Last week after reading in the Domaining.com newsletter:
Hello,
Game is over. Next week I will announce the new owner of domaining.com.
TGIF
Francois
Myself and many others assumed the deal was done and started speculating how much it sold for and who the buyer was. The poll I posted had almost 100 votes – lots of varying opinions on the value! Yesterday, Francois did a guest post on TheDomains in which he explained after receiving an offer meeting his reserve (but deal not closed) he prematurely made the above announcement…in hopes of getting the other buyers to jump and come back to the table with higher offers. It seems now there is no buyer yet for domaining.com at the price level Francois seeks to sell, which he has stated is seven figures+.
I agree with some of the sentiment from the commenters on TheDomains article yesterday, that it was a mistake to announce the sale early and bad negotiation tactic. I disagree with all the folks who think domaining.com is something that can be easily replicated. There is no replicating domaining.com – it is the one website that if you ask anyone in the domain industry where to find the best daily domain news and opinion columns they will send you. Surely, domaining.com wouldn’t be where it is today without bloggers like Alleman, Silver, Schwartz, Berkens, Cultra, etc…however, it’s a two way street. Those blogs, this one and many others wouldn’t have the readership, traffic and advertisers without domaining.com, the man behind it and the passion he has for domaining.
You are wright: Domaining.com is unique as Domain Name and maybe worth $100K-$150K (Hard to believe somebody will pay +7 figures) but the website as design has low value and is very easy to replicate. Is just a fedd aggregator like many outhers out there. The only value there is the Domain Name: Domaining.com
Industry news you can also find at: NameBee.com, NicMarket.com and many, many outhers …
Hi Bill, thanks for the comment. Yes, a blog aggregator can easily be replicated – that’s not my point. I am familiar with namebee, domainsville and other domain blog aggregators. What can’t be replicated is the loyal audience, the length of time domaining.com has been the #1 resource for domain industry news, other services are tied into it and all of this on the best possible domain for the purpose of the site.
Go to a domain conference and ask someone what’s domaining.com? My guess is 95% of the folks will be able to answer and of those probably 65% will have had visited the site in the previous 7 days. Ask the same folks about the other domain blog aggregators and see how many know what you are talking about.
@mlaw do not count on “loyal audience” as readers will flock to better sites and services as the days of loyal readership are over.
True Domaining.com is a very good domain but the website itself is not worth anywhere near $1 million+ ( how will you ever redeem that investment?the industry is too small and getting smaller hence all the mergers) There is no original content and the Domain blog heyday is long gone and the domaining feed is on the decline as there are only a handful of blogs worth reading now and if 2 or more were to disappear then Domaining.com’s effectiveness will be greatly reduced .
Yes domaining.com has value as it has traffic but how much $ is that traffic turning into? The P/E ratio he is asking for is ridiculous, it will take a person 30 years to recoup their purchase price.
The other thing is domaining offers no unique content themselves. And crowds can be fickle, look at Digg and how it dominated and then got demolished by Reddit. Someone else opens an aggregator and treats the bloggers nice with free ad placements or free sponsored headlines in return for exclusivity then what happens to domaining.com? Domaining offers the bloggers nothing, in fact it charges blogs $500 to get added to its feed. Without domaining.com the bloggers still have their blogs, without the blogs then domaining.com has nothing.
@Alan – domain industry is getting smaller? I’d love for you to clue me in on how you came to that conclusion.. mergers..? hmm. If there are only a handful of domain blogs worth reading now – what are you doing here? Surely, this one is not in the top 5. How did you find this post?
MLaw: That is exactly what I was saying: Domaining.com is a good brand and has a nice audience (if you check ALEXA stats his audience declined a lot over the last 3-4 years) so the domain name Domaining.com is the only value of this sale. The website has NO value at all. Poor and easy to replicate. Obviously who buys Domaining.com gets the audience as well (type-in traffic). About the value as I said before it may be worth $100K – $150K but never +7 figures. 7 figures may be worth DOMAIN.com or DOMAINS.com but not Domaining.com
@Mlaw
If you are not aware of companies like Rook Media, Endurance Group and Godaddy acquiring/merging domain properties then it sounds like you may need to read Domaining.com a bit more and yes, you are right you are not one of the handful of blogs that I read religiously, but why would you be, you write about twice a month. I only came here because your story about Domaining.com being sold was the freshest post on Google.
I don’t see why you have hostility towards me for merely putting in my 2 cents
@Bill – The domaining.com brand (including newsletter email database, audience, traffic, inbound links, advertisers, etc…) are all part of the website. Again, yes, a blog aggregator can be replicated somewhat easily but I wholeheartedly disagree that the domain name is the only value of the sale. I am aware that the traffic has gone down in recent years – aggregators have lots of competition with other ways to find articles, especially social media. I actually like the domaining.com interface opposed to others and continue to directly navigate to that site daily to see what’s happening in the domain industry. For me, it’s easy to find news and views all in one place. You say domaining.com has a poor design.. you’re not hurting my feelings but you leave yourself open for criticism as you link to and mention NicMarket in your first comment. Whether that’s your site or not, I visited it today and IMHO that design is worse than domaining.com, too busy for the eyes. As far as the value I am not arguing domaining.com is worth 7 figures, I have never stated what I think the value is. The fact is that it is worth whatever a potential buyer is willing to pay. We do not know what that figure is, and I guess at this point Francois doesn’t either. Anyway, thanks for the lively discussion Bill! 😉
@Alan – I am aware of the mergers. To me that alone doesn’t signal a decline. I see a growing industry full of energy, new domainers, new TLDs, more ad dollars, higher premium sales and more people attending domain events. I was at NamesCon last year and this year, much bigger, much more money spent, a successful auction this year. Sure, newTLDs are a big part of it but that is still part of the industry..that I see is growing. The Internet is not going anywhere – people and businesses will always need domain names. I wasn’t trying to be a jackass earlier by posing those questions to you, I was honestly curious. Thanks for sharing where you found this blog and I really appreciate you stopping in to add your comments. All the best Alan! Cheers, Mike