Dynadot

sales STANDS4 Buys Lyrics.com in Their Most Expensive Purchase Ever

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In February of this year, we spoke to Yigal Ben Efraim as a part of our Inside Interview series, after he completed the purchase of Scripts.com from domain broker Ali Zandi (@Zandibot). During that interview, Yigal told us that he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on domain acquisitions.

top_logo_lyr.png

Lyrics.com's Logo
Since 2001, Yigal's company STANDS4 has been providing free educational resources online, and has purchased some incredible domains to help expand their network. Some of their existing sites include Grammar.com, Abbreviations.com and Symbols.com.

Today, Yigal emailed me to tell me about his brand new domain name, Lyrics.com. I think you'll all agree that this is an incredible domain, and the best possible name for a lyrics based website. STANDS4 acquired Lyrics.net for $65,000 some years ago, but has finally upgraded to the .COM.

According to Yigal, this was their most expensive domain acquisition ever, and as you may expect, this purchase took a lot of work. Negotiations on this purchase started in May 2015, and the domain transaction was only completed within the last couple of weeks.

Regarding the purchase price, Yigal told me: "Unfortunately I won't be able to disclose the price at the moment, but I can tell you it was by far our most expensive domain ever, and we've got a large number of premiums on our network that we've paid six figures for."

That would suggest a high six figure, or a low seven figure sale, but that is just speculation. The transaction was a cash deal that was completed via escrow.

Why was Lyrics.com such a desirable domain name for STANDS4? Yigal said: "We were operating an existing lyrics website under the Lyrics.net domain (which we've acquired on 2010 for $65,000) and very much wanted to upgrade to the .com version."

Online lyrics is a huge business that has a higher search volume than other lucrative generic keywords such as shopping, books and travel. I have no doubt that with the purchase of Lyrics.com, Yigal and his company will be one of the major players in the online lyrics business.

Congratulations to Yigal and STANDS4!
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Thanks for this interview. Those who knows the value of gold buys it. Cheers.
 
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I don't know your background, must be branding, but reason for drop in the rankings are simple: .net site
has way more links. Also it can be related to design change and bounce rate, if you direct .net visitors to new site with design unfamiliar for them some may leave right away.
It should go back to norm though, give it some time.

But it wasn't my point. I only said that any domain with investment in SEO, linkbuilding and creating quality content can flourish. If you would put this money you spend on domain there, results would come faster.

RapGenius was new kid on the block and they dominated the niche with investors money starting from the scratch.

I've got more than 15 years of SEO experience -- our network attract more than 10M unique visitors monthly.

Yes, if we had $40M to launch a new lyrics website like RapGenius had we'd probably flourish, and even they spent a fortune on branding to Genius.com eventually.

Since our budget for this initiative was slightly more modest, and as we already had the other ingredients you've mentioned in place (links, quality content & SEO), the smartest move we could have made is getting a hold of the ultimate industry category defining domain, which is undoubtedly: Lyrics.com.

We strongly believe this will get us the brand identity, authority, future linking, ongoing direct navigation traffic and search engine love, for a single, one-time and permanent expense. If you are indeed into the domain name business, you can't really underestimate the reasoning behind our move.
 
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For whoever still watching this, and was curious about the Google ranking issue -- we've managed to climb up nicely to result #5! more to come...
 
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Congrats - to have secured such an exclusive highly sought after one word .com is quite a result

musicians should pool resources and buy music.com if it became available and make their music available for free globally via that website and recoup their $'s from the ads on it

eg the music fan wins and the musicians win - eg win win
 
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Good deal for the seller.
Lyrics.com is only 8th place in the search for me, it's not the area where branding is important.
People searching for lyrics don't care what site they will find the answer at.
azlyrics.com, lyricsfreak.com, metrolyrics.com and few others dominate the niche. garbage domains but quality sites and SEO behind them.

Any SEO expert can grab LyricsDoc.com or LyricsWiz.com (both available @tm) and start eating your "huge business" lunch with minimal expense involved.
 
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Good deal for the seller.
Lyrics.com is only 8th place in the search for me, it's not the area where branding is important.
People searching for lyrics don't care what site they will find the answer at.
azlyrics.com, lyricsfreak.com, metrolyrics.com and few others dominate the niche. garbage domains but quality sites and SEO behind them.

Any SEO expert can grab LyricsDoc.com or LyricsWiz.com (both available @tm) and start eating your "huge business" lunch with minimal expense involved.

That's because you live in a Google world, but there are other search engines out there like Bing and DuckDuckGo where Lyrics.com is 1st.

Also, we are not planning on staying low on Google for long...
 
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Interesting, considering that most lyrics are actually copyrighted. Music publishers sometimes request that they get taken down.

Song lyrics on Lyrics.com are legally licensed from music publishers.
 
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I'm not unique in choosing Google as default search engine:

Here is a comparison of August 2016 vs. July 2016, with the previous month’s numbers in parentheses:
  • Google: 79.88% (79.17%)
  • Bing: 9.9% (10%)
  • DuckDuckGo: 0.41% (0.43%)
Looks like Google share is increasing, B + DDG under 10% and declining.

Good luck to your business, since you invest money there, I'm just watching on the side with no horse in this race.

I do appreciate your feedback -- it's true Google dominate search, but with such a massive audience for lyrics I wouldn't ignore 10% of the population.

We also believe brand does matter here, specifically for new artists who would like to get their work published online, and also for writers/journalists who cite existing work.

On a different note, I'll share something interesting with you and the other readers -- our previous domain Lyrics.net was #4 on Google before the transition. Now with Lyrics.com (combined with a legit forward from Lyrics.net) we dropped to #8. That obviously doesn't make sense and we attribute it to (a wrong) Google's EMD penalty or just a delay in their algorithm adjustment.

In any case, with our improved layouts and usability, massive amount of legal and relevant content, thousand of links from respected sources, the power of our existing network, and the best brand existing for our market we expect to lead the search results on Google sooner or later.

I invite you to watch closely ;)

Cheers,
Yigal
 
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our previous domain Lyrics.net was #4 on Google before the transition. Now with Lyrics.com (combined with a legit forward from Lyrics.net) we dropped to #8. That obviously doesn't make sense and we attribute it to (a wrong) Google's EMD penalty or just a delay in their algorithm adjustment.

I don't know your background, must be branding, but reason for drop in the rankings are simple: .net site
has way more links. Also it can be related to design change and bounce rate, if you direct .net visitors to new site with design unfamiliar for them some may leave right away.
It should go back to norm though, give it some time.

But it wasn't my point. I only said that any domain with investment in SEO, linkbuilding and creating quality content can flourish. If you would put this money you spend on domain there, results would come faster.

RapGenius was new kid on the block and they dominated the niche with investors money starting from the scratch.
 
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It is not a penalty or delay. Redirecting one domain to another does not pass its full link juice even if you do a 301 redirect.

I do appreciate your feedback -- it's true Google dominate search, but with such a massive audience for lyrics I wouldn't ignore 10% of the population.

We also believe brand does matter here, specifically for new artists who would like to get their work published online, and also for writers/journalists who cite existing work.

On a different note, I'll share something interesting with you and the other readers -- our previous domain Lyrics.net was #4 on Google before the transition. Now with Lyrics.com (combined with a legit forward from Lyrics.net) we dropped to #8. That obviously doesn't make sense and we attribute it to (a wrong) Google's EMD penalty or just a delay in their algorithm adjustment.

In any case, with our improved layouts and usability, massive amount of legal and relevant content, thousand of links from respected sources, the power of our existing network, and the best brand existing for our market we expect to lead the search results on Google sooner or later.

I invite you to watch closely ;)

Cheers,
Yigal
 
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Thanks, that might indeed be the case -- well, we'll see how it goes...

I have seen this many times before. Keep on working on the new site and build top notch links to it and you will get back soon in my opinion. Focus on quality not quantity.
 
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Even if Lyrics.com boosts SEO only by 10% it could pay for itself over time.

Lyrics.com might have a higher CTR compared to weaker URLs and visitors will remember it, you will never forget lyrics.com again. Returning traffic can be boosted enormously by such an URL.

You are also more likely to be perceived as an authority which will lead to more exposure in the media and more quality backlinks.

Even when the website shuts down the domain can still be resold.
 
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Great interview, thanks!
 
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Thanks James. Another good read.
 
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Thanks James for the good interview read with information.

I purchased VRLyrics/LyricsVR.com off a friend early this year for virtual reality where people can have competitive sing off battle with their avatars in the future. I really like the the word lyrics as most people know the word lyrics is associated with music:)

Virtual Reality will be huge for music and entertainment in the very near future IMO.
I own VRMusic.club & VRMusicClub.com as these can all tie in together. I've had NP inbox discussions with Ali early this year on how I believe VR will be the next big thing in the future 3-5yrs from now.

Currently we watch entertainment and music on a flat screen in-front of us. Very soon with VR we feel like we are immersed with what we are watching. It will interesting to look back in future years if my assumption is right or horribly wrong?

VRLyrics.com.png

LyricsVR.com.png
 
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Interesting, considering that most lyrics are actually copyrighted. Music publishers sometimes request that they get taken down.
 
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That's because you live in a Google world, but there are other search engines out there like Bing and DuckDuckGo where Lyrics.com is 1st.

Also, we are not planning on staying low on Google for long...
I'm not unique in choosing Google as default search engine:

Here is a comparison of August 2016 vs. July 2016, with the previous month’s numbers in parentheses:
  • Google: 79.88% (79.17%)
  • Bing: 9.9% (10%)
  • DuckDuckGo: 0.41% (0.43%)
Looks like Google share is increasing, B + DDG under 10% and declining.

Good luck to your business, since you invest money there, I'm just watching on the side with no horse in this race.
 
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It is not a penalty or delay. Redirecting one domain to another does not pass its full link juice even if you do a 301 redirect.

Thanks, that might indeed be the case -- well, we'll see how it goes...
 
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i made lyrics247.com drop.. didnt even know... I'm scratching my head, like i would never do that...I must have been low on cash.
 
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