domain e-Buy.com: A piece of internet history.. in 2000, a 7 million offer received?!

[Domain Jedi]

Hello NamePros,

What do you think e-Buy.com is worth?

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Here is a little food for thought. According to BBC News, 9 years ago, a £4.6m ($7m) offer was made for e-Buy.com and associated trademarks.

FYI: None of the original trademarks are in effect today.

The owner of the domain at the time decided he would make more money by using the name himself.

BBC News | BUSINESS | Gambling on the e-future

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Now let’s fast forward 9 years. What is this domain worth today?

Please note that e-Buy.com receives 275 visitors per day on the average.

Also, the current Alexa Traffic Rank is: 866,043

Additionally, the domain is over 12 years old.

What do you think?

Thank you for your time!

DJ

 

[mjbenterprises]

Not sure what it's worth now, but I can't believe they turned down such an offer in 2000 for a domain with a hyphen... That, to me, is the epitome of greed, and in this case , they obviously made a BIG mistake in turning down such a large sum...

 

[Domain Jedi]

I can't believe they turned down such an offer in 2000 for a domain with a hyphen... That, to me, is the epitome of greed, and in this case , they obviously made a BIG mistake in turning down such a large sum...

Pretty crazy huh..

 

[nicedomains]

Not sure what it's worth now, but I can't believe they turned down such an offer in 2000 for a domain with a hyphen... That, to me, is the epitome of greed, and in this case , they obviously made a BIG mistake in turning down such a large sum...

I don't think it's the epitome of greed. After reading the article it seems to me more like the registrant was an 'overly' optimistic. The guy truly believed that his domain and business model were going to make the $7 million offer seem like a drop in the bucket down the road. You must have some of that attitude and drive to make it huge, guess it didn't work out for the e-buy owner but can you imagine if after a year of working on their project google owners decided to sell google for $7 million?? I'm sure they had the opportunity, and if they had crashed we may be speculating about that domain today.

Anyway, back to subject :talk:

I think it's still a great domain name, tough to put a price on but I will guess it's value is in the the $xx,xxx range. There has to be something far better than sedo parking for this one. Seems like this domain is yearning to be monetized using an ebay store affiliate, or links to some online marketplace. Curious as to how you came upon owning this domain Jedi?

 

[mjbenterprises]

Well, if you look at the Archived records of the site e-buy.com, you can see they never really had a REAL development plan.. All they had were big dreams, and not much else, except the fact that e-buy.com IS a decent name, but NEVER , in any market, will the name itself be worth anything close to 7 million..

This decision not to sell at that price must rank as one of the worst domaining mistakes in history....

 

[Domain Jedi]

I think it's still a great domain name, tough to put a price on but I will guess it's value is in the the $xx,xxx range. There has to be something far better than sedo parking for this one. Seems like this domain is yearning to be monetized using an ebay store affiliate, or links to some online marketplace. Curious as to how you came upon owning this domain Jedi?

First of all, I appreciate the appraisal!!

I recently acquired this domain from iREIT via a third party vendor. I am currently considering how to best monetize this domain taking into account the great traffic it receives.

 

[Domain Jedi]

Anyone else care to comment?

 

[rokoroko]

buy.com or amazon affiliate would be my choice with the traffic you have

 

[Domain Jedi]

buy.com or amazon affiliate would be my choice with the traffic you have

I appreciate your feedback. I am parking the domain at Parked.com to analyze the traffic. After I give the domain about a week, I am going to take a close look at the mentioned affiliate programs.

 

[DubDubDubDot]

He could have sold the name and continued on with his project using a different one. That should have been a no brainer.

There has to be more to this story. Maybe they were a typical .bust company that was just in the business of securing venture capital to pay their bloated salaries and the site was the typical smoke & mirrors of the period. $3M cash is a lot of money, but it's less tempting if they were on the VC gravy train back then. Who knows.

 

[zoogo]

Totally understand this guy's perspective.

Primest keyword online, period.

Sometimes domainers are so short-sighted. Like the world is gonna end in 2012 - which it may but probably not in that way.

---------- Post added at 04:41 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:40 PM ----------

This decision not to sell at that price must rank as one of the worst domaining mistakes in history....

Thats right, but its also one of the best decisions in business history.

 

[owntype]

Yes, try affiliate networks. For parking, dotzup.com would be the best choice for this domain. GL

 

[DubDubDubDot]

Offers received from eBuy.com in 1999 and 2000. Archive.org shows that at the time eBuy was just a tiny B2B service enabling companies to sell online. If they wanted e-buy.com for consumer sales, why not just rebrand the much more powerful eBuy.com????

By 2003 both eBuy.com and e-Buy.com are the same service (which looks like garbage). So they either bought it, partnered or the story was fake and for free publicity.

 

[donrich]

it worth up to $ 10 m

 

[Domain Jedi]

it worth up to $ 10 m

I like the way you think!

 

[Ben42]

A remnant from before the dot com bubble burst. To the owners they prob saw billions in sales and didn't want to let it go cheap. Those days where it is worth that much are long gone.

Still today, considering it's traffic and history I'd put it at about 12-15k wholesale. I'm sure someone could develop it into a very profitable affiliate site. Best of luck!

 

[Domain Jedi]

I really appreciate the comments thus far! If I could only turn back time. :hehe: