The new Latona's is live. What it is and why we are doing it
POSTED BY Rick Latona IN Featured, Web Sites

For months now I've been divesting from the pure generic domain business and defining in my organization the class of assets known as web properties. I believe that what matters in today's day and age is cash flow. That is the simplest way to explain the new business model behind Latona's. To fully understand where we are going with this, I'd like to expand on what I mean by cash flow and what exactly we consider a "web property".

First, a little background on what got us here. The domain bubble burst in late 2008. Various sites and reports will show you that sales are still strong on the low end of the market, $x,xxx and $xx,xxx sized deals. Occasionally, we'll even see some 6 and 7 digit deals hit the news. However, those are rare and far between. There certainly aren't enough of them for a broker to make a decent business out of them. Maybe if you were independent and working out of your house and had no expenses you could make a living brokering domains but we are trying to do bigger things here.

It is our opinion that the market won't recover any time soon, if it recovers at all. We feel that domains just aren't worth that much anymore and the only way to sell one for a significant amount is to get a little lucky. Many domainers take the "land mine" approach. Meaning, the more domains they have, the more likely someone will step on one of them. This is expensive and ties up a lot of capital. We here at Latona's aren't about to go back to building a huge portfolio and waiting patiently for buyers to come to us. It just isn't our style.

So based on that premise, we started to focus on only cash flow. What's a cash flow asset? Well, in a perfect world it's something that requires little or no maintenance and just generates revenue every month. Passive revenue to use a domainer term. In the world we now live in, investors have a lot of options where to put their hard earned capital. Real Estate, ETFs, Securities are all fine capital investments - but we have been able to exceed those ROI's by investing in cash flow generating web properties.  

The term web property we are loosly defining as a digital asset that resides in cyberspace such as a website, domain, facebook fan page, twitter account, YouTube channel, email marketing lists, mobile and tablet applications.

We want to stretch the bounderies here and represent any cash flow generating web property. I've been busy retraining and training new recruits on a better way to get clients worth having. We feel strongly that choosing what not to do is as an important part of our strategy as choosing what to do. That's why we've broadened our focus to web properties as a whole but narrowed it at the same time to only properties that generate cash flow and nothing that has an asking price of more than five times annual earnings.

We've been signing up clients in the background for some time now but will only be releasing 5-15 deals a week so we can focus our efforts on marketing them properly. You can view the initial list at http://latonas.com/web-properties-for-sale/

If you have a property that you feel qualifies for a listing, you can submit it at this URL: http://latonas.com/how-to-sell-web-properties/

As always, I'd appreciate any feedback. You can contact me directly through my blog.

  • David

    How would your site compare with Flippa.com?

  • Anonymous

    Flippa is a network that lists everything, the good, the bad and the ugly. You can spend a lot of time trying to find something to buy and it's a buyer beware situation.

    Our inventory is hand selected and verified.

  • Alexander

    Rick, wishing you success in carving a niche in the 'Flippa' market!

  • Rob

    Are you planning to sell Twitter and Facebook accounts, because I thought that was against their TOS?

    You can't go wrong with cash flow assets, I agree about your domain 'landmine' theory, but it's still worth holding on to good domains if you can cover the costs. Looks like you are not completely out of domains because you list them as potential cash flow web properties.

  • Anonymous

    Social accounts need to be handled carefully and as an entity. You are correct that you can't just transfer a password.

  • Frankie Aladii

    Rick this is great. This type of market is long overdue. Actually checked on incomedomains.com and incomewebsites.com a couple of days ago and It was taken. I did the search because when I went to flippa, it was difficult separating truth from fiction and I thought; wouldn't it be nice to have a site listing only income domains or website? You already have a recognized brand with RickLatona so I believe you will have great success with this venture. Seams Harvard is already paying off in a very short period of time :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Rob-Sequin/1316290065 Rob Sequin

    Great concept and a nice fit to all the other domain business models. Congratulations.

  • Mark Milburn

    I have to say Rick I have followed your movement in the domain name business for some time and have appreciated your success and innovations. It is comforting to learn that others are seeing what I am experiencing and realize that for now and into the foreseeable future, your new method of operation should prove even more fruitful. That "landmine" approach never worked for me and I agree with you...2008 was just about it. Ready for lunch at fogo next time I am back in ATL. This time I'm buying:-)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Gui-Rro/686010946 Gui Rro

    I am very happy to see you back Rick.
    The idea looks good, I wish you success!

  • http://twitter.com/NYParisLondon NYParisLondon

    Sounds good, Rick. Much luck!
    http://1-800AUCTION.COM
    http://1-800GERMANY.COM

  • http://twitter.com/EmergingDomains Emerging Domains

    Congratulations! You were first to fill the gap of verified income-producing websites for sale!

  • jiansen

    BKALM.COM
    twitteripad.com
    SMLNE.COM
    TELOSENG.COM
    INTERNETIPV6.COM
    yeyeah.com
    zunehost.com
    wonsey.com
    workpause.com
    pppal.com
    hispeak.com

  • Dijon

    Hey Rick, so would a FB page with 6,000 likes, linked to an actual website get your interest? Like CricketWC.com?

  • Mobernard

    What is your added value to:

    http://websiteproperties.com/

    ?

  • Logan

    How do you verify the revenue?

  • Anonymous

    Logan, "very carefully" :) Seriously, we get screenshots, which of course could be manipulated so we also look at 3rd party tools and their analytics to look for any anomalies. Meaning, if the traffic doesn't look like it would support the revenue then something fishy could be happening.

    Lastly, we have lots of examples of the RPMs sites in various categories should receive. We also look for anomalies there.

    Like anything in life, you have to be careful and there are no guarantees. We encourage buyers to ask for as much proof as they can think of and we'll work on their behalf to round it all up.

  • http://www.leicestersquare.com Robert Haastrup-Timmi

    Rick, would you consider websites that are partly developed but don't yet generate revenue?

    This is a provocative question. Because in silicon valley parlance, most web properties will not generate revenue until a real investment is made and then revenue can only be realised over a period of time. So you could be missing out on great web assets that could become huge in the near future once a considerable investment is made to create scale. I'll give you an example if you don't mind. RecruitSocially.com for instance is a site I developed to a stage, but don't have the investment to scale further just yet. It has about 700 subscribers, a mix of skilled professionals and recruiters, employers etc.. It's a recruitment social media play. So would a baby site like this qualify for your listing? I say this because if a recruitment company bought such a site, they already have the investment I may not have to create scale. That in my opinion is where the real value of what you are trying to do is! I strongly suggest you do not limit your model to only cash producing sites. Most of them on Flippa are really crap! What you should consider is sites that have scalability, that is where the real money is and I would personally do it. I'm basically saying, think like the sites you see on KillerStartup.com you get my gist? That is where the real future money is. All the best!

  • Mobernard

    Latona is definively right: the domain market is special as the mean demand for a domain is and ***will ever be*** way below 1 (to compare for example with houses where it is way more than 1). Furthermore, "invest" in a domain costs nearly nothing.

    As a conclusion, it is natural to see the common domainer adopt the so-called "land mine" approach.

    Just to make it clearer: (1) the SEO benefit of a keyword based domain is very low and (2) the "easy to remember" doesn't really exist starting at 2 keywords because of possible variations.

    (the very low subset of very premium domains has to be taken separately, but is not significative)

  • http://www.ricklatona.com/2011/06/11/are-domains-worthless/ Rick Latona » Are domains worthless?

    [...] been a lot of drama surrounding last Tuesday's announcement so I felt compelled to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon elaborating on some of my comments [...]

  • http://www.facebook.com/funkywizard Gabriel Ramuglia

    It's actually pretty simple. If the thing puts money in your bank account every month, it's an asset. If it takes money away from you every month, it's a liability. Can liabilities eventually become assets with the right grooming? Sure, of course. But why focus on things that are not making money, when it's just as easy to buy things that are making money? If you grow your assets, that provides more money to buy even more assets, making you richer. If you grow your liabilities, you become poorer with each new property you buy, hoping that one of them will strike it rich and make up for all the losers. Sounds like the difference between investing and buying lottery tickets. I'll take investing thanks.

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