Why CDN.net Sold for 6 Figures

I was somewhat surprised that the CDN.net domain name sold for $185,000, as reported by DN Journal. The seller was Frank Schilling’s Name Administration, and the buyer appears to be Ditlev Bredahl of a company called OnApp, according to  the Whois record from March 13.

I mentioned my surprise about the sale at dinner last night with a business friend, and he thought the price was reasonable. He is more familiar with the CDN acronym than I, and he briefly explained why he felt it had significant value.

Among plenty of other things, CDN stands for Content Delivery Network(s), and I found the video below, which features Mr. Bredahl speaking about the technology. The article in which this video appears also does a good job of explaining the CDN landscape.

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

22 COMMENTS

  1. CDN is huge when it comes to content services. Most heavy content sites use CDN services to distribute content (so it loads faster). It’s chump change for a company in the space.

  2. It makes perfect sense. Many major websites use domains for content services that end in .net. For example, Facebook uses fbcdn.net while Akamai uses akamaihd.net

  3. The question is will owning a lll.net be worth it from a branding perspective. It will leak traffic to the .com.

    I would have saved $184k and went after something like eCDN.com instead.

  4. Would be fun to had this discussion before the sale was announced and I’d guess the average appraisal of CDN.net would have been around $2,000 …Right? 😉

  5. @ Shaun

    I would say the majority of people would say under $5k, a few people with knowledge of CDN would say 5 or 6 figures, and most everyone else would tell those people they are idiots. That’s kind of how it goes.

  6. My first thought upon hearing of the sale was perhaps it was purchased by/for a Canadian site.

    CDN is often used as an abbreviation for Canada/Canadian (although less so than CAN) and is sometimes used to represent our currency (although again, less so than CAD or CAN$).

    Given my patriotic interpretation, CDN.net had good intrinsic value even outside the ‘content delivery network’ arena.

    Steve

  7. Lol O’Canada cdn.ca is owned by the Canadian Dairy Network, but they would have to sell a whole lot of milk to make up for that sale. Some companies get it, invest a little today, to get a larger piece of the pie tomorrow, instant credibility.

  8. CDN is a multi-billion dollar business.

    Factor in a seller like Schilling, and you can see why it fetched the price that it did.

    CDN, CRM, SEM, SEO – these are all huge acronyms online, all capable of fetching six figures in either .net or .org because of the multi-billion dollar industries built around them.

  9. CDN’s speed up content delivery on the internet by storing multiple copies/images of sites/files on servers closer to the end user.

    It’s a big reason why I picked up WebAccelerator.com a few years back when it dropped.

    🙂

  10. Viva .NET !!!

    We’re on the InterNET … not The InterCOM – -:-) – …. Frank and Kevin too have bought many more .NETs over the years than some people realize … many .NETs have been selling on an incremental basis at Sedo & Afternic/BuyDomains over the past 2+ years… furthermore, Verisign recently started a more pro-active marketing campaign for .NET

    Don’t forget .NET !

  11. The more I see sales the more I believe the sale price is more dependent on the owners ability to hold onto the name for the correct price.

    Not many people here would have rejected offers along the way to a $185k price tag.

    Having the correct domains helps too.

  12. 99% of domainers would have sold this had they got a $25k offer, Samit is right. It takes a advanced seller to be able to hold for the right price.

  13. Price = value of domain + value of buyer’s idea + premium because buyer wants to make a start rather than waste time in grinding negotiations.

    Also, buying avoids the distracting thought ‘what if I had bought that domain’, with risk that a competitor buys it – particularly concerning as he can copy your good work / ideas.

    Arguably, steps should have been taken to require domain sellers to sell at fair market prices – so that buyer simply has to beat the next best bidder, rather than having much of the value of his idea and momentum extracted in addition.

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