Sedo: It Started with a College Thesis

sedoSedo is an acronym for Search Engine Domain Offers. It’s a company that operates as a domain name and website marketplace out of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cologne, Germany. Founded by three college students, and based on one of their college thesis papers (“Price Formation in the Trade of Internet Domain Names”), the company has become a smashing success. The premise of the site is that users can shop the site for existing domain names and buy them. What’s so special about that? For starters, the domain names can be (and often are) premium names. Some very successful and innovative brands have been born out of the ashes of parked or deserted domains.

Coffee.org

William McClure wanted to create a national coffee distribution network for hotels and offices. McClure learned that the best domains aren’t always “.com” domains. A “.org” shows you’re an industry organization and can also be a very affordable alternative to an overt commercial domain. Once McClure had his domain, he approached other coffee experts like GourmetCoffee.org. He had relationships, and traffic, in no time at all.

Bobblehead.com

Warren Royal wanted to build an online store that sold bobbleheads. What are bobbleheads? They’re small figurines that have heads that “wobble” all over the place. Yes, there’s a market for that. Warren didn’t want to spend a lot of extra time and money doing SEO, so he approached Sedo. The company was able to help him find the site he wanted – with existing traffic and a strong visitor base to start from. With existing traffic, Warren’s company hit the ground running. Since he only needed to spend a few hours a week to get his site going, his success was virtually guaranteed. It was like inheriting a store front with people already milling about outside. All he had to do is get them to look around his site and find something that interested them, and he did just that.

Dyn.com

Sometimes businesses are looking to expand existing operations. The company had many different brands, and was officially called “Dynamo Network Services.” They already had a website – a long one. It was dynamicnetworkservices.com. Ouch. It was difficult to remember and prone to spelling errors.

Knowing that a long name can prevent customers from ever reaching their business on the Internet, Dynamo sought out a shorter name that was still relevant. Dyn.com was much shorter, and was a great way to truncate and simplify the company’s branding without diluting brand equity. Unfortunately, Dyn.com was already taken. After unsuccessfully trying to contact the owner of the site, Dynamo turned to Sedo. The result? Dynamo has a hip, new, brand that still gives a respectable homage to the longer business name.

Wish.co.uk

Ever wanted to shoot shoot zombies? Hunt vampires? Go on a thrilling helicopter ride? How about being thrown into real riot training? Maybe a romantic getaway to an exotic place is more your speed. Wish.co.uk is a site that allows you to do just that. Richard Kershaw and Stephen Pavlovich scored a major win with their company Wish. While looking for just the right domain name, the two stumbled upon Wish.co.uk on Sedo. They won the auction and immediately went to work designing the perfect online atmosphere for thrill-seekers and adventure enthusiasts.

Out of an abandoned domain rose Wish – a site dedicated to bringing customers unique experiences. Fight zombies in an abandoned shopping mall, learn how to fly a helicopter, see what it takes to be part of a riot team, hunt down vampires and kill them. Kershaw and Pavlovich brought their dream into existence. Sedo got them the name they needed.

Takeaway

Brands don’t have to suffer with bad domain names. Sedo can often find obscure, popular, or premium-quality names and get you a great deal on them. Even when you can’t work things out with the existing site owner directly, don’t lose hope. Many times, where there’s a will, there’s a way.