Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

Add in also today Mike Mann and partners completed the sale of Software.com.

Great day for the industry $$$!

Incredible!

Insure.com is one of the obvious “second best” choices you want to buy if you can not get the real deal – Insurance.com. Insurance.com and comparable top category names should be at least $50 million.

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

[...] Elliot Silver has been digging through the filings on the NASDAQ stock exchange and noticed that Insure.com (NSDQ:NSUR) has sold their domain name and company name for $16 million USD. The company will rebrand to “Life Quotes”. They originally paid $1,600,000 for the domain name in 2001. If this had been the domain name only this could have been a one of a kind record sale, but according to PaidContent.org, the sale included “related media assets”, which have yet to be explained in more detail. [...]

[...] Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded … [...]

“I believe that this is the highest recorded price for a domain sale”

This is not technically correct because Quinstreet purchased not just the domain name Insure.com but the entire website that is already ranked very high in the search engines and likely making a substantial amount of money.

Nice job being one of the first in the blogosphere to break this story though as I saw that even Tech Crunch linked to this post.

[...] big $$$$$$ in insurance! Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded | Elliot's Blog __________________ "The difficult I will do right now- the impossible may take a little [...]

[...] [...]

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

Indeed a great sale, but afaik the sale of yellowpages.com is the highest domain sale to date.

In 2004 Yellowpages.com was sold to a joint venture of Bell South and AT&T (former SBC) for US$ 98 million.

cheers
John

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

It’s a SITE sale, and absolutely NOT a domain sale!!!

I insist because after people will place this sale in the list of top domain sold and this will perturbate future valuations of true domain sales.

I bet the site was generating many millions of income yearly. Insurance with financing, real estate and remodeling are the most lucrative verticals for the business of leads and the core activity of the buyer.
I sold myself a similar site for severals millions to his competitor few years ago and it was absolutely not based in a premium domain.

[...] of Elliot / Elliot’s Blog: Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded  —  Insure.com, a publicly traded company whose shares trade on the NASDAQ stock [...]

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Francois,
You need to at least read press releases before making things up.

Insure.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: NSUR) announced today that it has sold its Insure.com brand name and related media assets for $16 million in cash to QuinStreet, Inc. Insure.com, Inc. (the Company) intends to change its corporate name to Life Quotes, Inc. and will continue its business under its Life Quotes and Consumer Insurance Guide brand names. The Company will retain all of its remaining balance sheet assets, national brokerage contracts with 25 leading life insurance companies, 50 fully licensed insurance agents, call center operations, customer and prospect lists, and nearly all of its current inbound affiliate and traffic partnerships.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/insurecom-announces-16-million-asset-sale-continuation-of-business-under-life-quotes-brand-name-63885287.html

[...] reported by Elliot – Insure.com has sold its website and domain for $16,000,000, a premium domain for a premium [...]

No way to determine it to be a pure domain sale. . . so it’s likely not. Pure domain name sales are going to be more and more hard to figure out as domains mature and more of the premium domains are put to use. If buyers can grab up other assets in the deal and/or when sellers can get stock options and other intangibles, we’ll see less of these sales appearing on the highest sales “charts”. I have no problem doing a “Barry Bonds” and putting an asteriks next to the sale.

I think the clearest sign of a domain sale is that the company that sold it intends to continue normal business operations under a new brand name.

But yeah, I agree that it’s going to be harder and harder to gauge pure domain sales.

[...] Read more from the original source:  Insure.com Sells for $16 Million – Highest Domain Sale Recorded … [...]

In the need to continue and boost the domain industry we are now willing to report sales that should not be categorized with others, just to top past events. It was great to hear the name and business sold but it is NOT a domain name sale in the pure form. The name allowed and contributed to the business that was built but not the reason for the $16M. While toys.com had back links and ranked high it imo WAS a pure domain sale, yes the generated traffic contributed to value but I believe it was not the reason for the sale price.

@ Josh

You missed a big portion. The BUSINESS was NOT sold. The publicly traded company is going to continue operating with all business assets, with the exception of the domain name and some website content.

If the business had been sold, the shareholders would have been cashed out since Quin Street is a private company.

I agree that it was not a “pure” domain sale, but just about any domain sale is no longer pure. Even when Rick Latona sells most of his names, he includes the website he built and those are all considered domain sales.

If they included affiliates or even insurance relationships in the sale, which they did not, I wouldn’t classify it as a domain sale. IMO, the asset they wanted was Insure.com, and they didn’t want to lose the inbound links so they got the content. They got no customers, no prospects, no employees, no relationships, no affiliates, no overhead…etc.

$16mm practically equals the company’s net assets – looks to be a very good deal for the company (assuming it’s just a domain name sale).

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

So we are to believe it was JUST a name and content sale?

If so than I would agree it is pretty close to a ” pure ” sale considering most good names have some history or content/links etc.

Are we absolute there was no other asset(s) involved?

@ Josh

Because the company is required to disclose everything publicly, I am fairly certain all has been disclosed.

Whether it was a “pure” domain sale or not is irrelevant as far as i’m concerned when looking at how this story affects the domain industry. It might matter to us domainers, but to the larger business community…the headline…and what they will take away from the story is “Insure.com sold for $16 million.” This benefits our industry as a whole….”pure” sale or not.

Jon

You said to Francois “You need to at least read press releases before making things up”

Have no idea what you’re talking about.

Francois’s comment was as accurate as you can be. This was not a pure domain sale. My guess is earnings were between 2.5 – 3.5 million annually – an educated guess understanding the insurance market very well and the traffic to this particular site. Thus purchase price reflect 5-7 times earnings.

When you buy a developed site with thousands of pages of unique content, backlinks that will always be there regardless if the content remains on the existing domain or is forwarded to another and generates revenue using an ad platform outside of parking guess what – you have a business for sale not a domain name.

While I note that this sale is good for the industry since people will only hear a .com sold for 16 million its not a domain sale.

Elliot .. you know I respect you man but please

“Even when Rick Latona sells most of his names, he includes the website he built and those are all considered domain sales”

Selling a minisite with a domain adds no value to the name whatsoever – only another car salesman pitch for newbies that say wow – I’m getting a design (usually followed by – have no idea to do with it).

Minisites add ZERO value to a domain. In fact, you can add a minisite, a custom bumper sticker or a certificate for a piece of the moon with a sale but its still just a domain name sale.

A developed site with real content and standalone revenue is a business of its own – not a domain name sale.

No way insure.com is a domain name sale.

Like Joel said – good catch all the same but 100% disagree with you on the classification of this transaction.

Alan,
You are making things up as well by talking about earnings. Revenue, earnings, cash-flow did not sell. No part of the website as a money-making going concern was sold. The only thing that sold was domain name. Old links and SEO rankings insure.com has are no different from old links and SEO rankings of toys.com or any other domain sold that had a website before.

You are making a completely arbitrary value judgement call based on nothing that insure.com old links and rankings somehow make the sale a business sale, while toys.com old links and search ranking make toys.com domain sale.

Furthermore, the seller made it clear they will keep current inbound affiliate and traffic partnerships. Those affiliate traffic partnerships and paid links may very well have accounted for majority of traffic, and the seller will keep all this traffic.

Jon,

Think what you will.

Quinstreet is one of the largest lead generation companies in the country owning massive properties all across mortgage, debt, insurance and more. In fact, it may be possible to say they are larger than Oversee.

Anyone who has been around the block knows they do not buy domain names undeveloped all but maybe a few exceptions but no way in hell for $16m.

You have to be on crack to think they paid $16 million in this horrible economy or even a good one just for a domain name.

Not that crack is a bad thing – I’ve heard it does help some crazy domain owners believe their domains are worth millions late at night.

Peace man – anyone who wants to think this is a pure domain name sale go for it – I’m out, don’t really care how this is classified one way or the other but seriously, hit your crack dealer up if you really do think they paid 16M just for a domain.

Like Alex said “the story is “Insure.com sold for $16 million”

That’s all people will hear.

Which at the end of the day – is good for all domain owners.

Seems like some people aren’t reading everything that was officially released about this sale and are making incorrect statements.

It clearly states they sold only the domain name and not the underlying business.

[...] to this report, marketing firm QuinStreet has bought this domain name. QuinStreet has also bought [...]

[...] [More information: ElliotsBlog.com] [...]

[...] specialist, QuinStreet has just purchased Insure.com for a whopping $16 million.  This sale has sparked a debate over at Elliot’s Blog on whether it was purely a domain sale or whether  actually sold off [...]

Bottom line he just made $16 Million and that’s all that matters.

Haha, well, even though the price probably wasn’t for just the domain, the sensationalist headline definitely worked, it got tons of coverage and links back Either way, the coverage is always good for the industry.

[...] Elliot Silver has been digging through the filings on the NASDAQ stock exchange and noticed that Insure.com (NSDQ:NSUR) has sold their domain name and company name for $16 million USD. The company will rebrand to “Life Quotes”. They originally paid $1,600,000 for the domain name in 2001. If this had been the domain name only this could have been a one of a kind record sale, but according to PaidContent.org, the sale included “related media assets”, which have yet to be explained in more detail. [...]

@Kevin

“Seems like some people aren’t reading everything that was officially released about this sale and are making incorrect statements.

It clearly states they sold only the domain name and not the underlying business.”

Kevin, there is an important distinction that you are missing. Just because they did not sell their underlying business they did in fact sell more than just the domain name –> here it is everyone –> wait for it –> they sold the entire DOMAIN + WEBSITE.

http://www.domainsuperstar.com/insurecom-sale-some-domainers-just-dont-get-it

Once the deal includes website content it is clearly not just a domain name sale. I would guess the domain was the main reason for the sale but at the end of the day the press release clearly states

“We have sold our Insure.com name and specified website content”.

It sounds to me like the content was a significant part of the deal in terms of retaining search engine traffic etc.

Agree with what Adam said about deals likely being more difficult to seperate out over time, mainly due to the value of the search traffic with people being less inclined to cut the domain lose if it is already getting significant search traffic.

@ Domain Superstar

Hmmm $16 Million for a web site.

Ok LOL

If the investor is giving 16 M, then it must be worth it.

I’ll sell my IN-SURANCE.COM domain name for 200k.

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

[...] ha vendido su dominio corporativo por casi 11 millones de euros (16 millones de dólares). Esta empresa cotiza [...]

Insure.com is worth $16M. What do you think CheapestCarInsurance.com is worth?

[...] to this report, the domain name was purchased by marketing firm QuinStreet, which also shelled out $18 million for [...]

[...] Quinstreet bought the domain name insure.com for $16 Million back in November 2009. [...]

[...] Quinstreet bought the domain name insure.com for $16 Million back in November 2009. [...]