Posted: 24 Aug 2011 04:52 AM PDT

After watching an interview on MO.com with Brent Beshore, an Inc 500 entrepreneur, I cruised over to Inc.com and noticed another familiar name in the list of the fastest growing companies. Matias de Tezanos and his company BrokerWeb.com ranked #20 in the 2011 Inc 500issue. The company saw a 3 year growth of 8,127% with 2010 Revenues of $15.7 million.

Tezanos has has a stellar track record as an entrepreneur starting his career at the age of 20 launching Hoteles.com (sold to Expedia in 2002). He also sold his company ClickDiario.com to Livedoor.com which later sold to NewsCorp in 2007. ClickDiario was rated one of the top 10 largest Spanish networks at the time of the sale with over 25 million monthly users. The company portfolio included incredible domains such as Deportes.com (Sports), Salud.com (Health), Mujer.com (Women), Mascotas.com (Pets), Boletines.com (Newsletters), Dietas.com (Diets), and Tarjetas.com (Greeting Cards).

His current company BrokersWeb.com, runs a dozen niche sites mostly focused on insurance products on some great domains including Healthcare.com, AutoInsuranceFinders.com and LifeInsurance.org. Tezanos is also an investor in DomainHoldings.

If you haven’t heard of Tezanos, you may want to read some history from a 2005 DnJournal story.

Congrats Matias and BrokerWeb.com

Left of the Dot Relaunches Importers.com

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 03:22 PM PDT

Importers.com was owned by Canadian Company Live Current Media (previously known as Communicate) and was purchased by a domain investor in 2010. The domain was purchased strictly for the inherent value of the name itself with the intent to switch off the business and replace it with a parked page. Instead the domain investor was also able to obtain the current website and existing user base and has now revived the site with the help of another Canadian company.

The website was originally started in 2003 but day-to- day growth and management of the business was ceased by its previous owners in 2007. Despite a lack of leadership and support, the community continued to expand to over 400,000 members.

Left of the Dot Media, has relaunched the site with a new look and new features. Over the past year the company has worked to create a platform to support their business model and renovate the Importers.com site. Key component to the company’s business model is to lease out subdomains under premium domains and to build a directory-style site for the domain itself. Depending on the vertical the domain covers, there may be additional custom features added.

The site is now adding about 1,000 users every week and competes directly with Alibaba.com and TradeKey.com which are valued at $10B and $2B respectively. Based on a value of between $50 and $120 per customer (as used by Alibaba & TradeKey), the operators feel that Importers.com has an implied value of at least $17.5M.

Left of the Dot has introduced three different membership types and trust certifications to the site and added the ability to lease premium subdomains for prices ranging from $25-$199 per month, called “marketing names“. According to the company, hundreds of the sites existing subdomains are already listed in the top 3 search results in the search engines.

“A memorable generic name like Importers.com is equivalent to quality real estate, the Park Places and Boardwalks of the domain industry”, says John Lyotier, Co-Founder at Left of the Dot, “Importers.com represented the virtual equivalent of renovating an entire city centre and giving businesses all the tools they need to grow and prosper – it's good for each business and good for the community. The key for us is enabling importers and exporters to lease their very own sub-domains (Marketing Names) off the Importers.com brand so that they can become a valuable part of the community.”

The company also is one of the 25 finalists in this year’s BCIC-New Ventures competition. Other sites managed by the company listed in their portfolio are Villa.com, Oahu.com and Beef.com.

[via Press Release]

Disclaimer: The author, Frank Michlick, is now an external Technical Adviser for Left of the Dot Media and was CTO until the end of July 2011.

SEC Filing reveals BankRate.com’s Domain Acquisitions

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 12:27 PM PDT

BankRate.com’s Premium Domain Acquisitions in 2010 and 2011 have been revealed in a recent SEC filing totaling over $80 million USD. Albeit the purchases also included companies, content and software, the filing breaks the value of the domain names out as a separate number.

Bargaineering.com – $2.7 million USD, January 29, 2010
“Approximately $2.8 million was recorded as finite-lived intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $2.7 million and non-compete agreement for $140,000.”

InsuranceQuotes.com – $5.9 million USD, March 31, 2010
“Approximately $5.9 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $5.9 million, non-compete agreement for $20,000 and Internet content for $15,000.”

NetQuote.com – $40.9 million USD, July 13, 2010
“Approximately $92.0 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $40.9 million, customer relationships for $46.0 million, and developed technology for $5.1 million.”

CreditCards.com – $67.8 million USD.August 6, 2010
“Approximately $67.8 million was recorded as finite-lived intangible assets consisting of Internet domain name for $26.5 million, customer relationships for $39.4 million, and developed technology for $1.9 million.”

CD.com – $500,000 USD. October 15, 2010
“On October 15, 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of the internet domain name CD.com from Rick Latona Auctions, LLC, a Georgia Limited Liability Company for $500,000.”

CreditCards.ca – $650,000 USD, November 23, 2010
“On November 23, 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of internet domain name CreditCards.ca from an Enterprise Analyticals Modeling and Process, LLC, for $650,000.”

TrouveMedia.com(?) – $230,000 USD, January 1, 2011
It doesn’t clearly state the domain name in the filing. “Approximately $3.9 million was recorded as intangible assets consisting of agent relationships for $2.3 million, developed technologies for $1.4 million, and internet domain name for $230,000.”

CarInsuranceQuotes.com – $7.5 million USD, May 13, 2011
“Approximately $7.5 million was recorded as intangible asset, all of which, was for the domain name.”

As noted by Elliot Silver, “they amortize domain names from anywhere from 5 years to 25 years, depending on the domain name“.

[Hat tip to George Kirikos]