Media Options Flips White.com

Media OptionsI just learned that Media Options successfully flipped White.com, a domain name the company privately acquired in December of 2012. The company acquired the domain name for $195,000, and “sold it for a substantial 6 figure amount,” according to Media Options CEO, Andrew Rosener. White.com had not been offered for sale in the company’s daily domain newsletter.

Although the Whois registrant information is private, the website appears to belong to Polish artist Tomasz Gudzowaty. Prior to hearing about this sale, I had not heard of Gudzowaty, but he appears to be an accomplished photographer who likes to work with black and white photography.

According to his bio page found on White.com, “his photos have been published in Max Magazine, L’Equipe, The Guardian, Newsweek, Forbes, Time and Photo and he is also the author of several albums. He is  a  multiple winner of the most important photography contests, among others the World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year, NPPA Best of Photojournalism. ”

Spending six figures on a domain name as an investment can be risky, but for someone like Andrew Rosener, it’s a calculated risk. The acquisition and sale of White.com shows that great domain names are liquid, and there is still a considerable amount of money to be made from flipping domain names for people who have knowledge about the market and a high level of risk  tolerance. It also shows that there is a considerable amount of business done below the radar, not reported to DN Journal.

Congratulations to Andrew on the successful flip.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

18 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Elliot.

    Names like White.com are a one off asset. When they are gone their gone and that’s it. So yes, we paid a very high price to acquire White.com but in the end it’s irrelevant to some degree. When the right buyer needs to buy a domain like white.com they just have to pay the price, regardless, because a name like that has no substitutes.

    The same could be said for some of the other names we are currently selling like:

    Gig.com
    Sample.com
    Grape.com
    Oregano.com
    Etc…

    These are priceless brands.

    I will say that we had to think long and hard before even letting go of a name like White.com though! We’ll likely never own another color.

  2. I watched this interview a couple weeks ago and he quickly mentioned the White.com domain name with Cyger (domainsherpa.com). There is lots of good info in these interviews. Fire one up and put it as background noise while you work and you would be surprised how much you can learn without even really paying attention.

  3. Cool story. Random photographer whose business is not even called White buys the name for what looks like well over $ half a million, while hundreds of larger businesses called White Something are asleep at the wheel as always. Price just went up another several hundred percent in case one of the larger businesses called White Something wants to buy it in the future.

  4. You’re right Elliot, DNJournal has its own limitations. On the other hand congrats to Andrew and he’s correct that right buyer just have to pay the price under no option conditions.

  5. To be honest I was blown away that a photographer no matter how successful could buy a name like this so I did a little research on Tomasz Gudzowaty and yes he is an amazing photographer but I found an article in the Polish Forbes magazine about him and I translated it to english. He is #26 of the 100 richest men in Poland with a net worth of over 240 million US dollars which we know didn’t come from taking pictures. I wonder if Andrew knew that.

    • At the end of the day, just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean they are going to necessarily spend more for a domain name. They might, but they might not, so it’s a calculated risk.

      Knowing Andrew, I am sure he did as much homework about the buyer that he could, but he does know the value of the asset as well as anyone could.

    • “At the end of the day, just because someone has a lot of money doesn’t mean they are going to necessarily spend more for a domain name. They might, but they might not, so it’s a calculated risk.”

      I agree with you Elliot on this most of the time but you have to take into what I’ll coin as the the “lottery effect” which is “Money not earned is money that’s easy to burn.” If it is inherited money or free money than chances are you are more willing to spend it than if you actually earned it.

  6. What a brilliant domain. As Andrew said, these things are extremely rare, so the price has to be right to even consider letting it go. Great story and especially nice to see it get into end user hands. Good luck getting it back Andrew 🙂

  7. Very good find about him being rich Todd. I read a little more and it says he inherited 240 million USD from his dad. So it may be a vanity art-like purchase, something I always thought would become more common with top of the line cool-sounding .coms. He will probably buy black.com as well to make black.com and white.com into an art project.

  8. In this case Elliot is right. Lots of deals happening and not in dnjournal.

    However 90 percent of the rumors and bs price ranges don’t mean shit to me that’s nda.

  9. What a great story! It would be nice for the general media to publish something about this, as it involves a known photographer and the tech world and that of the success of Andrew Rosener, thus more exposure to the domain industry, especially with it being flipped onto it’s end soon. Such a sale will educate the general non domainer on the real importance of premium .com’s and may give them and some business owners the understanding in the hierarchy of value in non premium .com’s that still have merit.

  10. Great point Howie. I never understand why such an awesome domaining story like this would not make the ‘mainstream’ media like BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune…I know that demographics of that readerbase and they would LOVE this story!

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