Fairy Tales are Hard to Kill — Domain Price

Myths regarding sales prices grow like weeds.

With Sex.com hitting the auction block next week, mainstream media are in a tizzy writing regarding the auction of the “world’s most valuable domain name”. As usual, they’re comparing it to other big ticket domain sales. The only problem is that many of the sales they refer to have misleading sales figures.

Consider The Huffington Post’s “The 11 Most Expensive Domain Names Ever“.

Casino.com is on HuffPos’ list at $5.5 million, but the caption notes that it was the web site and domain. So that wasn’t a domain sale.

You’ll also see Business.com, which was widely noted as sold for $7.5 million. But that was in illiquid equity. As stated by the buyer, the equity ended up being redeemed for only $2.0 million. (The seller claims it ended up being more than $7.5 million.)

Then there’s the granddaddy of them all, Insure.com. Look, Quinstreet did not buy the domain name Insure.com for $16 million. It bought an active web site, and it generates substantial leads. The domain itself wasn’t worth that much.

Buyers and sellers often times have an incentive to pump up the sales price for domains. The buyer gets lots of publicity, and the seller gets an ego boost. Yet it’s painful to see this sort of misinformation continue to spread.