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sales Exclusive: SumoMe Buys Sumo.com Domain for $1.5 Million

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To what extent would you go to acquire the perfect domain name for your business? For SumoMe, a seven year pursuit of the incredible sumo.com domain name has just come to a conclusion. On Monday, we learned the news that SumoMe’s CEO Noah Kagan bought the domain sumo.com for a fee of $1.5 million.

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SumoMe provides free marketing tools to help small businesses grow by capturing more emails, and finding out exactly how visitors interact with a company’s website. It has become an extremely popular service that now powers over half a million websites, including AirBnB, Entrepreneur.com and TheChive.com.

Since 2010, SumoMe’s CEO Noah Kagan has been pursuing the domain name Sumo.com. Recently, Noah made the decision to acquire the name for $1.5 million. On Monday, we spoke with Noah, who confirmed the $1.5 million price tag and told us more about the deal:
It took 7 years, 4 domain brokers, 200+ emails, nearly flying to India but we finally got the domain we always wanted. Very much worth it.

Having now completed the purchase of Sumo.com, Noah has confirmed that SumoMe.com will now be rebranding to Sumo.com in a move that is sure to increase interest in the already popular marketing tools.

According to NameBio, Sumo.com was sold in 2008 by Sedo for a fee of $150,000, and thanks to DomainIQ’s WHOIS history, we can see that the name has been in the possession of the owner of HindustanTimes.com from 2008 until now. The $1.5 million price places Sumo.com as the second largest domain sale of the year, behind only 01.com on DNJournal’s year to date sales list. It also puts it on a par with other $1.5 million sales that include Russia.com, Cameras.com and Deposit.com.

Noah has just released a new podcast that explains his reasoning behind buying Sumo.com, and what he learned during the process. The podcast is available on his website, OKDork.com.

Congratulations to Noah and his team on finally acquiring Sumo.com.


Note: After discovering the sale of Sumo.com on Monday, SumoMe's CEO requested that we wait until Wednesday morning to publish, when we'd exclusively be able to reveal the news of this phenomenal sale.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Noah has gone into more detail about his purchase of Sumo.com on his podcast. Take a listen.
 
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The owner of HindustanTimes.com is a billionaire.
 
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Yeah got that news via sumo newsletter.. awesome!

BTW: Sumo rocks! :)
 
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There was no exclusive James they were talking to a lot of people about this, they contacted us at TheDomains last week. I don't think they told anyone they shared it with everyone at the time.
 
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Excellent deal!

There was no exclusive James they were talking to a lot of people about this, they contacted us at TheDomains last week. I don't think they told anyone they shared it with everyone at the time.
Thanks, I just reviewed the full correspondence. James was under the impression from those conversations that it would be an exclusive, after clearly stating it, and the CEO did not indicate otherwise. After review, I interpret it the same way and agree with James. I guess there was a miscommunication. ;)
 
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The reason this name sold for 1.5M is because buyer was chasing this name for years and needed it for better branding, which the seller knew.

Great price for seller. ..JMO
 
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Excellent deal!


Thanks, I just reviewed the full correspondence. James was under the impression from those conversations that it would be an exclusive, after clearly stating it, and the CEO did not indicate otherwise. After review, I interpret it the same way and agree with James. I guess there was a miscommunication. ;)

Oh I understand Eric, because I said to Michael I thought this was exclusive, I think they played everybody, as this is on Entrepreneur.com and other non domaining websites.
 
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Here's an exclusive counter-point on why this wasn't a great idea after all.
GEEEZ.
Another domainer that doesn't get customer "WANT"

Don't see similar counter points towards Godaddy.com moving to go.com
 
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[...] spending a much lesser amount could have avoided these issues, perhaps by focusing on the following type of domain acquisition: Getting a domain that defines, describes and delivers the company’s functions, in order to overcome the generic nature of their core brand.

For example, Sumo.Solutions is catchy and available. SumoSolutions.com even, looks barely used. SumoTraffic.com would have cost much less. SumoSlap.com could be a great choice of a brand that would rank high in the search engines.

Any of these domains would rank high in Google, unlike the potential of Sumo.com [..]



Copyright DomainGang.com: http://domaingang.com/domain-news/w...ing-the-domain-sumo-com-was-not-a-great-idea/

Sumo.solutions, sumosolutions.com ..yeah right!
sumo.me? .. better not to mention.

Why not:
sumo-marketing-tools.ws? .. it´s also available i guess.


At least i know where to get best branding/rebranding advice.
 
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Great article!

Just found what Noah said after they bought the "sumo.com" domain name:

[...] when the sale went through I thought of everything we could’ve bought with that money. A McLaren F1 supercar. A NetJet private membership. Five houses in Austin. You can’t even sleep inside Sumo.com! But still, I knew it was the right decision.

Found this on entrepreneur.com

Btw: $1.5 million was worth it ;)
 
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GEEEZ.
Another domainer that doesn't get customer "WANT"

Don't see similar counter points towards Godaddy.com moving to go.com

I'm actually not just a "domainer" but a brand specialist and developer. But simply by using my domainer role here - all 17 years of it - I can assure you that I very much "get" what customers want: a brand that stands out and makes sense about what it is about.

GoDaddy does not own Go.com - that's Disney.
 
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Yea, I know who you are. Thanks for your assurance.

"why this wasn't a great idea after all" My perspective suggests you don't get this decision.
Noah, "I knew it was the right decision" My perspective suggests you don't get this decision. THE CLIENT
all 17 years - What a a remarkable concurrence of events I've been around that long too.,1999
Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur- haven't had to work for a living since I was 23. Residuals that just don't end :)
So you don't like my perspective. Carry On. :)
Cheers
 
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I don't mind your perspective. It's yours but you support it with cliche phrases "what the client wants."

I support mine with plenty of analysis.

It's ok to disagree. Carry on as well.
 
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