OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Mike Berkens bought the domain name Stock.Photo today at the NamesCon auction in Las Vegas for $16,000.
15 minutes later he had already sold the domain name together with the plural version (Stock.Photos) for $60,000 to Richard Lau.
Mike Berkens bought Stock.Photos back in June 2015 in Early Access Program (EAP) day 2 for about $3,000. It was part of the collisions list.
Both domains have regular (non-premium) renewals.
Frank Schilling, owner of the .photo registry, was present at the auction and the private sale.
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Recover.Photos
Nice turn, as one says in Northern Ireland, a province of the UK. Interesting, too, in that it’s one of the new gtlds.
My only photo-related domain (from memory – I have lots) is photability.com
Cheers!
Why didn’t Richard Lau buy the singular version domain at the action ?M’i missing something?
Maybe he wanted the pair and and didn’t want the one without the other?
I don’t know…
He does not want to have competition? So he bought both.
I own MostWanted.photos MostWanted.photo 🙂
He was bidding from his room and the crappy internet connection at the Tropicana kicked him off.
It was a great day for the New G’s!
can anyone post the auction results??????????
Here are the results:
http://namebio.com/blog/daily-market-report-for-january-11th-2016/
Richard was trying to buy it online and had wifi problems. It was still a great deal for both parties. Great day for the new g’s .
I bought smart.watch e.flowers and vintage.auto lots of nice sales web.hosting 55k
Vintage.auto is nice 🙂
.mobi had high auction sales too people.
sorry but the new G’s look awful.
It’s no longer about the extension, but the entire phrase. The game has changed. That is the difference……
i guess. if you say so. I dont see it.
Are you at namescon? Let’s meet at waternight!
I’m not at Namescon..:(
Spencer that example is getting tired.. Sorry but you can’t stop progress . The news G’s had a fantastic showing today. Some very great minds and .com investors are investing in the new G’s they span the dot nicely they do well in search . It’s a new day , .com is great but there are wonderful new g’s as well.
How much is FreshFood.com sold?
It didn’t meet reserve, bidding reached $16,000 and the reserve range was $10,001 – $25,000. So it’ll be put back in auction at NameJet.
May I ask if you know whether the high-bid (16K) is retained or is the auction reset altogether?
So one of the guys who runs ROTD won a name in an auction they had put together. The name he won was being sold by the registry that was a title sponsor of the conference and then the name was resold to one of the guys that runs Namescon who had trouble bidding on the auction running at his conference.
What a trifecta!
Gee not suspicious as all…
Cynical person might see it as advertisement for a next year Namescon: “Come bid on our domains, see how easy is to flip them?”
The only way this charade would be more comical if Adam Dicker was hired to develop a website for it.
I have to agree with such a bullshit setup, come on are you retards that stupid, money is not easy to make.
I was watching the auction on 4G network, is the namescon founder so broke he can’t afford a proper cell phone plan, but can dish $60k before any money has changed hands from the buyer.
Come on guys like Phil, who pays more in renewals than he gets in sales has had his head in the sand for a long time, I would never trust a used car salesman.
Phil has actually sold a lot of new gTLD domain names.
Agreed.
It all smells bad and it is a hell of a rabbit hole.
Now the ROTD consultants and co-hosts of the auction itself – with prior knowledge of reserves -grandstanding that they buying and flipping to each other? On the only domain I wanted no less? It was only a year ago that Mr. Berkens looked in his webcam in disgust when Domain Sherpa asked if it was a conflict of interest to bid given his inside knowledge. As per the standard there was a proclamation that ROTD does what ROTD wants.
So beyond the fact of all us being sucked into an auction where 90% of the names benefited five people – do you really put it beyond them to spend a few hundred thousand dollars buying new TLDs at 10x their value simply as a valuation technique? It would easily return millions given their ability to shift and leverage the success of this event for their own biased growth objectives. Very small price to pay when you come loaded with thousands upon thousands of niche based keyword and extension possibilities.
Especially for a consultant group tasked with raising profitability and awareness for new extension releases in the first place. Disheartening even further when you get to read about how clever they think they are. Let alone the irony of stockphotos.com being originally available from DNS for less than this unheard of TLD just sold for.
FCarson – If I can lessen your anger by selling you a New G, I would be more than happy to do so.
Call 100 businesses and you’ll quickly discover 90% still have not heard of TV, and that CO is still often seen as a .com spelling or typo error. Ad agencies and their associations have already published clear letters stating refusal to adopt new GLTDS into media campaigns for dozens of reasons. Even Congress believes ICANN is being run into the ground – which is saying something.
I charge that too many of these individuals are participating in games meant to deliberately dupe us of our money. False sales reports, strategically timed investments, coordinated news releases on a payment basis to establish imaginary credibility and adoption rates, selective news reporting, and trusted trade sources being tainted with the promise of gain for their loyalty and alignment through sponsorship money.
The fake alpha/numeric .com craze to bypass currency controls is bad enough , but extending this to new extensions? “ How about you “hedge” all of my new extension’s four letter domains! I’ll cut you in for 75% percent to the benefactor of your choice, it helps me pad my numbers to promote false adoption rates, and then we can resale some for thousands of dollars over time as a further bump.” This is literally a pitch line, and you wouldn’t believe the key people dealing with new extensions not available for weeks at a time because they are “in China opening new markets”.
For the new GLTDS – many of these extension owners saw the potential for giant piggy banks. When the public didn’t bite – they elevated their numbers and decided to spend more money on the promise of future valuations.
Berkens comes out looking like the smartest guy in the room once again but Richard Lau? Not so much.
I love those keywords because they have huge search stats and that’s my thing but all I can say is it must be good to be able to flush $60K down the toilet like that.
This Richard Lau guy has the worst negotiation skill of any entrepreneur I know. I doubt if his 250k impromptu purchase of stockphoto.com on flippa has even generated 60k.
Very funny!
I agree that the new gtlds are so stupid. Can’t imagine a legit buyer actually paying a premium for one. The only one that actually makes sense to me is .worthless
Dave are you that insecure that you have to call people nasty names like retards ?? You can think what you want but I was there I bid on stock.photo as well as many others , I didn’t even know mike had won it until later , I glad he sold the pair he is a gentleman , an honest business man that has done well and allways gives back. To make such disparaging comments is just silly.
The singular and plural PAIR seems to be the answer for the high price.
@Domain Observer might have something there – if you’re using new gTLDs for a business and the plural form of your extension exists, i’d say it’s a no brainer that you need to get both of them – .car, .cars | .auto, .autos etc so these pairs would be more desireable.
one word ; bullshit!
Why do you think it’s called “NamesCON” because it does what it says on the tin…
Why has nobody made offer for my own pixshut.com if stock.photos could cost that much!
I’m not sure how anyone in this thread can call the new gTLD program “stupid” or “worthless” when it continues to be marked by significant growth in consumer awareness and adoption. The high value of domains like stock.photo and stock.photos demonstrate that new TLDs aren’t going anywhere but up.
I got followings
– Unlimited.photos
– Stick.photo
– Stick.photos
It’s an interesting story but I agree with @av that there might be an element of showmanship here – it’s a show afterall!
New gTLDs give you more branding options for sure but when the plurals exist on the right side of the dot as well as the left, this is a new headache and you end up forking out for more domains than you need like Mr Lau has.
“Mike Berkens bought Stock.Photos back in June 2016”. Little typo. Guess you meant 2015.
Corrected.
Thanks