
WW.com Sold in Private - larrys
http://www.domaininvesting.com/ww-com-sold-private/
======
drcode
Seems like a bad time to be buying domains, since the new TLDs are going to
shift the supply/demand landscape.

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jacquesm
Which is exactly why I decided to sell.

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dfischer
I have a list of domains I've gathered over the years. What would you
recommend doing if I wanted to see which are valuable? And secondly how do I
go about finding buyers?

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jacquesm
> What would you recommend doing if I wanted to see which are valuable?

Attempt to sell them. That's the only way you can establish the value of
anything.

One easy way to get an idea is by looking at recent transactions for similar
domains (do not look at the asking prices, they are typically not realistic).

> And secondly how do I go about finding buyers?

There are many ways to attract buyers, advertising, auctions, brokers,
messages on the domain itself, a blog post. Whatever you feel is required.

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unreal37
Congrats to one of my favorite HN contributors. Hope you got something close
to what you were asking.

Now if I can only sell my 2 letter domain for that...

~~~
jacquesm
> Now if I can only sell my 2 letter domain for that...

I'm pretty sure you could. What domain do you have?

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larrys
I understand that you said your broker did a good job for you so I'm sure
others would want to contact him. For example the parent commenter.

But if you follow the links the site premiumurls.net redirects to twitter and
the whois info is private (and why does it need to be?)

If he is really good at what he does then why is that, other than trying to
operate in some kind of stealth mode?

How did you hear about him originally I can't find out that much about him. (I
am finding that history records indicate a woman was attached to that domain
name and it seems odd that someone would pick a .net like that..)

~~~
jacquesm
tom at premiumurls dot net

Feel free to refer to me as the link-up (or reference this thread).

I completely understand someone that does not have a very public service in a
high stakes market. Being extremely visible is not always helpful. But he's
earned his spot in the light on this one and since it's easy to find him
through tfa I'm sure he's ok with his contact info being listed here.

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crisnoble
I just went to ww.com, clicked translate and it said the following (originally
in Chinese) "Your domain name is for sale.

A good domain only have the economic strength and strategic vision of the
business or individual reservations!"

Was this what jacquesm had on there or is this post aquisition? For some
reason I found it quite funny.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, it's funny, and that's post acquisition.

Let me explain what drives this process. The buyer here is a Chinese company
that somehow magically can move millions of $US to the other side of the
world. _Most_ Chinese companies, even those that have lots of $US can not do
that, they run into the $50K/year barrier that the Chinese central bank has
set up.

So by buying domains abroad and then offering them to Chinese buyers that can
not move their $ outside of China these people will make a substantial profit
on their deal. And I don't think it takes too much imagination to figure out
why they can move money out of China when everybody else can not.

~~~
samstave
Corruption?

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jacquesm
More or less, yes. My take on this is that if they allowed people to wire all
that money back out for goods that it would turn out that not all the money is
there anymore.

It's very nice to look at all your dollars in a Chinese bank account when you
can't do anything with them unless you go through the 'happy few'.

Think of the effect a bank run would have if all those people demanded to
actually see their dollars ostensibly kept in Chinese dollar accounts. That
would have some interesting effects, but I hope the day will not come while
I'm alive.

~~~
gabemart
It's none of my business, but to an outsider it seems like you're being
_extremely_ frank about this whole thing.

~~~
jacquesm
What's wrong with that?

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larrys
Perhaps if Jacques is not willing to give the price that he sold the name for
he could mention the % that the broker received for the sale and/or the gross
commission.

Edit: I'm curious why the HN handle of the seller was removed from the post.
To me that is an added point of interest and relevant.

~~~
dang
In general, HN tries to emphasize content, not personalities. So this was a
clear case for reverting to the article title, even though you're right that
jacquesm is the only reason why people here (including me!) would find it
interesting.

It sometime happens that a story makes it to the front page because of some
bait that was added to the title (in this case, to add social interest where
intellectual interest was lacking), whereupon a moderator removes the bait
from the title. This is not a bad pattern if you think about it. It's ok for
the front page to have a few such stories, but they shouldn't dominate it. And
once a story makes the front page, it should stand on its own.

~~~
jacquesm
I totally agree with the sentiment here, applying that even-handedly is going
to be hard though. Plenty of articles about frequent HN contributors had the
HN handle in the title, and in the future you're going to have to decide
between 'original titles only' and this 'emphasize content, not personalities'
policy.

Two samples:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4328367)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3214397)

But those were not on 'your watch' so I'm 100% on board with your new policy.

Quite a few blog posts carry the name of the blogger in the domain as well,
which emphasizes personality rather than content, that's going to be harder to
get rid of.

Anyway, I didn't even expect this to be on HN at all, it's been a roller
coaster month of negotiations and traveling, I'm happy it's done. Now to
repair the website, amazing how many dependencies on a domain name creep in
over the years!

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general_failure
Why doesn't someone have a cap on domain name sales? What sense does it make
to make this some sort of land grab promoting squatters.

(note that ww.com was not squatted on, i know that. i am just asking in
general why a price cap is a bad idea for resale.)

~~~
joelrunyon
Are there caps on any other purchases out there?

Should we start capping the amounts that startups can be acquired for? If FB
is willing to pay 1B for Instagram, 19B for Whatsapp, or more - who's to say
that they can't spend their money the way they want to?

~~~
general_failure
Well, if we start treating domain names as a public resource, then caps might
start making more sense. It's like any other regulation.

AFAIK, there are regulations already for how much you can pollute your
environment, usage of rivers, height of buildings, rearchitecting your house
etc.

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bokusiayam
Outside of the get rich quick dopes who think they're going to strike it big,
who cares about this? If I wanted to read about vapid people concerned only
with making money out of thin air while doing nothing useful, I'd be reading
SEO blogs. "It's worth a lot of money because people pay for it!!" is a
pathetic excuse to give attention to something, especially on a site
ostensibly for people with active brain cells.

~~~
josephschmoe
Yo.

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67726e
The exact same concept as holding onto a parking spot and waiting for someone
to come along and pay for it. Despicable. I read most everything jacquesm
writes and enjoy it, but how can you justify rent-seeking on a public
resource?

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jacquesm
You do realize that that 'parking spot' has had my highest income website on
it for over a decade with about 100K visitors daily even at the low times?

Also, I'm not sure what you mean with 'public resource' in this context,
domains are more like private registries held by semi-official companies that
you can choose to do business with or not.

There is a near infinity of them, shorter ones are obviously in short supply
but to date I've never ever had a problem buying a domain for a new project
for $8 or so.

~~~
67726e
In that case, my apologies, this is the edge-case of a domain-transfer of a
domain that was truly being used. The way I had read things, it sounded as
though you parked a two-letter domain on a sketchy web-cam site.

And regarding the public resource, it really is a public resource. You may
have to go through a registrar, but it is open for any and all to register. In
the case of "squatters", it is the same as attempting to rent a parking space.
Something meant for the public to use which requires a nominal fee.

~~~
bcohen5055
I'd say it's closer to real estate than a parking spot... Think of a book
store that has a great business but it is located in the middle of a bar
district. At some point the property is more valuable than the business and it
makes sense to sell it so someone else can develop a business that better
leverages the location.

~~~
67726e
Except you do not own it, you rent it. Most folks who sell domains just pick
one up for a few bucks and try to charge a ridiculous fee to transfer it. You
are taking a publicly available address and extorting someone who actually
intends to use it.

