The auction for the MutualFunds.com domain name has received several bids and is up to $800,000 in pre-bidding. I am told the reserve price has not yet been met (but it’s “close”). Including the 15% buyer’s premium, the current auction price is $920,000. I think MutualFunds.com is the best domain name in the auction, and getting it was a good score for HA. The highest online bid will be carried over to the Heritage Auctions live auction, which will be held on November 21, 2013.
MutualFunds.com is owned by Internet entrepreneur and NYT bestselling author Marc Ostrofsky, who also sold Business.com for what was then a record price of $7.5 million. His portfolio of domain names also includes Bachelor.com, Photographer.com, Consulting.com, HeartDisease.com, BeautyProducts.com, Psychologist.com, TechToys.com, p2p.com and many others. This is the only domain name Ostrofsky has listed in this auction although he told me, “all of my names are for sale these days.”
This domain name is clearly a valuable asset because of the topic. In addition to its high RPC, a new .mutualfunds gTLD will be coming out soon. It remains to be seen whether the applicant will be going after this domain name in auction or if a company that manages mutual funds (like Fidelity, Pimco, or Vanguard) will participate. HA placed an estimate of $2,000,000 – $4,000,000 for this domain auction.
I reached out to Ostrofsky to ask him why he selected Heritage Auctions as the venue for this domain auction. ““HA.com was an easy choice because they are spending big bucks advertising in in WSJ and NYT, direct mail and PR to the masses vs. all of the current domain auctions and the folks at SEDO and BuyDomains who only market to only domainers,” he told me.
To participate in the auction, you’ll need to sign up to bid on the Heritage Auctions website. Internet bids can be placed prior to the live auction, and people may participate in the live auction online or via phone bid. Bidders must register prior to the live auction in order to bid.
MutualFunds.com is easily the best name in that auction and certainly worth the 2-4 million dollars that Heritage estimates its worth. Vanguard or Fidelity would make many millions of dollars off of the domain. There needs to be somebody in a position of power at one of those major companies who understands that this would be a truly great asset for them.
With the exception of several great domains, the HA auction list is very poor. There are better domains at better prices on other domain exchange platforms. If HA plans for success they should start with more quality domains.
Thanks Elliot,
We’ve reached out to a great number of medium sized and large mutual fund companies. We’re also doing many PR pitches, directly – so we expect to see some coverage closer to the auction date.
We also have another NY Times ad coming out tomorrow – and it is exclusively for our domain auction. We’re working on a WSJ ad right now as well.
We have a lot of interest in many of the names, and the number of clients “tracking” each lot is encouraging.
We expect a lot of bidding activity, across all lots, as Nov 21st nears.
Thanks again for the writeup.
Aron
Side note:
Many of the names were picked because they either
A: fit the interests of our current client base
(gold, currency, luxury, comics, art, etc. as well as low priced names they could develop)
B: are investment quality names at low prices (such as the large number of LLL domains in the auction)
C: are truly premium names (like animation.com, the two-letter .com domains, mutualfunds.com, etc.)
Remember, our client base hasn’t seen any of these names for sale, ever.
So they are just as interested in these as anything else.
Aron
I am always suspicious/cautious when I see auctions with bids just slightly below the reserve price “just a notch” …
Flippa, SEDO come to mind etc etc
Are the bidders certified/bonded?
Wow, mutualfunds.com has a non reserve met bid, makes for a great article, and PR topic.
Let us know if it sells, that is more newsworthy.
“The auction for the MutualFunds.com domain name has received several bids and is up to $800,000 in pre-bidding. I am told the reserve price has not yet been met (but it’s “close”). “
Anyone have a link to the NYTimes and WSJ ads?
Thanks.