YP.Com Sold to Yellow Pages For ....

[ThreeD]

....$3,850,000!!

According to SEC filing, a public company Live Deal Inc. (NASDAQ:LIVE), sold the domain YP.com on November 5, 2008, to YellowPages.com LLC for $3,850,000. The domain, according to the company, was an active site and was the source of ongoing revenues from the sale of Internet Advertising Packages.

Full story over at domaining.com.

 

[Loren646]

wow. good stuff.

wish i had all of them.

 

[htmlindex]

A very nice sale for a very nice name!

 

[yougoldname]

great sale

 

[allanh]

Get real. Or speak for yourself.

Anyone who thinks they could have got it for $100-$150K is dreaming.

What - with an existing ongoing profitable business + the domain !?
Opportunity costs and all that.
I'm thinking it's more than a MFA mini-site like some of you lot...

BTW, the UK Yellow Pages have their site on Yell.com

Fair enough, the value of the domain might have been substantially increased by the fact that there was a commercial website behind it.

However:
1. Yellow Pages was only buying the domain, not the website/business behind it. Therefore the only added benefit of having a previous business was only previous traffic (which would likely decrease overtime)

2. Even if there was a lot of traffic with a great domain like YP.com, it is still hard to imagine the package would be sold for 3.8 mil USD had the seller not knowing it was YellowPages approaching him/her.

These are just my opinions, the bottom line is that I think the owner did a great job in selling this name at this price and full kudos to him :]

 

[floatingworld]

Honestly given what the guy was doing with it and its initials, if someone seeing he had an operating business on it is offering to buy it, there's very little conclusion to draw other than it'd be Yellow Pages going after it. Clearly the name alone would cost a lot but given the business on it too, anyone going after it would HAVE to have money and motivation.

That's right. The idea that you can anonymously purchase a domain name of this type is silly.

 

[allanh]

well, Yellow Pages could have gotten an employee to use a hotmail email account and make an offer of 250K .

 

[dotnom]

Right now even with the current crisis there are very few cases that LL.com names are sold below the 190-250K level.

Most of the LL owners just don't sell

 

[-REECE-]

If you aren't interested in a double premium, you can easily get one for half the figure you're quoting. There have been plenty of double premiums offered for sale for well under that, so I'm really not sure where you get that figure from. The sale is great but means squat for everyone owning LL.coms other than YP.com.

Right now even with the current crisis there are very few cases that LL.com names are sold below the 190-250K level.

Most of the LL owners just don't sell

 

[dotnom]

I saw the various LL.com sales that were reported last year and especially the last months after the economic crisis.
I took the figures from the owners of various premium LL names that i talked.

You're right i didn't look for random LL but meaningful with commercial potential. However most of the LL.com i know (premium or not) or emailed (only premium) are not for sale at the current low price range.

The YP.com sale is great but as you said it doesn't represent the LL.com market for now. It's an excellent example how a normal domain can bring a fortune to the domainer if he's able to get the right end-buyer

 

[allanh]

It's an excellent example how a normal domain can bring a fortune to the domainer if he's able to get the right end-buyer

the point is not to let your seller know you are the "endbuyer" :sold:

 

[floatingworld]

well, Yellow Pages could have gotten an employee to use a hotmail email account and make an offer of 250K .

Anybody selling a domain of that type will ask for a banker's reference. Think you can do it as Mr Smith using paypal do you?

 

[-REECE-]

I've heard of it happening a few times, however I don't know why more large companies don't hire reputable domainers/brokers to acquire the names they want for them... I'm sure it wouldn't have been cheap in this case, however I'm sure it still could have been had for less if they didn't announce themselves as being loaded

Anybody selling a domain of that type will ask for a banker's reference. Think you can do it as Mr Smith using paypal do you?

 

[allanh]

Anybody selling a domain of that type will ask for a banker's reference. Think you can do it as Mr Smith using paypal do you?

wired transfer is safe enough. Even buying through a Sedo broker would have gotten YP a lower price, imho.

Anyway, my point is the same as Reece's. You announce yourself being a cash cow to the world, everyone will look to get a slice off you.

 

[DNabc]

YP.org expired in 2007 and I start bidding but the end price was too high for me, I wonder how much it could be worth.