happen on Monday.
They have massively overpaid. The doesn’t make a lot of sense, “net dot work”, what does that mean?
This one is a lottery win for the registry. I wonder how the registrar sold them on this being an appropriate price? I suspect very little actual negotiation went on given the huge price and huge renewals, dream come true.
What does massively overpaid means?!?! When you have early revenue of over half a billion. Yes, they would have massively overpaid if it was average joe, this is not average joe. They might know much less about domains then average joe, but they didnt massively over pay because 100k to them is what buying a coffee. How does one massively over pay for coffee? Even if you get fancy machiato, you still feel its well withing you budget.
How does one massively over pay for coffee?
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By paying $1000 for a cup. It doesn’t matter if you are Bill Gates, you just got taken to the cleaners.
If they really felt they need this domain then I suspect they got some very bad advice on an acquisition price. The registry is desperate for premium sales and would have taken far less in my view. The high price + high renewals is a very bad deal.
Yes, they paid 1k for a cup but if you bill gates, you dont even think about it. Energy to think about it, worth more then to try to find cheaper price. They have a project, they needed good domain for it, they got quoted price and it seemed fine. Done. There is no buyers remorse, hence to them they didnt massively overpaid.
Massively overpaid is an opinion, the very same people who you and i think might have massively overpaid, think they got a deal. Depending on their place in business ecosystem and price of domain, they just got a really good coffee.
The truth is that when I want a domain for a project, and not just for resale, I can sometimes overpay for domainers standards.
“They have a project, they needed good domain for it, they got quoted price and it seemed fine. Done.”
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This is not how big businesses typically do things. They don’t think “we have lot of money in bank we’ll just pay whatever”. A big company will use employees or brokers to try and get it for what they feel is the lowest price possible.
I can guarantee Bill Gates or just about any other wealthy person will not pay $1000 for a cup of coffee, they’ll walk straight out of the shop.
That is one ugly domain name
DOMAINERS ….
A $100K sale it´s a very good and positive thing for domainers and domaining industry in general.
This is what we call: “Comparable Sales” …
It´s good that new gTLDs sell and it´s better if they sell for this prices.
This are arguments for our future negotiations … Just think a bit …
I love “Net.work”; it´s short and memorable and you got 3 words in one.
And as somebody said before: for a company like this $100K is just a cup of coffee.
If we didn´t make millions with the .COM as we where not in the domaining business
20 years ago (like the Domain KING) we need these new gTLDs to make those millions !
Way to expensive…
Just because you CAN, don’t mean you SHOULD. Overpaid for the domain and will overpay for renewals.
I already explained with facts and numbers why claims of overpaying hold no water. Read their financials, even if it is to see a very beautifully created annual report.
We’re all giving our opinions. I, along with most commenters here, are saying they overpaid. This is not a fact – just an opinion. Just like you saying the company didn’t overpay. That’s your opinion.
The important part is the company paid for it, so obviously, they thought it was worth it. No one has to agree.
It seems from URL visit that; “eNet.work” is also for sale on flippa.
Wondering …