Intuit buys Apps.net for 24,100 EUR among 25 end user domain sales
Intuit picks up Apps.net domain name and other notable domain purchases.
The biggest name on this week’s end user domain sales report is Intuit. The company (of Quicken and Quickbooks fame) bought Apps.net for EUR 21,400 at Sedo. It already owns Apps.com. It offers Intuit Apps for many of its products.
Here are other domain name purchases by end users over the past week.
Sedo
Ad network Multi-View, Inc. made this week’s big $112,000 purchase of AHHA.com.
Travel Networks Europe Ltd, owner of rental car finder CarJet.com, paid 3,000 GPB for CarHirecover.com
Jasper Engines & Transmissions paid $2,000 for MyJapser.com.
The restaurant data company behind FoodServiceReport.com bought RestaurantData.com for $1,299.
Travel services company HOTELBEDS SPAIN, S.L.U. bought AttractionStore.com for $1,895 and ResortActivities.com for $1,295.
University of Toronto mathematician James Colliander bought CrowdMark.com for $995. It will be interesting to see what he does with it.
Afternic
Westport, Connecticut cycling/spin studio JoyRide Cycling Studio picked up JoyrideStudio.com for $1,495. It currently owns Joyride-Cycling.com and JoyrideWestport.com.
Embassy Loans bought the singular version of its domain name — EmbassyLoan.com — for $1,500.
Healthcare company Primary Care Partners in South Florida bought HealthyPartners.com for $3,788.
The Catamaran Company, seller of catamarans (a type of boat), paid $2,088 for LagoonCatamarans.com
Elite Estate Buyers Inc, which already owns EliteAuction.com, bought EliteConsignment.com for $2,088.
Business intelligence company Third Time dropped the hyphen in its domain name for $1,200 by picking up ThirdTime.com. Nice purchase.
Book publisher Health Communications, Inc, whose slogan is “The Life Issues Publisher”, bought LifeIssues.com for $8,800. Nice sale.
Godat Landscape Construction Company paid $1,388 for Godat.net.
ShortTermStays.com, an L.A. short term rental referral service, bought ShortTermStay.com for $2,100.
It appears that Lufthansa Technik has purchased LTCS.com for $2,500. The whois record for the domain doesn’t mention the company, but the registrant’s email address is LTCS.aero, which is owned by Lufthansa. The actual registrant is Gordon Weller, Sr. Director Customer Service & Account Management for the company.
Max New York Life bought MaxLifeInsurance.com for a whopping $21,000.
Affordable Power, L.P., which goes by the name APG&E, picked up APGE.com for $5,088.
The owner of Waverlyhomes.ca bought Waverlyhomes.com for $2,000.
Calgary Co-operative Association Ltd. bought YourCoop.com for $2,655.
A brand new company called Canada Carbon has purchased none other than CanadaCarbon.com for $1,995.
Instant Home Loans, Inc. d.b.a. Instant Capital, bought InstantCapital.com for a strong $14,500. Its web site is MyInstantCapital.com.
American Trash Management, a unique company whose mission is to “reduce the environmental impact, costs and problems of trash”, bought SmartTrash.com for $2,188.
Production company Flatland Pictures bought MusicProfessor.com for $1,888. Perhaps the title of an upcoming film?
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Zimbabwe.com seller takes huge loss
Zimbabwe.com sells for a fraction of what it sold for in 2007.
We always hear stories about people who bought domains and flipped them for many times their purchase price. But the opposite also happens.
Take the case of Zimbabwe.com, which just sold for $42,500 at Sedo.
The last time this domain (reported) sold was in 2007. Purchase price: $130,000.
It’s possible the domain also changed hands in 2008. Regardless of if it has changed hands since 2007, the domain took a total haircut of $87,500 during that period.
Not pretty.
There’s not a whole lot you can do with Zimbabwe.com from a commerce perspective other than offer elephant hunting trips.
Ideally a buyer would use the domain to help shed more light on Robert Mugabe’s atrocities.
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The inside story of Mama.com
Mamma.com owner selling Mama.com.
I was originally a bit surprised to see mama.com in Moniker’s Spring Auction ending this week.
Then I realized the domain on auction is actually a typo of the once popular search engine Mamma.com — not the search engine itself. Well, sort of a typo, as I later found out.
I reached out to the founder of Mama.com owner Empresario, Omar Solis. As it turns out, his company bought the Mamma.com search engine in a deal completed in 2011. I asked him for the back story on the domain and he wrote a good explanation. Rather than chop it up, I’ve decided to publish it in full here….
The back-story:
Mamma.com was once a promising search engine from the “.com-bubble” era. It was founded in 1996 by a graduate student from Quebec Canada named Herman Tumurcuoglu. Eventually it got funded and taken public, ultimately merging with a desktop search company named Copernic in 2005. They also wanted to own the single ” m” version of their brand name and an Executive at the company acquired mama.com from a small us-based organization sometime around 2000-2001.
In 2009 we acquired the Mamma.com search and ad network assets from Copernic, which included the two domain names. Originally the deal was for $5 million, but we ended up paying $500,000 for all the assets. We took over the business in 2009, but did not take ownership until Sept 2011 when the sale was finalized with the assistance from a well-known American investor.
Although mamma.com didn’t make it to the big stage as a search engine, it still enjoyed a loyal user base from the US, Canada (especially French CA), France, and Asia. The Ad Network business was also profitable, generating several million dollars a year in revenue. Plus it came with the mama.com domain, which I knew had plenty of value in itself.
Present day:
Today we continue to operate the ad network and monetize the search engine traffic from mamma.com, which has proven to be a steady revenue business. In addition we operate a business incubator called Empresario.com, where we work with nimble entrepreneurs to create new value from our business platforms. Predominately working with online publishers, advertisers, and agencies that leverage our resources to advance their own business.
Our plan this year is to develop our incubator business further, so we decided to systematically dismantle and sell assets that did not directly support our current goals. After the mamma.com deal was finalized in Sept, we took a step back and evaluated the business from top to bottom. What we uncovered was a nice cache of Internet assets that no longer supported our objectives, but had tremendous value.
A good portion of these assets came in the form of premium domain names that we acquired over the years and have been sitting on parked pages. A while back we did well in domain parking but after 2009 our revenue channels became more diverse and parking was overlooked. In regards to selling domains, we have always entertained offers and have sold many domain names over the years, but have never made it a full-blown effort like we are doing now.
Coincidentally, at the end of 2011 we started receiving serious 6-figure offers for mama.com, mostly interest from China and Japan where our largest offers have originated. As we drilled further into the analysis, we figured out that all the type-in users that went to mama.com, were looking for “female/maternal” topics and not a search engine. Separating and selling mama.com from mamma.com started making sense.
Also the sale includes the Twitter handle @mama, which will give this deal a unique twist. I have have not heard of many domain sales that also included the related Twitter handle, which these days is an excellent value-add.
Currently we are focused on the mama.com sale, but we have also put up a sample of 36 premium domain names from our portfolio that are currently available for sale via our site. In the next few weeks will place the rest of our portfolio on Sedo & Snapnames, except for a few exclusives that will only be offered on our website.
Hopefully mama.com will sell via Moniker’s auction this week, but regardless we will continue to push the sale this year, as we are eager to focus on our core business.
You can reach Solis here.
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