Here's the story of the guy who paid $250,000 for the domain stockphoto.com. It all sounds so simple....

http://flippa.com/blog/stockphoto-case-study/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Flippa+Newsletter+101213&utm_content=Flippa+Newsletter+101213+Version+A+CID_6a40f6ddaf0cecffb61f5e50d3440a94&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=How%20to%20Ask%20Your%20Partner%20Permission%20to%20Spend%20250k%20on%20a%20Flippa%20Auction

My guess is that they have no intention of building a long term business there. A few sales might be nice enough but I'll bet that this is all about selling the domain on for more money. Hence all the pub.

Funny really because I strongly believe that it increasingly doesn't much matter what a site is called. A site selling stock photos really doesn't need to be called stock-anything. Having the word stock in the name of business could even be detrimental.

My bet is that the next great collection will be named after the curator and will be called the Somebody Something Collection. Like private galleries.

If having a good URL was all it took, photos.com would be the cream of the crop and it's a rather stale looking backwater...

meow

I also wonder if when (if) the floodgates open on new endings (like photos.stk and so on) if that will make sitting on domain names less profitable. some people have definitely cashed out with a little forethought and luck, but mostly they seem to be squatting leaches grabbing up useful domain names and then holding out for big bucks ransom to let people make use of them.

It certainly seems that article is trying to sell something - domain name auctions or similar. It doesn't really seem like they are trying to make a serious competitor to other stock sites, more just make some $ while hoping for a big $ buyout from someone.

My reckoning is that they will end up being closed down by getty, just like "Mac" companies get closed by macdonald's.

Jumping into a 250k 'investment' with no knowledge of the industry, and one contributor doesn't seem very smart to me.

The $250K for the domain name is probably not as risky as it first appears. My guess is that the name itself will remain a saleable asset which will probably increase in value faster than most investments. At any rate the $250K is surely 'small beer' when compared to the likely costs of serious entry into the stock photography market.

I'm surprised, given the scale of the initial investment, that he's not making serious efforts to get other contributors yet.

It would be more like Burger King trying to trademark 'burger'.

OK - so this is bit off thread. But I was reading that a chain of pho restaurants in England had tried to stop other places from using pho in their names on the basis that they had trademarked the word pho. Which would be just like trying to trademark the word burger.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/25/vietnamese-pho-trademark-soup-cafe

Forgive me, but what is "pho"?

Let me Google that for you;

https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=pho+re&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADFA_enGB447GB448&q=pho+restaurant&gs_l=hp..1.0l5.0.0.1.82824658...........0.u403adfc6O8

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on December 10, 2013, 15:47

Jumping into a 250k 'investment' with no knowledge of the industry, and one contributor doesn't seem very smart to me.

The $250K for the domain name is probably not as risky as it first appears. My guess is that the name itself will remain a saleable asset which will probably increase in value faster than most investments.

I don't think so. Soon new top-level domains should be available and then this domain will be worth a fraction of what he paid now. The availability of new TL domains will be like an earthquake for "domain investors". It will open new opportunities, too.

IMHO now is the last good moment to sell existing domains.

When I'm looking for something I just type in a description of what I'm after and Google finds me (usually) some reasonable choices or the site I was looking for but whose URL I couldn't remember.

It's like phone numbers - you used to have to remember them to call someone and having a catchy easy-to-remember number was a good thing for a business. Now I have contacts on my phone and I increasingly have no idea what number I dialed (I can still remember my childhood phone number though!).

If having a good URL was all it took, photos.com would be the cream of the crop and it's a rather stale looking backwater...

agreed but the SEO value of a good domain is worth a lot.  I have some pretty crappy sites that show up very high in the search results for matching searches.  Or, do a search for stock photo and this new site has already managed 4th spot.

I watched that auction on Flippa and was pretty surprised at the price when it sold.  I agree with Gostwyk though, I think the domain will have value in itself for quite a while.  Even if the added TLD's become popular, everyone is going to consider the .com as default for quite a while yet.  I've talked to the guy who owns the domain it a little and he seems like a genuine and nice guy (for what that's worth).  I can't comment on the business plan side of it though as I don't know much about his long term plans and wouldn't want to put words in his mouth even if I did.

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Right now I've got my money on crapstock.com over stockphotos .com in the next few years....

That domain's already taken - a photographer here with a sense of humor is setting up a site on it as we speak

I think it was a good buy in long term. That domain has many advantages, huge natural type-in traffic, huge typo traffic, great SEO possibilities, history, it is naturally brandable, thus it has great potential, if it will be treated with care and good business plan.

But it has also something else. Completely free bonus. The bonus is that there is iStockPhoto.com stock agency sitting "nearby" this domain! There must be TONs of people mistyping StockPhoto.com domain, instead iStockPhoto.com domain! No doubts it makes TONs of free typo traffic every day, when people type-in StockPhoto.com instead iStockPhoto.com!

That is great bonus for the buyer!

Every time when iStockPhoto.com agency invests their money, sources, and efforts in promotion of their iStockPhoto.com brand name, they (I am sure very involuntary now) make free promotion also for StockPhoto.com domain!

That is the main reason why, in this exact case, singular word (StockPhoto.com) has much higher value than plural word (StockPhotos.com). Through usually plural domain has higher value in most cases. But not in this case. Because of iStockPhoto.com brand, which makes free (involuntary) promotion also for StockPhoto.com and gives it free every day's influx of typo traffic/visitors.

Anyway, I guess risk of iStockPhoto.com suing StockPhoto.com, and wining that trial equals almost zero. Domain StockPhoto.com is older than iStockPhoto.com, so if someone was to sue anyone, it could end actually in reverse order.

Even StockPhotos.com probably receives some typo traffic from iStockPhoto.com too, but it will be much more less than typo traffic StockPhoto.com receives. To mistype only "i" in the beginning of the word is much more easier than to mistype "i" as well as "s" at the ending. The difference in typo traffic for those two domains will be miles between each other.

Anyway, as I mentioned at the beginning StockPhoto.com, as well as StockPhotos.com are great domains, because they receive also natural type-in traffic, in form of people looking for stockphoto(s). When someone wants to find stock photos on the internet what will he do? He will naturally put stockphoto(s) to address bar of his browser to see what website is there. If there is quality stock photos related website with quality content he will convert to buyer. And all of this is completely for free for the owner of the domain. No need for him to spend TONs of money in advertising, he has natural influx of people looking for stock photos and typing stockphoto(s) to address bar! Advertising is expensive, he could easily waste $250,000 on advertising, but when advertising campaigns ends, influx of advertising traffic also ends, but on the other side, natural type-in traffic is staying forever for FREE, and for all the time, as long as stock photo(s) words will exist, or there will not be some huge changes in the way internet domains works, which I guess will be not anytime soon. So type-in traffic is the best and FREE advertising! So in longer term it was a great purchase for the buyer! If he will do things right, he cannot loose with this purchase!

I would question the SEO value a normal person like a small business owner probably use either Google image search or use a term like: 'where can I buy pictures' even if they aware of the term stockphoto. Designers already have one or more agencies that they are buying stockphotos and if they are looking for alternatives they will ask fellow designers for advice like in a forum.

The name itself is also not good was it stockphoto.com or stockphotos.com or stock-photo.com? With video becoming also more and more important it limits you to photo. Also with all this websites making jokes about stockphotos, stockphoto has already a negative vibe.

Also Google doesn't value the domain name that much anymore as it used to be in the past.

It's stupid and the interview with the guy (oh Shutterstock makes so much money with stockphotos and we already have one contributor it's a sure invest) just confirms it.