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09|16|2009 10:28 am EDT

Marchex lists their domains for sale

by Frank Michlick in Categories: Domain Sales

An anonymous tipster pointed us to the recently updated MDNHInc. website, which is the company that holds Marchex‘s (MCHX) domain portfolio, pointing out that they now accept offers on domain names in their portfolio. The names listed for sale seem to include names from the orignal purchase of the Yun Ye (Ultimate Search) domain portfolio, which Marchex purchased for 164 Million USD in 2005. With this move Marchex joins the ranks of Oversee.net, Kevin Ham’s Reinvent and Frank Schilling’s Name Administration who have also started offering their domains for sale.

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  • http://UtterDomain.com Andrew Douglas

    You failed to mention that they want an arm and a leg (or maybe two arms and an appendage of your choice) for said domains. SmashHit.com for $250k?? Seriously? My wife would be very Angry if I paid a half million for Angry.com…
    They do own some domains I’d like to get my hands on, but at those prices I think I’ll continue to look elsewhere.

  • http://i.m.fm/ Frank Michlick

    You are right Andrew, they do have interesting asking prices – but rumors have it that they may sell some of the names for lower offers as well.

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  • http://fragerfactor.com owen frager

    First iReit via NameJet. Now all these companies selling. It speaks volumes.

  • JoshP

    Who knew?

  • Snoopy

    “First iReit via NameJet. Now all these companies selling. It speaks volumes.”

    Yep, the market “sure ain’t what she used to be”. With parking down 50% people are scrambling for any additional revenue they can get. The next few months are going to be interesting, I think if we don’t see a good bounce out of summer then things will get very desperate. I think we will see a bounce but if we don’t look out for alot more contraction in the industry.

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  • http://www.gurus.com Beachie

    My guess is that Marchex have seen how successful the BuyDomains and NameMedia/Afternic model continues to be – $500,000 to $1,000,000 per week from the sale of, frankly, fairly low quality names. iREIT’s asking prices are steep, but they only need a few bites here and there to make a LOT of money, and these names are MUCH better than the stuff that’s been selling at Afternic/BuyDomains.

    The same goes for Frank Schilling’s recent decision to take offers on his domains. Why not take offers – you never know when a good one will come along, and no-one is forcing you to sell unless the price is right.

    It’s just good business.

  • http://successclick@gmail.com Stephen Douglas

    DAMMIT! I AGREE WITH SNOOPY!

    I must go now and hide in my special cave (outfitted with some Lagavulin Islay and canned oysters).

    What’s next? Me and Snoopy sitting down at a five star Sushi bar at TRAFFIC Vegas next year? And him picking up the check? (okay, i know, i know, i went waaaaay to far on that last sentence)

    ;-)

  • JoshP

    Ill say this, addressing each statement isn’t worth my time.

    A LOT of the above information regarding saler prices being fake and sale prices mention in another post are not entirely true themself. There is some truth behind corporate facts but a lot of mis information above as well.

    Take it all with a grain of salt.

  • Idiot Domainer

    @Owen Frager what volumes does it speak ? I think i just saw a post with you unloading a bunch of your shit domains for $20 to me that speaks volumes

  • Snoopy

    “iREIT’s asking prices are steep”

    They are still in business?

  • http://www.gurus.com Beachie
  • Miles Brean
  • Monte

    http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/02/16/daily38.html

    Marchex reports $129M Q4 loss

    No use trying to talk good of a company losing this much money! whatever their current strategy is it clearly has not been working.

    They would better to list all their names for sale and get what they can for them in a very competitive market.

    You might note many of the mdnh inc names / marchex names are now just monetized via Google Syndication. This should tell you they have realized their own monetization and development plans where not working.

    But say they just sell each name for $1000 they will be far ahead of where they are now. Crazy “NO” it makes more sense to be making a profit than making a loss!

  • JoshP

    I bet you know just the auction platform too ;)

  • Henry

    Interesting article and responses. However, many seem to be missing a point or two here. There’s more than meets the eye.

    If you pay attention, you will notice that they are not selling any high RPC domain names out of their portfolio, shortail or longtail. It seems to me they are pruning and consolidating. It does not matter, 1 word, 2 words, or 3 words domain name, if it cannot make enough money to justify its expense, it’s not worth keeping.

    In time domainers will learn to pay great attention to the product or service viability of any given name before spending their money on it, no matter how short or long it is, character-wise or word-wise.

    Traffic quality anyone? Many focus on keyword density of a given page. How about the keyword density of the domain name itself especially when it comes to click through rate, conversion rate, and search revenue? How does it relate to products and services people actually search for? Is it targeted or not? For example, many of the high bid search terms out there are not the shortest of search terms.

    Just some things to think about!

    Regards to all.

  • http://www.gear199.com buy steroids

    personally im looking to buy premium domains,
    the way i see it is ist all about the revenue
    possible to generate as to budget,
    if a domain has pr4 – 5 and revenue is 4- 8k /month
    then the asking price should be based on that,
    its that simple and can be good value,

    regards dale.

  • Sam

    Be serious – they’ve had these domains for a while now, used them up for all their worth. I’d say with all the SEM they blasted these pages with in the past that anyone whose purchasing them may find out that a lot are blacklisted by Google – so it may take a moment to get your SEO plan working.

    In the end – the reason why they are selling these domains is because they can’t make money from them….but nor can anyone without a content plan to make the site worth anything in the first place.

    The days on one stop sites with cool names is done. It’s about your businesses ability to monetize, your content, apps, and how well you execute SEO and online marketing It doens’t need to be angry.com, it could be angry123.com – it you have the right content and biz model – you can make money without a pretty name.

    Sam

  • Investor Joe

    Sams right. They have 200,000 names over $500 million in cash injected into their company and they still make a loss! This means a lot!

    Also a good test is go to mdnhinc.com pick any of thei listed domain names and type it into google. The results speaks for themselves. Their names are worth nothing.

  • Dan

    Sales fell by 44 percent 2Q

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009606257_webmarchex05.html

    results

    http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/Marchex+Reports+Second+Quarter+2009+Financial+Results/4849015.html

    well they better start acting and try selling whatever names they have for reasonable prices. Otherwise the man with the big hammer comes and smashes it all to pieces.

    Dan

  • http://hostpoet.com/ HostPoet

    It seems to me that whatever ideas I may have had about four year ago until now, there were larger companies doing the same on a much higher level. The only reason I even came here is because I have always been kind of keen on the dot ORG’s as a truly viable alternative to the dot Com’s.

    It’s this basic dichotomy that when your an end user and you are planning ahead its worthwhile to see if you can get a hold of a dot com perhaps even before you sink some time and effort into developing and launching your dot Org.

    I guess the difference between me and the typical domainer is that I would really rather be developing domains than selling them!