Last week, it was announced that Poker.org sold for $1,000,000. Most people were surprised by the amount. I wasn’t. The same people were surprised when Ireport.com sold for $750,000. Again I wasn’t. The key to selling at those amounts is asking for it. Of course that will rule out selling most of the domains that one has in their portfolio since there aren’t that many buyers right now at that level. Most importantly, you have to not care whether the name will sell. National A-1, which owned poker.org and Rick Schwartz that owned IReport.com are successful outside the domain world. This gives them the opportunity to be bold in their sales approach. . However, while many domainer’s would have sold those name’s for a tenth of what they sold for, in reality they sold at those amounts because the owners asked for that amount and didn’t have to sell if they did not get their asking price.
The only difference between a Gorgeous $200 street whore and a Gorgeous $3000 call girl…….is the asking price.
Well reasoned analysis and perfectly stated.
I was wondering the same thing about iReport.com compared to Poker.org.
One other consideration: Numerous organizations within the industries involved which bought those two domains (television news & gaming) appear to have sufficient capital to buy whatever they want.
Well said.. 🙂
I don’t agree at all. Poker.org was sold to a company in the domain industry, so they obviously think they can make enough money from developing it to cover the huge price. They have experience gambling .org domains already and must have some advantage when it comes to that (like getting it listed at the top of Google). Mainly, the domain had a significant value to any speculator. iReport.com was sold to an end user (cnn.com) and the value was based on the fact cnn wanted that particular domain because they had already chosen that name for their reporting service, and buying the domain for whatever it cost was a drop in the bucket for them. I don’t think the domain itself had any significant value at all to a domain speculator. Yes, in both cases the sellers drove a hard bargain to get those amazing prices, but that is not the whole story.
Poker.org might be worth more today than poker.com because of the jurisdictional location of the dot com registrar and restrictive US gaming laws. This was a truly brilliant purchase and was probably undervalued; certainly not how it appears at first blush, though. That deal finally allowed me to understand why my fivecard.com domain isn’t worth much. But a change in US law could quickly upend dot net and dot org gaming names… and bring dot coms back to life…
The reason dot net and dot org gaming names are selling like crazy is because of the jurisdiction of the dot com registrar. It makes poker.org a truly brilliant purchase. Until a change occurs in US gaming laws, it is probably worth far more than poker.com. I finally get why my fivecard.com domain has little value….
This price was very high, good luck to new owners.
This price was very high!!! I don’t believe