PriveCo purchased the domain name Vibrators.com in 2008 after leasing the domain name since around 2002. How much did PriveCo pay for the generic adult related toys domain name? A cool Million Dollars. Yes, $1,000,000.00

Not only is PriveCo excelling with the generic domain name Vibrators.com, sales have more than doubled from January 2009 to January 2010 and continue to do so to date!  According to Founder Tom Nardone, Vibrators.com is also doing $1 Million in sales annually, so you can see why the $1M purchase made sense to PriveCo. Yes, buying a domain name for $1 Million dollars can get you some attention, but there is also a lot more to learn behind the purchaser and the company behind it.

PriveCo focuses on a pretty good niche that the internet allows them to take full advantage of, which is offering products that many people are shy making a purchase at a local store. That includes Vibrators!

PriveCo like many other businesses started small in Tom’s spare room at his home some 11.5 years ago. ShopInPrivate.com was the companies first web site and it was doing well but would run into some slow months during the month of March. Tom found himself with too much spare time on his hands during these slow times with ShopInPrivate.com and thought it was time to try and find something to pick up business during the slow months. Based on some sales number of Bachelorette orders with shop in private, Tom thought it would be a good idea to enter into the Bachelorette market. He was also aware that things picked up around his current slow times. Tom made his first domain name purchase from somebody that already owned the domain name and purchased the generic domain name BacheloretteParties.com for $1,500 and still runs the site today.

By 2001 the Bachelorette business was doing pretty well and Tom had the insight to try and purchase the domain name Bachelorette.com . After some talking and deal making, Tom was able to purchase Bachelorette.com in 2001 for $64,000. Still to this day, Bachelorette.com is the best performing site for PriveCo which does about $2 Million in sales annually.

In 2002 Tom felt he and his team could sell the heck out of some vibrators and the product fit the niche they sell and became interested in the premium generic domain name Vibrators.com . PriveCo struck a partnership with the domain owner of Vibrators.com at the time because of the owners offering price of the domain name and Tom then ran the business for Vibrators.com for several years. By 2008, Tom had saved up and knew the price the Vibrators.com owner would sell at and the $1 Million Dollar sale took place. $200,000 was paid up front, with the remaining being paid out over the next 5 years.

$1 Million Dollars is a lot of money for any small company, but Tom had been running the site for 6 years already and was well aware of what he was getting in to with his purchase. This made the purchase a lot easier and Tom knew it was the right thing to do. With sales continuing to rise, Tom is proving his purchase was the right thing to do.

With search stats provided by the Google Adwords Tool, it states that the singular term vibrator actually is searched for 450,000 times exactly globally per month compared to about 246,000 times the for plural vibrators.

That is a lot of searches each and every month and holding the number 1 spot is very important for the PriveCo owners of Vibrators.com.  Vibrators.com holds the # 1 spot on Google for the matching term, they also hold the # 2 spot. That means all those 246,000 searches for the exact match term see and likely click into the Vibrators.com site to help ring up the $1 Million yearly sales! Don’t forget about the all important direct navigation as well.

Although the singular term is searched for some 200,000 more times per month, Vibrators.com still holds the natural # 4 and # 5 spots for the singular term and holds many great rankings for long tail popular searches. Vibrator.com ranks # 3, getting beat out by Wikipedia which holds the # 1 and # 2 spot for its matching term. Tom and Keith, the owner of Vibrator.com know each other and the competition keeps them working each and everyday but both feel Google is treating them about right. Keith may not think the same but Tom is for sure "OK" with the rankings. Keep in mind that Yahoo and Bing also provide traffic, as well as the direct navigation.

When I had my chance to talk with PriveCo’s Founder and CEO Tom Nardone, he couldn’t be more excited about his million dollar purchase of the domain name Vibrators.com . He was even more excited about his site Bachelorette.com purchase and site started several years ago. They both have strong search engine rankings for the all important generic product and niche that people search for naturally and owning the generic domain names cuts down advertising cost and brings in solid traffic that is converting to growing sales. Tom puts his main focus on converting and feels owning the matching premium generic domain name does this the best. He also feels that KISS (keep it simple stupid) is the right approach.

PriveCo keeps the online stores they own with mainly the best selling and most popular products on the market. Quality products at a lower volume works best. Vibrators.com for an example has about 470 items, where as similar sites on the market offer some 17,000 products. It becomes a bit too much Tom feels and thinks it is important to offer items people are interested in buying than having an online store with endless amounts of products.

You may be surprised but Tom stated he puts very little focus on SEO. He said it is important to his customers that they can read unique content about a specific product and have a nice selection without being overwhelmed on the site with products to choose from. Tom was very passionate about the value in generic domain names and he felt the true value in premium generic domain names is because they convert the best!

One of my last questions to Tom was how he went about contacting a domain name owner when he was interested in a specific domain. Tom would use Whois and sends an email to the contact address provided. He said the thing that upsets him the most is many people simply over value their domain names and many simply never reply to his emails. Keep in mind that Tom purchased a domain name for a Million Dollars, so if the domain owner doesn’t reply to Tom as a buyer, they need to rethink things. Tom stated he is very open with his contact to the domain name owners of who he is and he is also very likely to know what he is willing to pay for the domain name before making contact. Profit margins are a large thing considered with any domain name purchased Tom stated. Asking a million dollars for a product that can only make a buck on is going to be a hard sell. Even though a domain name like Baseballs.com may sound great, it will be hard to convert and sell baseballs online.

So not every domain name is perfect for online sales, even though it may be considered a premium generic. Profit margins are very important and should be considered by a domain name buyer. Tom and PriveCo found their niche and had the wise plan to own premium generic domain names due to direct navigation they get, the search engines favor developed sites with the matching terms and so much more!

Some other sites also owned by PriveCo.com include, RomanticGifts.com, EnemaSupply.com and SexToyParty.com to name a few. PriveCo also owns and ships everything directly for its own warehouse, which is located in Michigan. Check out the video tour of the PriveCo team and see the business.

Thank you again to Tom for the interview, what a great guy!