iReport sold for $750,000

The reason it is "I" and not "E" or even "U", is because "I" instills a sense of involvement and personal ownership among the audience. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that the major media outlets are losing their stranglehold as more and more alternatives surface on the web. People are flocking to sites like YouTube and stuff in order to stake their own claim in the media arena from the comfort of their own homes. CNN is just hoping to create a project that instills this same sense of viewer involvement. This type of action may not stave off the inevitable decline as more and more people turn to alternative sources, but it does give them a huge advantage over their competition, provided it's properly executed.

A simple understanding of connotations goes a long way. uReport.com is a decent domain, don't get me wrong. But when I say it... "you report".. I dont usually refer to myself as "you". So in the back of my mind, its as if "you" refers to someone else... But if I say "I report", I'm directly addressing myself and this somehow validates my own personal involvement and participation. And it sounds powerful! *I* Report!!!

Now one can argue that given this scenario, iTube would have been preferable to YouTube. However, given the timing and popularity of YouTube, the overall appeal of the service and "liberation" it provided, far outweighed any trivial play with words... Though the media networks don't have those same conditions going for them. They're losing ground fast and have to compete against the stigma of an outdated paradigm which they created. People are tired of being reported to and things are obviously changing.

So in my opinion, that "I" alone was worth about 500k of the total price if not a bit more.

estibot values it at $130! BOOYAH!

And he also chucked in I-Report.com for free ?

Cant mind where i read this.

yes he gave the for free as to not hold up negotiations-
ronald regging- you are exactly right

smashfactory said:

yes he gave the for free as to not hold up negotiations-
ronald regging- you are exactly right

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I would have traded it for a donation to charity. It kills 2 birds with one stone by reducing tax liability and helping people at the same time.

dalem said:

estibot values it at $130! BOOYAH!

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There you go. Proves it was an overpriced domain Rick got lucky with this one. Good luck to him.

stub said:

There you go. Proves it was an overpriced domain Rick got lucky with this one. Good luck to him.

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this is what i was tacitly trying to imply in my first post about this issue. I agree . A very good sale, but i don't think under regular market conditions this name is worth this amount.

This is one of those very nice sales... I think many people would sell this domain in the range of xx,xxx but Rick has done a good job making CCN pay up $750k haha :D

want to see if my idutch.com can reach 1/1000 of ireport.com. Now gets $250 offer and it is on aunction here at namepros.

kemjika11 said:

this is what i was tacitly trying to imply in my first post about this issue. I agree . A very good sale, but i don't think under regular market conditions this name is worth this amount.

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I took his views in domain appraisal service:
http://emil.king.net/2008/01/ireportcom-sold-for-750000.html

I agree that domain appraisal is irrelevant.

I still think domain appraisal is useful to test water. We can’t just write off appraisal because of few exceptional sales, just my 2cents.

Unfortunately some of you are missing the most important thing about this. Often we as "domainers" go by our own bible of of what this domain or that domain is worth, and we hurt ourselves. I heard someone in another thread say, "Well, Estibot says it's only $750, so he definitely got a great deal.". Really?? To me this proves the irrelevance of Estibot more than anything (even though the creator did the best job you could do through automated methods).

A domain is worth whatever the other party is willing to pay - period! CNN doesn't care what Estibot says. If a name YOU own makes sense to a company that can in-turn build it into a 50 million dollar plus business, that is all that matters. That's why so many of the top people in this industry, including Rick, are against so-called professional appraisals.

Another important thing we could all learn from this is the importance of leverage in negotiating. Rick took his sweet time through the whole negotiation process. He created a vision of what his name was worth to CNN, and through patience made it a reality. Sure, he didn't need the money like you or I might, which helped with the patience part, but he kept the power in his hands, which is important as anyone involved in sales will know. Makes you wonder how many times we are too eager to accept under valued offers for the sake of making a quick sale. I know I'm guilty.

To the guy who said Rick was "cybersquating": Get real! That is just stupid!

stub said:

Proves it was an overpriced domain

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Totally Wrong. I disagree with you.

A domain is worth whatever the other party is willing to pay - period! CNN doesn't care what Estibot says. If a name YOU own makes sense to a company that can in-turn build it into a 50 million dollar plus business, that is all that matters.

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I agree with you. I have always been a firm believer in it. IMO any appraisal is just non sense & waste of money.

If your domain name is relevant to the end user's business, then they will do anything to get hold of that.

last hand registered domain I sold was for $6500
purchased it 21 months ago for $6.95
automated appraisal today= $50
amount of parking income per month= under $1.00

traffic and parking income is 1 set of stats that could be used to form an educated guess on appraisal value, you have to look at the product that the domain represents and determine how valuable sales conversions on that product or service could become, I see a lot of domainers appraise domains with xx-xx,xxx and 99% of the time I think their estimates are too low as they are not taking multiple stats into consideration, a domain can make $0 a month parked and still sell for 5-10k+ to the right end user, you have to be able to look at your own domains and determine the premium from the trash based on traffic, ppc revenue, search popularity etc... and the most important one that gets overlooked the most "commercial appeal", I have held domains that make $0 parked because I know they will find the right end user in the future, gotta have the patience as some will sell overnight and others may take years for all the stars to align just right, best way to sell a domain for maximum ROI is to not be desperate to sell the domain, first offers are rarely the best that will come, looking to automated software for your domain values will generally leave you with the short end of the stick as there are too many stats to take into consideration for an automated service to calculate, I have heard "follow the money" in reference to obtaining domains with parking income, another form of "follow the money" is to hold your "commercial appeal" domains whether they have pay per click earnings or not as end users don't care as much as domainers do about pay per click earnings and will spend xxxx-xx,xxx+ strictly based on the domain name itself as their development will bring the traffic, about 75%+ of the end users I have sold to in 2007 never asked for parking or traffic stats and bought the domains strictly based on the domain name itself.
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Giode said:

A domain is worth whatever the other party is willing to pay - period! CNN doesn't care what Estibot says. If a name YOU own makes sense to a company that can in-turn build it into a 50 million dollar plus business, that is all that matters. That's why so many of the top people in this industry, including Rick, are against so-called professional appraisals.

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I think it is fairly apparent that the domain is not worth the $750,000 paid. What would Cnn get for it if they decided tommorrow they wanted to sell it? What would it get at auction?- that is the market price. A domain isn't simply worth what a single party would pay, if that was true nobody would ever have overpaid for anything. To me this shows how non transparent (inefficient & misunderstood) this market is that a deal could actually occur at that price.

Giode said:

If a name YOU own makes sense to a company that can in-turn build it into a 50 million dollar plus business, that is all that matters

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Very well said.

snoop said:

I think it is fairly apparent that the domain is not worth the $750,000 paid. What would Cnn get for it if they decided tommorrow they wanted to sell it?

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You may need to consider that buy and sell forces won't necessarily fit your notion of value. Most high end sales have a large contingent of naysayers who didn't see the value that the end-user saw. The market is made up of many tiers and they are not all subject to the same rules.

Carlton said:

Very well said.

You may need to consider that buy and sell forces won't necessarily fit your notion of value. Most high end sales have a large contingent of naysayers who didn't see the value that the end-user saw. The market is made up of many tiers and they are not all subject to the same rules.

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My notion of value comes from an economics textbook (the interaction between supply and demand, prices of comarable domains etc), have you heard of another notion of value other than the "it must be worth whatever it sold for" one?

Carlton said:

Very well said.
Most high end sales have a large contingent of naysayers who didn't see the value that the end-user saw.

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That is because those sales are few and far between, for every high end sale to an enduser there is 100 other names that don't sell. Domainers seem to forget that when trying to justify sales that in reality are "outliers", market values can be seen in auction figures.

snoop said:

I think it is fairly apparent that the domain is not worth the $750,000 paid. What would Cnn get for it if they decided tommorrow they wanted to sell it? What would it get at auction?- that is the market price. A domain isn't simply worth what a single party would pay, if that was true nobody would ever have overpaid for anything. To me this shows how non transparent (inefficient & misunderstood) this market is that a deal could actually occur at that price.

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Good points, and I agree - to us domainers, this is way beyond market value. At the same time, a patient seller doesn't need to be concerned with getting market value. "Market value" is a term used when selling to other domainers (aka resellers), but those outside our industry aren't as concerned with the criteria we use to decide a domains true value. To them it either makes sense, or it doesn't. If it makes sense to company/individual with deeper pockets, you will get what the name is worth to them if you negotiate smart. Usually this is well beyond the market value as we see it.

All I was trying to say is, we don't necessarily have to settle for domainers market value. As an example, I have a sale going through right now for 100k that I was told has a market value of mid xxxx. I have noticed this trend a lot.

Thank goodness companies like CNN don't buy based off of what they could get in return, if tried to sell tomorrow.

Giode said:

Good points, and I agree - to us domainers, this is way beyond market value. At the same time, a patient seller doesn't need to be concerned with getting market value. "Market value" is a term used when selling to other domainers (aka resellers), but those outside our industry aren't as concerned with the criteria we use to decide a domains true value. To them it either makes sense, or it doesn't. If it makes sense to company/individual with deeper pockets, you will get what the name is worth to them if you negotiate smart. Usually this is well beyond the market value as we see it.

All I was trying to say is, we don't necessarily have to settle for domainers market value. As an example, I have a sale going through right now for 100k that I was told has a market value of mid xxxx. I have noticed this trend a lot.

Thank goodness companies like CNN don't buy based off of what they could get in return, if tried to sell tomorrow.

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There is no such thing as "domainers market value" and "endusers market value", an item has a value- it can't be worth two completely different amounts, and above and below that means underpriced or overpriced. ireport.com is an example of a company paying way too much, as the market gets more clearer though and people realize that either they are selling too cheap or paying too much prices should become more predictable and less volatile.

These types of sales won't ever end in my view though I think they will gradually become rarer and rarer thanks to all the sales data and information about the market that is coming out. That isn't to say domainers shouldn't try and get as high a price as they can, the name of the game (lets call it $profit) is to try and buy underpriced domains and try and sell them for overpriced amounts, as the market matures that will become harder though.

snoop said:

There is no such thing as "domainers market value" and "endusers market value", an item has a value- it can't be worth two completely different amounts, and above and below that means underpriced or overpriced. ireport.com is an example of a company paying way too much, as the market gets more clearer though and people realize that either they are selling too cheap or paying too much prices should become more predictable and less volatile.

These types of sales won't ever end in my view though I think they will gradually become rarer and rarer thanks to all the sales data and information about the market that is coming out. That isn't to say domainers shouldn't try and get as high a price as they can, the name of the game (lets call it $profit) is to try and buy underpriced domains and try and sell them for overpriced amounts, as the market matures that will become harder though.

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You really think these inflated sales will diminish Snoop? I would have thought that as more "eye balls" appear online, and the NEED for businesses to establish more of a commanding presence, inflated domain sales will only increase. This, coupled with the fact that the ability to purchase quality names is getting harder and harder (even in the short time I have been involved in domains). I see a Barry Diller effect taking place, where you'll have all these media conglamorates rushing to do what IAC has done, and they will pay whatever it takes to purchase these premium addresses to build a network around. Just a prediction.

Of course you have been doing this a lot longer than I have, and know what you are talking about. It just doesn't seem so cut and dry to me.