Turning down $7MM offer on a domain
Small post today but it gets across a big message… You have to know when to sell and sometimes waiting isn’t the right thing to do. Take a look at this article on BBC News right back at the peak of the Dotcom Boom.
This article really is perfect as it was literally written exactly at the peak of the dotcom boom. From mid-2000 through early 2003, the NASDAQ continued to fall. Some of the domains sold in 2001-2003 (eg. Inbox.com for $2000) would very likely have sold for 100 times what they did had they sold in 1999-2000. I wasn’t around in 1997, however you can read up on it and see how tier 1 generics go from being under 10k to being million+ domains by 1999. And then 2001 happens, the bubble burst and people think the whole internet was just one big fad. The only thing that really proved to be a fad was VCs shelling out big bucks on companies which had a good domain name (eg. Pets.com) and not much else going for them.
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June 25th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Imagine turning down $7mm for a dash domain! Both versions still parked after all these years!
June 25th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Seems like Peter is a little attached to this very “so/so” domain. Sell it for $7 Million, put away 6 and buy a great domain with the other $1 Million that get’s a Ton Of Traffic already.. Some people’s kids I tell you!
June 25th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I would be kicking myself now if I was him, but who knows, maybe he has made more by sticking to his guns. Wonder if you can get hold of him for a comment?
June 25th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Hi Gary,
I just did a whois check and it appears he no longer owns the domain.
June 25th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
He must have sold it to Craig Petersen for much less further down the line!
Ouch!
June 26th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Not meaning to be a cynic, but I think that there’s a world of difference between actually selling something for $Xm and releasing a press release that gets a story in the press about someone “offering” you $Xm.
I think that this story was far more likely an attempt to get some free publicity and to ramp the domain. I was working as a Producer at the BBC at the time of this story BTW, so can tell you that news stories without a named author are often lacking in veracity as they are generally news wire rewrites (and the BBC’s web team was also a LOT smaller in 2000). Other than calling the 2 parties for confirmation there’s not much you could do to check this type of story.
Having a quick search round shows that some people at the time had the same opinion of this as I did. See this article in Internet News in 2000. http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/383161
June 26th, 2009 at 2:45 am
Hi Ty,
Thank you for the insider information — much appreciated
June 26th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Now that’s called gambling with domains
Nice digging work reece 
June 26th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
ONLY A CRACK ADDICT WOULD TURN DOWN 7 MILLION FOR A DOMAIN UNLESS IT IS LIKE SEX.COM OR SIMILAR!! DUUUUHHHHH!!!!
June 28th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
That domain would be sold the second the offer came in. Unfortunately, the offer was probably largely made in stock. Still, several thousand in near-worthless penny stock is worth far more than that domain.