Wow!! eBay is buying Rent.com for $415 Million!!!
 

Rent.com was only launched 36 months ago.

This really shows the power of domains!

:thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup

Full article link:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...y_rentals_site

domain is a small part... sure, its short , sweet, prime, but if their actual website sucked, i dont think ebay would be buying it - and even if they did, the domain would be nowhere near that price




domains dont make the site - the site does.

i sale mrizzz.com for 415 million turkish lire if anyone is interested

Very true

Sorry, I don't think it's worth that much.

Very true but KRL will never understand this.

damn you, now my feelings are hurt:(

eBay is the best. As long as my shares rise.. they can do whatever the hell they want. :pimp

Rent.com is everywhere when you search for places. Yes, good domain name, but hardly what made this worth the amount.

They partnered with a ton of newspapers to help provide the backend for there rental columns.

they bought 'marktplaats.nl' for $325 million ( not sure but it was something like this )

nothing surprise me anymore

I was going to say that is nuts just for a domain name. But for the entire thing, it might be a good deal.

I'll take it!

I also want mrizzz.cc !!!

"The company said it is profitable and expects revenues in 2004 to total more than $40 million."

They definately had more than just the domain name right.

Rent.com is a good domain it was easy to brand the name of course the name rent.com isn't worth 415 million but it sure did help to brand the name that it was short and easy and directly to deal with relestate.....

Great pickup and in 3 years it will be worth a Billion...

Power of domains my ass. Domains are worthless. It doesn't matter if the domain is rent.com or urent.com or erent.com - they are domain names, plain and simple.

Ebay just paid $415 million for a company that brings in $40 million a year. Sounds like bad business to me.

And we wonder why the dot com bubble burst.

:thumbsup :thumbsup

You are all wrong! :2 cents:

Tell us why we are wrong. It seems like extremely bad business to me as well.

For less than 30 million you could start a buy an new domain and take rent.net's entire market position. It wouldn't even take a year.

$415million for a domain :1orglaugh

"Domains Are Worthless."


I'm going to frame that quote and put it on my wall.

:thumbsup


Corporatate america works by making money on brands folks. There are thousands of sites doing the same thing as rent.com.

But they bought rent.com didn't they?

The domain is the fricking brand for christs sake. And its killer.

Hello. Hello. Hello.

don't know why you fuckers think this is a good thing, as many of you bought it for them. Where do you think all those closed paypal account balances went?

Exactly!

:thumbsup

I'm amazed by the people that don't share this viewpoint on this thread.

"Location. Location. Location."

the real value to a domain is the typeins, a name like rent.com generates enormous targeted traffic for free to a high demand industry site, just like casino.com would and does

whoever sold casino.com for $5million should have their head examined

i've never seen rent.com advertisements, i wonder what % of their $40million a year revenue comes from typeins?

So very true.

Okay I guess KRL needs a history lesson.

http://www.men.com

The people that run this site have a great domain *but* they have failed to create a site that anyone would ever visit except as a once-in-a-lifetime type-in for shits and giggles. In short, the domain men.com has been "stained" and it is highly unlikely it can ever recover. It might as well be lajofdkjsdlfjdk.com now.

Of course rent.com is a good domain but just sitting undeveloped, like men.com is now, it would never be worth $415 million. That is the point people are trying to make KRL.

Exactly. As I said, any topical domain could be developed for less than 10% of what they paid for Rent.com that would at least halve their marketshare in under a year.

That's what the net's about. Newer, faster, better, cheaper! The next site that looks better and and is brand spanking new with proper funding will scrub the floor with rent.com. Only a fool would pay that kind of money for it.

The last deal where the guy sold his 100,000 domains for $164 mil made waaay more sense than this.

krl could invest a million into men.com and easily take it public somewhere down the road and bank potentially hundreds of millions or more

in the meantime i'm sure he is making money just off typeins, the beauty of online real estate is that you can sit on it while it produces 'rent' and you have no minimal 'maintenance' expenses (ie. hosting) and your property taxes are the cost of annual registration.

if you have the money (and not many people do since you normally can't finance a domain name), there is no better investment right now imo then a premier mainstream .com

I disagree. Sure, domain names are powerful in the sense of branding, but I don't think it played a big role in this transaction. eBay is not in the domain business :) They are WAY past that stage. Fortunately for Rent.com, they not only have a great domain, but are also very promising financially.

You need to look beyond the domain. Although there are 50 other apartment-search websites, Rent.com is undoubtly the market leader. All the other services, when compared to Rent.com, are pretty much useless. The only real competitor is apartments.com.

It just happened to be that eBay chose Rent.com over all the others. It could have been their financial figures, relationship with the management team, etc.

But I don't think Meg Whitman said to the board: "guys, it's a 4-character domain, WE MUST GET A HOLD OF IT! $415 MILLION IS GOOD FOR YOU?!" :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

OBVIOUSLY it was easier for Rent.com to gain popularity over sites with domains such as FindAnApartmentNow.com or GreatApartments4RENT.com.

Like I said before, a domain name brings you attention, but only a good innovative service/product will bring the retention you need to hit it big.

You've got Porno.com. God knows how much you paid for it ($1.5M I'd assume?) So people type it in, what, 1000 times a day? I bet none of them comes back! EVER! All they get right now is a screen that reminds them the spyware that took over their computer last month :) True, your domain does have a value, and you could probably sell it for $3M with no problems these days. I'm glad you're finally doing something with it, and I hope to see it live soon. With a great service/product you could be sitting on a cash cow that generates $1M+ a year pre-tax.

Sorry but men.com is dead in the water. He might as well re-direct it to a free email program now.

Men.com is a more viable domain than rent.com. With a domain like men.com you can own a men related niche. With rent.com you will always be a competitor waiting to be crushed.

i know that krl would get at least double what he paid if he sold it today as a quick sale

the internet is in its infancy

It used to be. :1orglaugh

Excuse me, but this is 2004, not 1999 :1orglaugh You can't just take a domain name for an IPO. No one will look at you if all you have is a 3-char domain with a men's portal full of ads. You need a TRUE SERVICE / PRODUCT. Domains DO have value, but as the years pass by, they must also come with a real service/product/company/vision/income/future/uniqueness.

No doubt about it. But you can double your money all day long in the stock market (WYNN, SIRI, GG) :thumbsup :thumbsup

With a bunch of good domains you could build an empire if you actually sell or offer a unique service.

i disagree, men.com is a great domain, but it would require a far more significant investment to develop into a money maker, far more risk as rent.com is a cant miss profitable business on day1 with decent back end software it runs itself

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Aww c'mon now Twisty. I don't remember what was on Men.com before KRL bought it and I honestly haven't paid attention to what's going on now. I'm sure that whenever he finds a solid path for the domain to follow it has a good chance of becoming IPO-able.

But if you waste all your money on domains, your competitor with MenOnly.com will spend $2M on good PR and eat you alive :thumbsup

archive.org :thumbsup