5000 Ruble bills.
SputnikNews.com, the newly launched web site about Russia, attracted global media attention after Russian news agency, RIA Novosti, announced its rebranding.
We uncovered who the previous owner was, using DomainTools, and speculated on the selling price for the domain.
A Russian publication unveiled today that the sale of SputninkNews.com by its owner, Ukrainian citizen Roman Korneev, was for 5,000 Rubles – a mere $107 dollars.
The sale occurred two months ago, when Roman Korneev was approached for the domain, which combines the Soviet satellite name with the word “news.”
According to the article, Korneev set up a basic “simple blog, not very interesting” to host advertising, but he found out that search engines like Yandex and Google actively promote their own ad channels, dropping the rank of web sites that contain a lot of ads.
Following the recent launch of the propaganda portal, Korneev was taken aback by the news, stating that had he known who the buyer was, he would have asked for much more money.
Many thanks to Russian domain investor “Aleksei” for the tip. For the full article in Russian, click here.
Unfortunate for the seller, I wonder what he could have got? Probably something in the $XXXX range USD.
Rob – That would have been substantially more, don’t forget the local economies are not doing too great. E.g., $5,000 USD is 233,000 Rubles.