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interviews Inside Interview: Behind the Million Dollar PX.com Purchase

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This week's Inside Interview is with Frans van Hulle, the CEO and Co-founder of ReviMedia - a company that has a long history of producing high-quality lead generation websites on premium domain names. In August 2015, it was announced that the company had acquired the domain name PX.com for $1 million plus other considerations.

The domain was acquired from Andrew Rosener, CEO of MediaOptions.com and recent inductee into The Domain Conference Hall of Fame. At the time of ReviMedia's acquisition, Frans stated that owning PX.com was "exciting and a big step forward for ReviMedia."

Two letter .COM domain names are a hot topic at the moment, and it's very rare that we get to see some of the thought process behind such acquisitions. Thanks to Frans and ReviMedia for their time in answering our questions.


NP: Can you give us a brief description of ReviMedia - the company behind the PX.com acquisition?

Frans: ReviMedia is a lead generation company, operating in a range of verticals within insurance, home services, financial services and automotive industries. Its portfolio ranges from own web properties, concepts, and optimized lead generation campaigns to an in-house best-in-class developed SaaS platform LXP.

ReviMedia connects its publishers and lead buyers to empower their performance with a revolutionary technology in lead scoring & verification, guaranteeing maximum lead quality. ReviMedia is headquartered in NY and operates in four countries.


NP: Congratulations on the acquisition of PX.com. How did you find out that PX.com was available to purchase? Did you actively seek out the name, or was it a domain name that was offered to you?

Frans: I am a pretty active domainer myself, always following the latest developments and looking for good investments. However, PX.com I missed initially. I happen to be good friends with Andrew Rosener [CEO of MediaOptions.com] and coincidentally we started to talk about PX.com. We have been looking to re-brand our LXP platform for quite some time and have considered a couple of names but nothing beats PX.com. It just happened to be a great match.


NP: How did you determine the domain was worth $1 million to you?

Frans: Good question, and also hard to answer. Each 2-letter domain has its own story and valuation. People owning 2-letter domains like to use the sale of FB.com for $8.5mm as an example but that is an isolated case and not necessary representative for other 2-letter domains.

To come to some kind of bench mark, I looked at the reported sales of 2-letter domains of the last 3 years and took an average, both for 'whole sale’/investors market and retail/end-user sales. Furthermore, we analyzed the annual growth rate of the reported sales and came to a rough benchmark and a forecasted value increase. At the end, partly due the great sales skills of Andrew, we were willing to pay $1mm for this name. It is the perfect name for what we envision and future will tell if this was a good investment or not but for sure PX.com is a great asset.


NP: Do you think the domain is worth more than you were willing to pay for it?

Frans: Future will tell. I believe there is already a premium paid at this price point. As a domain investor I look at deals such as SX.com (reported $1.6mm, after the initial sale of $800k I believe), NL.com ($550k) and some other deals in the $600k-$700k range and in comparison with those the price point of PX.com was representative as at end we are an end-user of the domain.


NP: Would you have considered paying more than you did for PX.com?

Frans: No we would not have paid more, although we have provided some extra potential upside through other consideration.


NP: For ReviMedia, what's the attraction of owning a two-letter .COM domain?

Frans: I’ll be honest with you, first of all, it is a bit of an ego thing. Owning a 2-letter domain always has been a great wish and now actually owning PX.com gave a great sense of achievement. From an investment point of view, it creates extra value for our company and being able to brand our platform to PX.com will boost our growth, mainly internationally. The trust factor of a 2-letter domain is just invaluable.


NP: Can you give us details of the negotiations which lead to you agreeing upon a price? (Their asking price, your opening offer, counter offers, etc.)

Frans: Andrew and I have known each other for a long time and the negotiation process was actually pretty straight forward. The negotiation was mainly around the details and terms rather the price. Finding agreement on the price took perhaps a 30 minute conversation. It took me some time to make the final decision, mainly because I wanted to make sure there would not be any obvious trademark issues. We’ve analyzed this well before pulling the trigger.


NP: What does the future hold for PX.com? Do you plan on developing the domain?

Frans: Yes, absolutely. We’ll soon announce the official re-branding of our platform to PX.com. The website is about to go live in a couple of weeks.


NP: I noticed on your website that ReviMedia owns and operates a number of other premium domain names such as HomeSafety.com and BestQuotes.com. Do you believe that operating a website on a premium domain gives you an advantage over other sites in the same market?

Frans: Absolutely. We believe strongly (and we actually have real numbers to prove this) that a premium domain has multiple advantages. First of all, there is the trust factor. Someone is just more inclined to fill in a lead form on BestQuotes.com than Auto-Insurance-Cheap.info (just an example, and I hope I don’t offend anyone).

Furthermore, we have seen better overall conversions and lower drop-off rates on our campaigns. For us an important factor is that having a premium domain provides better access to big lead buyers and leading advertisers as well due to, again, the trust factor. Other domains we have are RefinanceCalculator.com, MortgageOnline.com and TopSolar.com.



Inside Interviews is a blog series profiling the buyers of high-value domain names. Find out their motives, negotiation tactics, and their opinions on popular domaining topics only on the NamePros Blog.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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@jamesiles Thanks for this presentation. A great payment for a great name.

Cheers.
 
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@jamessiles - Awesome interview. I like this series. Excellent work. Hope i get to own a LL.com someday:)
 
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Thanks for your comments @domainnamesdirect - if you have a spare couple of million, then perhaps you'll get one ;)
 
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And I'am here struggling to sell my domain name for $10 :)
 
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James I must say your interview posts are great. I read most of them. Always learning something. I can't imagine how 2 letters make it so expensive.
Buying a domain is not like buying a house. When you buy a house, you buy more rooms, then you should pay more. But in domains, it seems the opposite. Shouldn't it be more letters equals bigger, should make it more expensive?
 
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James I must say your interview posts are great. I read most of them. Always learning something. I can't imagine how 2 letters make it so expensive.
Buying a domain is not like buying a house. When you buy a house, you buy more rooms, then you should pay more. But in domains, it seems the opposite. Shouldn't it be more letters equals bigger, should make it more expensive?

You've been on Namepros since 2010 and I find this very amusing, no offense though.
 
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Yes, you got that right.
I wrote it for a good laughs. I guess you're the only that read it and responded.

Are you to Namescon Namecloud?
 
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