Subscribe
uTube.com rides the YouTube wave to 29 Million Dollars
May 16th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
Universal Tube the manufacturer of tubes sued Google because of the amount of traffic they had coming to their site. They said these “nuisance Internet visitors” have caused their server to crash many times, which lead them to sue Google. The UTube company could not figure out why there was so much traffic but they finally figured it out. People heard about YouTube and so they went to a computer and typed in “U Tube”.
To a Domainer this is Internet Gold. To a pipe company this is “nuisance Internet Visitors”, but wait. They had someone from SearchFeed.com contact them and offer them a way to make money off of the traffic. Turns out they could make a lot of money off the traffic by selling advertising for Ringtones and other Pay-Per-Click advertising at the top of the page.
Estimates by Compete.com say 1 Million people a month visit the UTube.com site. However we have calculated that the visitors are actually much higher. Which could be as high as 6 Million visitors because Compete only measures US traffic.
We estimate that UTube is making $8,000 a day on the traffic or $2,920,000 a year. The domain is now easily worth 10 years revenue which comes out to a cool $29 Million if they wanted to sell. Else they can sit back and collect the free money from the YouTube monster typo.
Owning a domain is like buying a lottery ticket, you never know who your neighbor will be or how popular. A good example is Disney Internet Group. They own DIG.com, but someone else registered DIGG.com. Now Disney enjoys free traffic.
« Newer Post Older Post »
Posted in Domain Parking, Domain Typo Generator |
May 16th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
A good one..just a missing G and the traffic goes..whoosh!
azrin @ http://www.azrin.net
May 16th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Come on Jay quit baiting your posts for comments
This one isn’t going to get you to the front page of Digg this time.
Come on. You know domains enough to know that $29m is unrealistic. The discount rate on a valuation of a domain that relies completely on another domain for its traffic and thus revenue would be considerably higher than “any old typein” domain that gets a 10x valuation. At best this name would get a 1-3x valuation, anything more and you are rolling the dice. I’d say 6m would be a hefty gamble.
Also can you post your math on your daily rev estimate just for fun. :)thanks adam
May 16th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
sound is good… how about zootube.com ?
May 16th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Porn.com is estimated at 50K page views a month and earns $2000 a day. We see that UTube.com is estimated at 1M. So it is nearly 20X. So if the money held true it would be $40,0000 a day. I discounted it a little and estimated a lot of people would realize the typo and go away. So $8,000 a day is good estimate.
I don’t think YouTube is going anywhere, I would pay at least 5 years revenue for the domain. I assume the traffic would double in five years as well. So I really do think it is worth $29M. YouTube is one of the top 10 domains in the world.
May 17th, 2007 at 7:39 am
You sir are a gambler. You should buy poker.com instead.
Seriously though, Utube.com is no porn.com. These are 2 entirely different types of domains.
I had heard porn.com was doing $5k a day btw and I think utube may do more than the $8k you estimated. Regardless of what utube earns though, to say it’s worth a 10x multiple is still crazy. First, consider what else your $29m could have bought. Besides the much safer traditional investments, both sex.com and porn.com could have been yours and you would still have ~9m left over to pretty much buy the top 20 domains sold recently as reported on dnjournal.
“I don’t think YouTube is going anywhere, I would pay at least 5 years revenue for the domain. I assume the traffic would double in five years as well. So I really do think it is worth $29M. YouTube is one of the top 10 domains in the world.”
Altavista, looksmart, netscape, etc. The “where are they now” of the internet. These were top internet brands at one time too . Time will tell I suppose but this is a major risk. If I were the owner I’d be taking you up on that $29m
May 17th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Personally, I find it interesting that they continue to be allowed to collect revenues on this name. In any other case, google would have been able to file a UDRP and probably win. But instead, in this case, Utube pushed back before google even had the chance to. This is a perfect example of where if you don’t protect your trademark, and it becomes public domain, then you loose out. Here we have Utube seeking to protect their mark, which creates a situation where, now, google is on the defensive. If Utube hadn’t been as aggressive in protecting their “Utube” mark and business name, I doubt we would see Utube be able to monetize their “internet gold” traffic in such a potentially confusingly similar manner.
May 17th, 2007 at 11:03 am
The problem here is that Universal Tube has a genuine interest in the name “utube.”
If they sold it to a speculator, the name would immediately become UDRP fodder unless the speculator also bought the tubing company.
May 18th, 2007 at 4:38 am
The value of the domain may be $29 millions, but I don’t think they can sell the domain for that amount.