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Below is a snippet from DNJournal/Ron Jackson’s May 2007 interview with me:
The next major development involved a domain we bought for $12 in mid-2000 on the drop, a name that had no meaning at the time. However, it started to generate traffic and revenues very quickly because it became a word/phrase that was seen, discussed or talked about nearly everywhere (we know the name, which is now a common computer related term, but Sarid did not want to publicize it). In 2003 we signed a contract to lease the domain for 30 days for $3,000 with option to sell for $60,000 at the end of the lease. At the end of lease, the lessee said his maximum offer was $30,000. We declined. Two years later this domain was generating $3,000 a day on PPC.
The domain I talked about was Spyware.com, the one that we will be putting on the auction block relatively soon. As the term is now mainstream, traffic slowed down, revenues as well. It is still doing extremely well and is one of our top 10 PPC performers.
Every single day we get emails from users who are having issues with Spyware, asking for help with existing software, or asking what software to buy. All that without a developed site. We know the potential to build is there, we know we’re offering it for a very cheap price (especially our ridiculous reserve), however, we do believe if we put a very low reserve the market will come forward and we will get the full price for the domain. Whether we are right or wrong about the strategy, only time will tell.
More on this domain and auction details at a later point.
The great thing about the spyware.com story is that you can take a couple of words that when put together make sense to you and a few years later you have million dollar a year domain. With hindsight, spyware was inevitable after viruses. It could have been termed “snoopware”,”watchware” but spyware just “feels” right.
Obviously spyware.coms don’t come along every day, but a good number of my sales in 2-10k range have been terms that don’t actually exist (or two words not commonly used together) but just “felt right” to me … I guess the buyers agreed.