The domain name TGP.com was listed for sale on auction megasite eBay Thursday morning.
After being the property and the home page of an architectural firm that found the amount of adult traffic a bit troublesome, the domain landed in the hands of a group of business associates looking to start an adult venture three years ago. When other projects took precedence, the group, which is being represented for the sale by former Danni’s Hard Drive director of sales and marketing Sam Agboola, decided to look into selling the domain.
“Part of this is the difficulty in knowing a price in today’s market. Obviously it’s not something anyone wants to give away. Putting it on eBay is one way of making it widely known and widely available,” Agboola told AVNOnline.com.
“You’re going to sell it for a good price and know that enough people knew about it to mean the price is fair. Or, you’re going to get ignored and you say maybe we should go somewhere else.”
When TGP.com last had content, three years ago, it was bringing in 50,000 to 70,000 unique hits a day, according to Agboola.
The starting bid for the domain was set at $1, but the reserve is in the five-figure range. Agboola believes the domain could bring in six figures.
“I think most people in the adult space would tell you if you’re half serious about doing something with this, you’re going to make $50,000 on it in a year without really breaking a sweat,” he said.
Those around the industry seem to think a six-figure sale price is a reach. The owner of TGP SleazyDream.com, Scott Hjorleifson, said he thought the domain would bring in $40,000 to $50,000.
“I don’t think it’s worth $100,000. The TGP market isn’t about type-ins, it’s about bookmarks,” Hjorleifson told AVNOnline.com.
“It’s not the same kind of traffic as something like Sex.com. It’s traffic that is people looking to get something for free. It’s not traffic that is a surfer coming on there looking to buy something initially.”
Sex.com’s owner, Gary Kremen, agreed with the assumption, saying a six-figure payment for the domain would be foolish, though not out of the realm of possibilities.
“Domain names are only worth the traffic that’s typed into them or what can get branded on them. I don’t know how many people type in TGP.com. It’s not like it’s going to get spidered better than anything else,” Kremen told AVNOnline.com.
“The question is, are TGP surfers really worth that much money? Surfers come to us (Sex.com) and they’re pretty new surfers. They don’t know about TGPs, where you can get anything for free. I don’t think that traffic is worth that much.”
Regardless of how much interest the eBay offering draws, Agboola is content to use it as a starting point to gauge interest.
“If it doesn’t sell there’s really no loss on our end. This is a sale, but it’s also a trial balloon because we’ll come back with some information,” he said.
TGP.com is eBay item 5763063231.
