Ebola outbreak: Domain investor sells Ebola.com for $200,000

Businessman Jon Schultz buys and sells domain names for a profit, including Ebola.com for which he received $50,000 in cash and 19,000 shares in Cannabis Sativa Inc

Sunday 26 October 2014 11:17 GMT

An internet entrepreneur has sold Ebola.com for $200,000 after buying it in 2008 for $13,500 (Getty)

An internet real estate entrepreneur, who held on to Ebola.com for six years, has reportedly sold it for $200,000 (£124,000).

Jon Schultz’s Blue String Ventures capitalises on the popularity and demand of high profile domain names – investing in them to sell on at a later date at a higher price.

Blue String Ventures bought Ebola.com in 2008 for $13,500 and earlier this month Mr Schultz, who also owns birdflu.com and H1N1.com (Swine Flu), had claimed that a “reasonable” offer would be around the $150,000 mark, considering the website is bringing in 5,000 page views each day.

In an interview with the Washington Post he explained that his business is largely a waiting game and that the deadlier an epidemic is in the West, the more bucks it could rake in: “Our domain birdflu.com is worth way more than Ebola.com. We’re definitely holding onto that one for the event.

“That one’s airborne and Ebola would never go airborne in the United States like bird flu can.”

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Show all 6

1/6The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Linda Dixon, 60, leads research into African swine fever at the Pirbright Institute in Surrey

"For more than 25 years I've been trying to develop a vaccine for the African swine fever virus, which causes death in domestic pigs, and has symptoms quite like Ebola. It came from East Africa in the 1920s and was transmitted to Georgia in 2007 via food from shipping that was fed to pigs. It has now spread to neighbouring countries and this year entered the EU via Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It's difficult to eliminate because it also infects wild boar, which populate large parts of Europe."

David Vintiner

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Simon Woodmore, 45, is a paramedic and operations officer for London Ambulance Service's Hazardous Area Response Team (Hart)

"I have a helmet for all occasions – five in all – as well as an array of outfits, including breathing apparatus and gas-tight suits, respirators and chemical protective suits. My job is to put paramedics where historically they could not have worked. We were born out of the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995, and have been running as Hart since 2006. There are 94 of us in London dealing with chemical, biological and radiological incidents, as well as building collapses and floods."

David Vintiner

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Simon Woodmore, paramedic and operations officer

"We've always dealt with contagious diseases and work with the Royal Free Hospital London high-level isolation unit to transfer confirmed cases, which fortunately is rare. A lot of it is communicating with the patient in a caring and compassionate way, which can be difficult when you're in full gear. There is an increased awareness of Ebola, but it's about reinforcing the processes we already have in place. Any personal risk is mitigated by our training and equipment."

David Vintiner

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Benjamin Black, 33, is a specialist registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

"In June I travelled to Sierra Leone, where one in 21 women of reproductive age dies in childbirth. This was my first mission, and the reason I got into medicine. I had my eyes wide open to Ebola; though it was still in its early days and concentrated across the border in Guinea, within days I had my first suspected Ebola cases in maternity. It was happening."

David Vintiner

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Benjamin Black, Médecins Sans Frontières

"You need a healthy amount of fear to be safe, as well as protocol and organisational back-up. The greatest fear then is how long you can keep getting it right. There is also a huge psychological element. I checked my temperature daily, but in a hot, humid country there's a constant feverish feeling anyway. We had scares and one of our national nurses was infected, probably in the community. He sadly died and it had a huge impact on the team."

David Vintiner

The men and women on the frontline against Ebola and other hazards

Lisa Jameson, 29, is a National Institute for Health Research doctoral research fellow for Public Health England, based at the Porton Down facility in Wiltshire. She specialises in emerging viruses

"I was in the field watching patients come into the isolation centre next to us, often with their families. Sometimes they'd be walking and talkative, then die that night. It was tough but we were so busy, and being there made it feel like we were making a difference. When I got home after a month, I felt a sense of guilt that I was able to walk away. I'll almost certainly be going back."

David Vintiner

Days later on 20 October, he agreed to sell Ebola.com to Weed Growth Fund Inc for $50,000 in cash and 19,192 shares of the common stock of Cannabis Sativa Inc (CBDS), according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing cited by DomainInvesting.

Shares for CBDS on the NASDAQ on Sunday morning currently stand at $9.20 each, valuing that part of the agreement at $176,566 (£109,700).

“We've had others like LasVegasRealEstate.com and PaydayLoans.com that sold for more,” Mr Schultz told HuffingtonPost. “People don't understand what we do. We don't buy domain names hoping there's a disaster.”

Ebola.com (Ebola.com)

What Weed Growth Fund Inc would want with Ebola.com is anyone’s guess, though as reported by DomainInvesting, the CEO of Cannabis Sativa Inc, Gary Johnson, earlier this month spoke on Fox News about using marijuana to help treat Ebola.

Ebola.com has been updated until 16 October with news articles relating to the outbreak, while visitors can donate to Doctors Without Borders or read about tips to protect oneself from the disease.

Nearly 5,000 people have been killed by Ebola, with most of those in the worst hit countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa, while the number of cases as surpassed the 10,000 mark.

Blue String Ventures has been contacted by The Independent for comment.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies