.mobi Purchased for $200,000 Sold for $6,500

In a few years we will see the same things from people "investing" in TLD's like .BEST

NYJimbo said:

In a few years we will see the same things from people "investing" in TLD's like .BEST

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The .Company guy will be a living testimony

You know who. (Statement not question )

creataweb said:

You know who.

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The Domain King @Rick Schwartz

NYJimbo said:

In a few years we will see the same things from people "investing" in TLD's like .BEST

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The same thing is valid for any tld, including .com, last year naturalbeauty.com was sold for 10k after being acquired for 65k a few years back and that's happening every year with a few acquisitions, doesn't matter if it's .mobi, .best .or .com

boker said:

The same thing is valid for any tld, including .com, last year naturalbeauty.com was sold for 10k after being acquired for 65k a few years back and that's happening every year with a few acquisitions, doesn't matter if it's .mobi, .best .or .com

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NaturalBeauty.com can still sell back to $200k and above. Can you say the same about any new TLD? That's the difference.

The owner sold at that price maybe because he needed money so urgently.

dande said:

NaturalBeauty.com can still sell back to $200k and above. Can you say the same about any new TLD? That's the difference.

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If somebody would have been so sure than he can get 200k for it, I'm sure that the ex owner would have received higher offers than 10k in the 5 years or so. Also, a .club was sold recently for 500k after being acquired for 19k, so everything it's possible today for lot's of tlds.....what will happen in 5 years, nobody can be sure, neither for .com or ngtld, that's why domaining it's more speculation and instinct than a science.

boker said:

If somebody would have been so sure than he can get 200k for it, I'm sure that the ex owner would have received higher offers than 10k in the 5 years or so. Also, a .club was sold recently for 500k after being acquired for 19k, so everything it's possible today for lot's of tlds.....what will happen in 5 years, nobody can be sure, neither for .com or ngtld, that's why domaining it's more speculation and instinct than a science.

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The thing is, it was not "a" club, it was "the" club. Literally! The.Club, probably top 10 possible meaningful combo for that .tld and even then involved lots of luck that a rich heir decided to name his business idea that and the money was not an object.

.mobi was the total dud and anyone that experienced that rush and bust has got kind of vaccinated and won't fall for any marketing gimmicks, google is behind argument, etc.

Recons.Com said:

The thing is, it was not "a" club, it was "the" club. Literally! The.Club, probably top 10 possible meaningful combo for that .tld and even then involved lots of luck that a rich heir decided to name his business idea that and the money was not an object.

.mobi was the total dud and anyone that experienced that rush and bust has got kind of vaccinated and won't fall for any marketing gimmicks, google is behind argument, etc.

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He was saying 'any new tld', not a specific keyword before the tld. For sure flowers.mobi is much more worse than the.club, but they were acquired in different times and they don't particulary need to have the same future(but they could). The main idea is that nobody knows exactly what the future will bring in 5-10 years.

@boker no one knows what the future will bring in 5-10 for sure. I agree with you. But there are things which we are certain about.

1. There will still be internet in the next 10 years.
2. Businesses (both new and old) will still exist in the next 5-10 years.
3. .Com will still be king in the next 5-10 years.

While it is easy for people to take various lessons from .mobi, I think it is a parallel that is not quite the same as anything else. The gurus of the tech world, and a consortium of big name companies, at first decreed that every site would need a regular version and a mobile version on .mobi. So it had instant demand, and that was driven by an auction process that wrung huge sums out of those who were involved. Then one major player as a company decided to go a different way with mobile web serving, and as they say, the rest is history.

Other than the simple fact that paying a lot for any domain name does not mean that it will necessarily sell for the same amount, I don't think there is anything else to be learned from this. It was an alternative legacy extension that was promoted as being essential for one purpose. Then it wasn't.

Bob

But why would @Rick Schwartz of all people throw it $200,000 to buy Flowers.mobi? How much was he expecting it would be sold?

dande said:

@boker no one knows what the future will bring in 5-10 for sure. I agree with you. But there are things which we are certain about.

1. There will still be internet in the next 10 years.
2. Businesses (both new and old) will still exist in the next 5-10 years.
3. .Com will still be king in the next 5-10 years.

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I'm not sure sure of any of your points, but if you are sure, maybe you can see the future and than you will can make all the right choices and you would have to be a BillGates/MarkZuckerber/JeffBezos combined. We could have internet, but we could have multiple networks of internet or we could have a different one. Also, regarding 3.- .com it's not the king in lot's of countries today, from some EU countries to most asian countries or others, so try to guess what will be in ten years.

dande said:

But why would @Rick Schwartz of all people throw it $200,000 to buy Flowers.mobi? How much was he expecting it would be sold?

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Everyone at the time felt that .mobi would be parallel for mobile phones that .com/.net etc were for everything else. Therefore it was seen that the value would be the same as the combined value of the other extensions in that word. If you thought mobile would have 50% of the market, it would be worth as much as the .com+.net etc. This view that the investment was strong was predicated on one thing that never happened (Apple did not play the game) - that each site would NEED a .mobi. They were auctioned to the highest bidders.

The mindset for .mobi was not at all like when the new extensions were later introduced. The idea for .mobi was every site NEEDED just that extension. If anything it is more similar to the idea that every business needs the .com.

Bob

Yeah, we all believed that mobi was gonna be great, especially as it was aggressively promoted by Google. But spending $200,000 for any .mobi was highly unimaginable.

dande said:

1. There will still be internet in the next 10 years.
2. Businesses (both new and old) will still exist in the next 5-10 years.
3. .Com will still be king in the next 5-10 years.

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I think each of these are probable, but by no means certain (at least not 1 and 3). I think there will be internet but it may look very different or people hardly recognize it as the same. I think based on last decade trends it is likely that .com will have something like 40% +/- 10% of the world's web traffic, but I don't think it is an absolute certainty.

I said this in another thread, but to me as a domain investor the most worrying statistic is that Wix has 110 million active users, or about 70x the total number of domain sales for all years ever recorded in NameBio. I think that the critical question will be whether services like that continue to grow, or whether there is a backlash against social media giants (like FB where many tiny companies are placing their corporate presence) and there are more domains purchased (I realize some of those Wix users do have their own domain name). I think the biggest uncertainty about .com is largely political. That may affect the internet future as well. But I think it is highly probable people will still be selling .com for good values in 5 yrs time at least.

Bob

dande said:

But why would @Rick Schwartz of all people throw it $200,000 to buy Flowers.mobi? How much was he expecting it would be sold?

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Nobody knows why. At the time there was a lot of speculation about why he paid that much, some people suggesting it was not a genuine sale, but a gimmick to boost .mobi prices. He explained, as I recall, that what motivated him to buy it was the strong bidding at the auction, which does sound impulsive. By the way, after selling for 6.5k I believe the domain sold finally for 5k.

carob said:

Nobody knows why. At the time there was a lot of speculation about why he paid that much, some people suggesting it was not a genuine sale, but a gimmick to boost .mobi prices. He explained, as I recall, that what motivated him to buy it was the strong bidding at the auction, which does sound impulsive. By the way, after selling for 6.5k I believe the domain sold finally for 5k.

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Auctions sometimes can be damaging, especially when you have serious competitions, it becomes more of ego rather than sound business decisions.

dande said:

Yeah, we all believed that mobi was gonna be great, especially as it was aggressively promoted by Google. But spending $200,000 for any .mobi was highly unimaginable.

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Not just Google. This from Wikipedia.on .mobi.

dande said:

But spending $200,000 for any .mobi was highly unimaginable.

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I mean looking back it is easy to say that, but at the time it was felt that each .mobi would have at least the value of the corresponding .com. It would not be ridiculous to pay that for the .com in the same word. In face eFlowers in .com, not even just flowers, sold for $1 million. It was the idea that all but two companies were promoting that each website would NEED the .mobi or it would not work with mobile phones. Had that come to pass,.mobi would have been worth even those lofty investments.

Bob

Bob Hawkes said:

While it is easy for people to take various lessons from .mobi, I think it is a parallel that is not quite the same as anything else.

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Two lessons:
A bubble, in which some people really did make money, and other speculated wildly and lost.
Insolvency of registry - Dotmobi basically became insolvent, the investors did not want to put more in, so it was passed (donated?) to Afilias. Note how domain speculators happily ignore the fundamentals of the registries and focus on the extensions.

Bob Hawkes said:

The gurus of the tech world, and a consortium of big name companies, at first decreed that every site would need a regular version and a mobile version on .mobi. So it had instant demand, and that was driven by an auction process that wrung huge sums out of those who were involved.

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The domain had demand from speculators, hitting 1.2m. But it was never necessary to access the mobile web, just a possible convenience at the time for finding mobile-friendly content for very limited pre-smartphones. It was Nokia's idea (look what happened to them) and they got big names like Google, Microsoft, and Visa to invest a lot, but by the time of launch none of the big players had any appetite for serving their mobile content on .mobi.

Bob Hawkes said:

I mean looking back it is easy to say that, but at the time it was felt that each .mobi would have at least the value of the corresponding .com.

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True, the idea was, the mobile web is coming (not here yet) and the surest way to access it will be via a .mobi domain, so if we grab them now, we are securing prime real estate on the mobile web.

Problem is, mobile web does not equal .mobi, no matter how much people wanted it to. It would be like saying today video will be big, so register every .tv you can since all vids will be served on .tv.

Many transactions are done just for tax optimization or something like that...
Don't believe in all reports you see. A part of them is always fake.

Jurgen Wolf said:

Many transactions are done just for tax optimization or something like that...
Don't believe in all reports you see. A part of them is always fake.

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Yes I am very sceptical of some of the new registries reporting big end user sales. It is easy for them to set a public price, say 10k, then privately arrange a loan or credit terms which are ultra flexible and might even let the client just give back a domain after a few years or avoid paying in some other way.

dande said:

But why would @Rick Schwartz of all people throw it $200,000 to buy Flowers.mobi? How much was he expecting it would be sold?

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back then, speculators actually thought that the iPhone was going to have .mobi as the default extension in it's web browser

if you really want to know why Rick spent $200k, read the story:

ricksblog.com/2007/11/the-real-story/#.XNR5_3dFzIU

imo...