DATE PURCHASED: November 5, 2004
DOMAIN: Cemetaryflowers.com
PRICE: A little under two years projected revenue: $800 paid through Paypal
BACKGROUND INFO: I posted a wanted ad HERE in search of generic .com typo domains. I got responses and private messages from several people including this one from RaDiSTAR:
"hi iHQ,
I can offer CemetaryFlowers.com (instead of "cemetery"). It makes about $40 /month on Sedo - the clickthrough rate is great and ppc is more than $0.25 - up to $0.37 at times. Pure type-in traffic, about 400 uniques /month - zero promotion."
Looking for 24 months of monthly revenue.
Thanks,
Theo"
I purchased the domain after RadiSTAR provided a link to the past two months revenue stats on Sedo. He said he had just gotten another offer for $850 just moments after we agreed on a price of $800.
THE PROBLEM: Everything was perfect the first week. Stats/Visitors were on target and even a little higher with the domain parked at Domain Sponsor. HOWEVER, After owning the domain for appoximately one week, stats dropped to 0-1 visitor per day, zero most days. I PM'ed Theo after about a week of poor results and told him the problem. He called me and we talked about it. He suggested that the problem was with the DomainSponsor design or lack of design and that's why people weren't clicking. I tried to explain that it wasn't they weren't clicking on the ads it was that they weren't there to click on them. He said he'd never used DomainSponsor and that he didn't know if they had some downtime, etc. etc. and suggested changing it back to Sedo's parking. He also suggested I add a link in my signature of all the forums I post on (wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of buying a type-in traffic domain?). So a few days later I was able to make the change back to Sedo's parking. As I expected this made absolutely no difference and I continued to recieve barely any traffic. I think more than half of the 8 visits are from me checking to make sure the ads are up. Theo even said he visited it at least once since it was parked on Sedo. It's now been parked at Sedo for 10 days and recieved eight total visitors with one click the first full day it was parked (before it was optimized: Theo's visit?).
RESOLUTION: Several times I offered to drop the whole issue for a full refund of the original purchase price. Theo declined and offered no alternatives or solutions. Furthermore his last PM stated he would no longer respond to my messages. He maintains that all domains are sold as- is (I completely agree with that but not under these circumstances) and that the traffic was completely legitimate. However never in my experience has such an irregular traffic pattern for type-ins (8-15 visitors a day for 2 1/2 months and then overnight 0-1 for two-three weeks now) ever been displayed. Funny, how it dropped off within just seven days of purchasing the domain. Keep in mind we are talking about "cemetery flowers" not some fad or domain mentioned on TV once. Not every funeral in the US is scheduled between October 1st and November 11th.
I am fully aware that the Sedo stats Theo provided me with are accurate. HOWEVER that could have been due to advertising the domain elsewhere such as in his signature as he's currently doing with americasflowers.com or he could have been redirecting traffic or buying traffic from elsewhere. WHATEVER I really don't care, but the fact of the matter is that the traffic was NOT "type-in traffic", and by refusing to send a full refund upon pointing out these inaccuracies, Theo has taken unfair advantage of me.
I'm also well aware that there are many people who have made deals with RadiSTAR or Timechange that were successfully concluded on this very forum(many of which were name-only deals). However, I am out $800 here on a typo-domain that gets no traffic. It doesn't make any difference how many deals he's done in the past, I have simply presented the facts to you. I am requesting the mods ban this user if he isn't willing to settle this.
DOMAIN: Cemetaryflowers.com
PRICE: A little under two years projected revenue: $800 paid through Paypal
BACKGROUND INFO: I posted a wanted ad HERE in search of generic .com typo domains. I got responses and private messages from several people including this one from RaDiSTAR:
"hi iHQ,
I can offer CemetaryFlowers.com (instead of "cemetery"). It makes about $40 /month on Sedo - the clickthrough rate is great and ppc is more than $0.25 - up to $0.37 at times. Pure type-in traffic, about 400 uniques /month - zero promotion."
Looking for 24 months of monthly revenue.
Thanks,
Theo"
I purchased the domain after RadiSTAR provided a link to the past two months revenue stats on Sedo. He said he had just gotten another offer for $850 just moments after we agreed on a price of $800.
THE PROBLEM: Everything was perfect the first week. Stats/Visitors were on target and even a little higher with the domain parked at Domain Sponsor. HOWEVER, After owning the domain for appoximately one week, stats dropped to 0-1 visitor per day, zero most days. I PM'ed Theo after about a week of poor results and told him the problem. He called me and we talked about it. He suggested that the problem was with the DomainSponsor design or lack of design and that's why people weren't clicking. I tried to explain that it wasn't they weren't clicking on the ads it was that they weren't there to click on them. He said he'd never used DomainSponsor and that he didn't know if they had some downtime, etc. etc. and suggested changing it back to Sedo's parking. He also suggested I add a link in my signature of all the forums I post on (wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose of buying a type-in traffic domain?). So a few days later I was able to make the change back to Sedo's parking. As I expected this made absolutely no difference and I continued to recieve barely any traffic. I think more than half of the 8 visits are from me checking to make sure the ads are up. Theo even said he visited it at least once since it was parked on Sedo. It's now been parked at Sedo for 10 days and recieved eight total visitors with one click the first full day it was parked (before it was optimized: Theo's visit?).
RESOLUTION: Several times I offered to drop the whole issue for a full refund of the original purchase price. Theo declined and offered no alternatives or solutions. Furthermore his last PM stated he would no longer respond to my messages. He maintains that all domains are sold as- is (I completely agree with that but not under these circumstances) and that the traffic was completely legitimate. However never in my experience has such an irregular traffic pattern for type-ins (8-15 visitors a day for 2 1/2 months and then overnight 0-1 for two-three weeks now) ever been displayed. Funny, how it dropped off within just seven days of purchasing the domain. Keep in mind we are talking about "cemetery flowers" not some fad or domain mentioned on TV once. Not every funeral in the US is scheduled between October 1st and November 11th.
I am fully aware that the Sedo stats Theo provided me with are accurate. HOWEVER that could have been due to advertising the domain elsewhere such as in his signature as he's currently doing with americasflowers.com or he could have been redirecting traffic or buying traffic from elsewhere. WHATEVER I really don't care, but the fact of the matter is that the traffic was NOT "type-in traffic", and by refusing to send a full refund upon pointing out these inaccuracies, Theo has taken unfair advantage of me.
I'm also well aware that there are many people who have made deals with RadiSTAR or Timechange that were successfully concluded on this very forum(many of which were name-only deals). However, I am out $800 here on a typo-domain that gets no traffic. It doesn't make any difference how many deals he's done in the past, I have simply presented the facts to you. I am requesting the mods ban this user if he isn't willing to settle this.
