Is the domain Cold War over yet?
Back in November 2009 the domain name Russia.com was sold to a mystery buyer for the whopping amount of $1.5 million dollars. The web site is still parked, at GoDaddy no less, making the legendary Bob Parsons proud that he can command the Ruski traffic.
Three years earlier, in December 2006, Vodka.com was sold for twice as much: $3 million dollars. That’s one expensive firewater, if you asked me.
Today, Vodka.com is a seemingly developed, invitation-only web site. Heck, for $3 million dollars just for the domain alone, one would think that spending another $25k for out-of-the-box web development would be the right thing to do.
However, the Vodka.com invitation portal has been there for months. Somehow, we don’t believe that there is anything sober behind the gates of Vodka.com
In the summer of 2008, the domain name America.com was sold for $1.7 million dollars, slightly more than Russia.com. Two years later, what could have been the main flag of American Internet is just another GoDaddy parking page.
Bob Parsons: 2 – Internet users: 0
Let’s move on to Cowboys.com – that much advertised $370,000 sale that eclipsed the previous $275,000 offer by the Dallas Cowboys who then reneged on the deal. Despite having its own fanfare band and even a case study, Cowboys.com is nowadays nothing more than a “gold rush” city with tumble weed rolling through its once busy streets.
Moral of the story: largely advertised domain purchases are often performed by people that lack the development skills and a business plan and substitute these with suitcases of money. And when one has money to burn, the end result is exactly as pictured at these four domains.
I think your comments were unfair regarding Russia.com and Vodka.com. Russia.com is a great long-term investment at $1.5m, about as good as it gets. It is obviously speculative, but it can easily sell for 15m in 10 years. So who cares what the owner does with the name for now. And Vodka.com was bought at a very fair end user price. Maybe the owner will use it for international marketing at some point in the future, maybe the name will be wasted away forever. The owner probably does not know and does not care at this point. So if the owner does not care about these $3m, I don’t know why domainers who are not part of the conversation would care.
America.com and Cowboys.com were poor speculative investments at their prices in my opinion, so they are a different story.
The fact remains that Russia.com is parked at GoDaddy. That alone jeopardizes its future, both in terms of visits and in terms of shielding against a WIPO.
About Vodka.com – the point I made is that there is no actual web site to visit as nothing has changed from the current state in months and years. It’s a faux project, if you ask me.
There are several such examples, this is about several famous ones.
Even planning a future sale, both domains would perform better if they some kind of content. in my opinion. Anything is possible Join.me was re sold, last week, 2 months after acquisition, for $45K, a $30K+ profit, again just the domain without any site. You also have to give credit to the fact, that if they are commanding such large, risky investments, they must know what they are doing.
Everyone has their right to their opinion – having said that- I wish I have that kind of problem. Lots of money to spend on domains and doing nothing with them.
Anyway, I am content with my own BullShitwebsites and BullShitDomains.
Since I Can’t get good generic domains, I might as well piss them off tell everyone that their websites are full of BS…
Abe
“You also have to give credit to the fact, that if they are commanding such large, risky investments, they must know what they are doing”
Hasn’t this train of thought been proved wrong again and again over the last 100 years.
Money does not equal brains
Management does not equal brains
brains equal brains.