Morning Folks!!
Ever get up with a sick feeling in your stomach? May be true today of one domainer. Google now owns Helpout.com and Helpouts.com for their helpout service.
Did they pay $250? or $250,000? or ?,???,???
Maybe they even got the better price of $100 as listed below on DNForum.com in 2008.
Somebody left a YACHT on the table! And hopefully another domainer can go shopping for one!
Rick Schwartz
Domenclature.com
LOL at yacht …
Robin
Patience can be a profitable virtue.
Dinho Santana www.portfolio2000.com
develop the domain is the secret,
recently godaddy paid 70 million in locu.com.
the previous owner paid 4k in locu.com.
the mathematic doesn’t lie. the number says 1 billion
of percents in profit. hehehe
JBS
Yeah, it would suck to have sold the domain cheap and see Google launching a product on it.
It might suck even more to be the guy who had the same product idea and left that YACHT on the table…
It seems like there are YACHTS just lying around everywhere these days…
Tom
That’s gonna leave a psychological mark.
LSM
Domainers love to characterize these freak events with stupid univariate ideals when in reality, its obscenely multivariate.
If we were to make a contingency table populated with every domain owned, every domain sale ever made and an accurate representation of all costs associated with acquiring/maintaining those domains, the frequency of ‘whale sale’ distribution would orient massively away from from the ‘profitability’ region.
Outliers happen. People with half a brain know to disregard them as being definitive. People with no brain base an entire business model on it.
For all the self-professed ‘numbers don’t lie’ guys out there in the domain world (who absolutely couldn’t crack Junior High AP math), its funny how their thinking is based on mathematically shitty concepts.
JBS
RE: “Domainers love to characterize these freak events with stupid univariate ideals when in reality, its obscenely multivariate”. True, in the case of this domain, this turned out to be a YACHT, but the eventual business idea and buyer was not obvious. So, you can’t fault the prior domain owner for missing a huge potential deal. He obviously did not know he owned a YACHT (Rick’s point).
But somebody at Google saw a YACHT. That’s why I mention the business idea as well. We all need to get better at spotting YACHTS, both as domains and business ideas. There ARE plenty of dot com YACHTS lying around – if you know what to look for. If the business use for the domain is completely obvious (and is a good one at that) then it is a YACHT. You don’t leave YACHTS in the row boat bargain lot. It’s not that the prior owner blew it (in this case), but many do let YACHTS go…
JBS
Did I mention “YACHTS”? Sorry, I guess I really liked that analogy…
Owen Frager
That’s the problem with BUY IT NOW. You cna’t get a fair price if you don’t know who is on the end of the line. Look at ther examples of ate. Berkens reporting a a shell buyer stealing Under the Dome. Me yesterday about NBC buying their “iReport” for peanuts using their London designer as a decoy. Today Andrew reporting a billionaire hedge fund manager buying his EMD for $2600! PUKE!
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
This is a little like the old saying, ( when you let go of a yacht for dingy prices, you may have to book passage on a ship of fools.
Gratefully, Jeff schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
LSM
There are deals out there but its easy to call a name like Helpouts.com a YACHT after some totally random event occurs that infuses it with desirability when not a single ‘domainer’ – the people supposedly most keenly aware of this space- was willing to pay a hundred bucks for it.
To steal a portion of someone elses analogy: If everyone in the United States wokwere told to flip a coin and guess heads or tails, roughly half would get it right. If every morning they were given the same task, after twenty mornings, there would be a tiny handful, two or three hundred, who correctly called a coinflip twenty consecutive times. Naturally, they would write books on their coin flipping prowess, they would flog their coin flipping ‘system’. After all, there they stand, living, breathing examples of the third sigma.
(continued, because your comment section has an odd bug…)
LSM
In this context, it’s annoying to try and reason with them, to point out the influence of probability and the role played by dumb luck in certain events. They don’t understand it because its not something they can relate to, since their only point of reference is their own good fortune. George Harrison once said his greatest regret in life was not knowing what it was like being anyone other than a Beatle; an ‘ordinary Joe’. People who enjoy the benefits of luck are rarely the ones you want to talk to about the role chance plays in anything.
That domain was put up for sale- to DOMAINERS- for two fifty… Nobody cared. Then, 100. Nobody cared. Some years later, Google comes along, makes it a brand and now, domainers mock the guy for leaving money on the table?
This is the group who passed on it for a hundred bucks. MMQB’ing it is just intellectually insulting.
JBS
Random events, dumb luck, and an “okay” dot com can equal a big payout for a lucky few. But even a simple, two word domain like helpouts.com, and I would have passed on it as well, might become hard to find in a few more years…Not that I would recommend a shopping spree…
JBS
LSM, if you don’t mind me asking, why the photo of Henry Waxman? He is the epitome of intellectually insulting…
Jen
Well said my friend. Hind sight is 20/20. I guess Rick is the real owner of this domain as I’m sure he saw himself sailing off in the yacht of which he speaks.
Anita
Rick, It looks like a single owner (Richard, a probable non-domainer) has with some possibility “left a yatch on the table”. From history records he’s been the owner from 2001 till May 2013 after which it looks like it was acquired by “Name Advisers” for Google who obviously wouldn’t have revealed their backer. If he was pursued relentlessly he might have got a possibly good deal from his standpoint. He seems to have been really lucky that no one picked up the domain when he was offering it for peanuts. Don’t know if he would have made a killing but its obvious that he wouldn’t have got the kind of price he could have commanded if he had some idea or even guessed that this could be a big client.
Socialmedia5000.com
Hey Everybody :) I got the help-outs.com! What you think is it another Yacht on the table or just a loose invest? At this time no idea what to do with it :) Any Ideas?