This week we received news of yet another six figure sale for a finance related domain name.
The domain in question is carloan.com.au, and whilst it may not be insurance related, it’s still worth looking at.
James Wester brokered the sale of the domain on behalf of previous owner OMG, which is a wholly owned subsiduary of Fairfax Media.
The buyer was CarSales.com Limited, the owner of Australia’s leading online car sales portal of the same name.
Whilst the parties would not reveal the exact price, Wester advised that it was in excess of $200,000. This would make it the largest domain name sale in Australia for 2013.
Seeing CarSales as the buyer was certainly not a surprise to many people in the online marketing industry, as they have been prolific buyers of automotive related domain names over the last few years.
This sale certainly shows the value in generic finance domain names, and it will be interesting to see if CarSales simply parks the domain (excuse the pun) or builds it into a new car loan service.
Hmmm… no real surprise that CarSales is shifting into finance at some point but based on some of their domain purchases they also like locking out affiliates or competitors from these types of domains.
Agree on both points David. I wonder if they’ve had a crack at acquiring carinsurance.com.au to complete their set?
Highly unlikely they’ll be able to build it into another ‘brand’ like they have with carsales.com.au, given that carloans.com.au (note the ‘s’) is already an established business and brand.
You could be right, but I’m sure there are examples of two businesses operating with similar names – one singular and one plural. I note that there has been no trademark registered for carloans.com.au yet, which is perhaps not a great move.
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