I know this issue has been discussed before, but probably not so much from this perspective. Do you really think it is worth the money?? If you had $345M, wld u buy this site? Honestly, I don't think I would. Wrote an article on my blog for this: http://www.lifesperspective.com/2007/07/28/businesscom-worth-345m/ Please STUMBLE it if you think it was a worthwhile read. Tks! I'm sure many will disagree with me, so let me hear what you have to say both here and on my blog. Let the fight begin.
Sine that is 24 years of revenue, no, I would never buy it. Unless I had a way to monetise it much faster
Sounds like a lot, but it's not only a domain name, it's also a profitable business its value has increased 2300 times in 10 years... but I still think it's worth it.
Absolutely not... as I have stated in another thread, I could do a hell of a lot of promotion with that kind of cash...
Wouldn't it be easier to invest the money and get the yearly returns without any worries of running the website. Terry
the domain alone must be worth a large chunk, I think it is over prices I think its worth maybe 150 million at the most. but then again, look at myspace.com sold for 560 million now its worth much more. the new owners could make this site into something really huge and double the value!
Yeah the domain is worth a lot. I would never pay 24 years revenue. Most directories sell on sitepoint for anything between 10 months and 2 years of revenue.
I vote yes. The domain is a jewel and worth every penny of the $345 mil. The site is currently underdeveloped and serves as a hub for much bigger and lucrative activities.
Obviously if you have $345 mil to spend it's not about the money, it's about a good website. Worth every penny.
It's well worth the money, moneysupermarket.com floated for £834 Million,. Alive worth a $1m? If you mean Alive magazine maybe, if you mean alivedirectory? Wishful thinking there.
If you watch the stock market, you will realise that a p/e (price/earnings) ratio of 24 may look a bit expensive (market averages at 12-15), but for intenet companies, it is normal. Especially if you consider that a buyout contains some premium on the price. I think all these economists that probably took care of this buyout have studied every little piece of the company, and read every line on it's economic books. So maybe it will turn out to be a good investment. After all do you remember "napster" it was started by a young guy, and few years later it was sold for 100,000,000$..... Not bad at all.
NO I wouldn't. If the buyer managed to increase the revenue of that site to 2x of its current, even then it will take him 12 f*** years to be equal to his investment. Considering that the site is already pulling a lot in revenue its not easy unless you have some very sweet plan to get it done But again buyer must have thought something so lets see how it goes.
I voted for yes, after all as mentioned above, if you have 345 million, then it is not about the money. It is about alot more than money. The domain name, the internet presence, ect makes it worth that. Also as stated above, the site could be optimized and made to make a hell of alot more than that in a short period of time. I could easily get a return on my investment within just a few short years with a site such as that.
no one will ever say that its not about money. EVERYTHING is about MONEY in this industry. So if it's a good website, will you pay $1billion for it? I agree that its more than the revenue but also the presence it creates. However, i don't think its that easy to make 'a hell of alot more' money as you stated. If it was, i think these people wld have already done so unless they are so much less competent than us, which i doubt it since they are sitting on a property worth hundreds of millions. So I think it maybe alittle naive to think it's easy unless you have had the experience of running a multi-million dollar site......
Actually I have. I used to work for a major corporation in the retail industry. I did have the pleasure of working with several others on running and designing and the such for the retailer. Although the site was not mine, I did alot to get it to where it is today. And before you ask, why am I not still there, simple. I now have a family and kids to be at home with and this job kept me away for periods of time. Now on to business.com. Lets just look at a few things for business.com. 1. Proprietary Performance Based Advertising (PBA) platform considered one of the most advanced in industry. (extremely important.) 2. Named to the ‘Inc 500′ and BtoB magazine’s ‘Media Power 50′. (Major accomplishment already.) 3. 2007 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation is about $15M. 4. 6000 advertisers. 5. 6 million unique monthly visitors. Now take into account that yes they had some quality people at business.com however they only employeed approximately 100 skilled technologists, strategists and consultants. So now lets expand upon this idea. There are more than 100 skilled directory owners, seos ect here on DP. Your comment was . Do you really think google or yahoo would be where it is today if only 100 people were working on the sites? Here they can expand their minds to get alot more ideas. Lets look at #4 and #5 together. They have 6 million unique monthly visitors but only have 6000 advertisers. Considering they have The #1 idea Proprietary Performance Based Advertising (PBA) platform considered one of the most advanced in industry. They could easily convert these stats and create a buzz with brick and mortar companies as well as online retailers to increase this number tremendously. Now lets take a look at there website. To start with, one of the best and most recognized domain names around. But beyond that, it is a directory. There is not much content on the site besides listings, and there is much that could be done in ways of adding value and content to both their customers and visitors alike. Without going into much details right now, more content, increased value for both customers and visitors, better search results, would enable them to create even more of a drive to their site. Now on to the next step, do you ever really see any true advertisements for business.com. I don't. Not on TV, not in magazines, not on some of the most popular forums such as this, not on google, not on ebay, ect. Get the picture here. They have been relying on the domain name alone to bring in clients, visitors, and future advertisers. How did yahoo, google, walmart, bestbuy ect become so popular, advertising, customer service and word of mouth. Increase advertising, start adding more value to both visitors and advertisers, add true content, fine tune both the search results as well as their advertising systems, create deals with corporate giants of all categories, such as walmart, bestbuy, circutcity, yahoo, ebay, ect and you will start seeing even more revenue coming in. And all of this is simply a start and me sitting down at the computer trying to figure out how I could increase revenue in simply a matter of a few minutes. Now look at companies such as yahoo and google that have done all the above, there yearly earnings are in the billions. So yes with the right direction, I can easily see business.com make 'a hell of alot more' money. I could see there ROI come in 4-5 years and not 27-28 as stated on the blog. In my eyes, one very big thing is that this company is already profitable and is expected to generate revenues of greater than $50 million in 2007.
I got some feedback from Ben Hanna of business.com on my blog which may be of interest to you and adds to the complete picture of this sale.