Kentucky Man Who Sold City Site Network for $2.3M In 2014 Selling for Second Time

PROSPECT, KY – It’s not often that a seller gets the opportunity to off-load the same portfolio twice, especially when the sales price is north of $2M, but that’s exactly what is happening with Clark Scott’s “Hello Earth” city site network and its computer software system as well as a U.S. federal trademark for “HELLO EARTH” – all assets of “Hello Earth LLC.”

I recently connected with Clark where we discussed the long and interesting history of his unique network of city sites, and can report that I will be (exclusively through TLD Brokerage) representing him in his quest to find, yet again, a buyer for his vast network, for a second time.

Clark Scott created the network of city sites back in 1999 (the hay-day of the Internet for those who remember it), and built what he believed to be the answer to localized digital access to news and information for a world fast transforming from reliance on traditional newspapers and magazines to one where Internet users fulfill their insatiable appetite for real-time updated local content delivered in the form of “geographic portals” or “geo domain names” which serve local consumers. For those who know me, you will be familiar with my own experience with Geographic domains from my own dabbling in “Long Island Exchange” and “LongIsland.com,” of which I ran for nearly 15 years and sold at the very end of 2018.

For Scott, rather than trying to acquire an exact match domain name for each and every particular city, state, or region he wanted to produce content for, most of which were already being snapped-up by domainers, Scott had a different idea, an even better one which he said wouldn’t “lock him into a single region alone,” or create a necessity to catch up in a land-grab far in the rear-view mirror already (believe it or not even back then); his idea was more unique – yet more difficult in most cases. He would create his own brand of city domain names, based on a beginning English language word, acquire them all, mostly in one shot, so that he could have one unified system, for all major cities on Earth.

At the time, Scott, of Prospect, Kentucky, a town with just under 5,000 residents, named his enterprise “Hello Metro,” Hello Metro LLC and worked to ensure he had HELLO names for every major state and city in the U.S. with names such as HelloMiami.com, HelloSeattle.com, HelloFlorida.com, and then he moved on to every major city throughout the world with names such as HelloCancun.com, HelloTokyo.com, HelloMoscow.com. He then ran these sites with authors and writers, content feeds, and partner agreements with the likes of Yahoo and other portals hungry for localized information raking in millions.

After successfully running the sites for over ten years, Scott found that he had multiple buyers who were interested in acquiring this unique selection of digital properties and found himself at a point where he had two bidders; one at $2.1M and one at $2.3M. He agreed to the $2.3M deal with then rising public company “TheDirectory.com, Inc. (SEEK)” of which he was paid $2.1M over roughly two years.

This is where it starts to get interesting. We didn’t get deep into the details on the default, however, the buyer, who had done very little or next to nothing with the city network after the transfer, according to Clark, found itself in a situation where the remaining $200,000 could not be paid, of which it understood, would leave them to forfeit their interest based on the contract the entity agreed to.

The assets were then returned to the seller.

Scott continued building out his network of city sites, this time making the software behind them even better than before adding another $500k into his city-network enterprise, and buying another 500 domain names, relaunching it as “HELLO EARTH LLC” – a new name for a newly born (or reborn) endeavor. Today it is a 21-year collection of approximately 2,000 domain names, encompassing every major city on Earth beginning with Hello.

As Scott has pointed out to several companies he has had discussions with so far, for a new second time acquisition, and reiterated to me,

We have been collecting “Hello” Domains for 21 years, names such as HelloSeattle.com HelloDenver.com HelloMiami.com HelloChicago.com HelloLondon.com HelloTokyo.com HelloParis.com and 2,000 more. Basically, every major city in the world. Most of our domains can be found at HelloEarth.com. I believe this network of domains with the proper messaging could be a Localized Media platform. A space that is hard to hit because most advertising platforms are nationally or globally focused. These sites can be tailored for your clients and serve as a local city guide and information portal. A large company, media group, radio station, etc., could unify or simply promote all the 100s of media websites under a single brand that is easy to remember and type in.

As he explained the situation further to me it began to spike my interest even more. When you think of how many national or global companies, especially news television stations, use all different types of URLs, some with different television channels, call signals for radio stations, regional keywords, some with numbers in the domains, there is often no organizational structure in their domains.

They are, for the most part, a mess.

What seems obvious about this network, and what creates opportunity, aside from the many major GEO domains available for the taking, what would deter a major acquisition, is that a buyer can only acquire some of them, but no one, regardless of size or limitless checkbook – no one can have them all.

Hello Earth changes that game.

As an example, if you were even to attempt to purchase a collection of city domains, it would be virtually impossible to use a single or even two word English language dictionary word or words, where those domains could all be uniform and available for purchase. I believe a good example would be if the morning news show Good Morning America wanted to run a show in every major city in the country, or even in the world, they could not purchase “GoodMorningChicago.com”, “GoodMorningMiami.com”, “GoodMorningDenver.com”, they would all have to be, in a best case scenario, slightly different. That’s where the unique value of Hello Earth sits. If a buyer cannot have them all, regardless of how good many of them might be, it’s just not good enough for a serious player.

You would have to be able to get them all.

So, what is for sale, and how much will it all be this time around?

Asking Price: $2.8M

The purchase price includes all source code for the 2,000 web portals [all individually controlled from a single control panel] and corresponding domain names, the Facebook page and U.S. Trademark (Serial Number: 87925735),. There are also roughly 50,000 people signed up for push notification updates from the sites which collectively have approximately 3000 visits per day.  

Clark is seeking and hopeful to find the right type of buyer, approximately six years later, who will have the need to reorganize their digital presence throughout the country or the world, who can better benefit from what has now been his 21 year journey putting little icons on the map.

Interested parties or domain brokers open to co-broker opportunities feel free to contact me to discuss the details.