Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

prostoalex writes "So far in 2006 domain name on.com fetched $635,000, Macau.com was sold for $550,000, blue.com was sold for half a million, and Jasmin.com was bought for $310,000. With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads. USA Today talks about revived interest to domain name trade, and companies like Marchex, a 'leader in vertical and local traffic', which happens to own a .com domain for every single zip code in the United States. There's also a report that in the few days that .eu domain names were made available, 1,454,218 European domains were registered."

Bah!!!

To all those companies that are being so helpful in "parking" domain names for me and then charging outrageous prices to "register" them........ FSCK YOU!!!. Seriously though, how many of you have tried to go out and register even the most obscure of domain names for your website only to have companies like Marchex or GoDaddy say "Sure, we'll get that domain for you for the low, low price of $5000.00" (or more). This is the concept of the middle man taken to criminal levels. Can someone enlighten me as to what benefit(s) they provide? What services do they provide? Is there anything good at all about these companies or are they simply parasitic ticks feeding off the belly of the Internet?

And what does it say about the market audience when domain names with misspelled words (like Mortage.com) can go for $242,000?

Oh, I forgot.... at least one domain level parking company provides Microsoft with advertising because they "parked" all of their unused domains on IIS servers....which......appear at some level to be able to handle those traffic loads. :-)

Re:Bah!!!

I'm amazed that Google accepts and encourages [google.com] the domain-squatting parasites. They are link farms! How are those inane squatter pages better than the link farms that Google frowns upon?

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  Terrorists can destroy our trains and buildings, but they can't destroy our rights and freedom. Only we and our lawmakers can destroy that.

I wasted a ton of money on domains...

Here's a few of the names I registered and never made a cent on:

BudgetDSL.com
BudgetDSL.net
Artoo-Detoo.com
See-Threepio.com
InstantOnPC.com
NoBootPC.com
EarnPage.com (wow that's dumb!)
DSLCheap.com
DSLCheap.net
MartianSprings.com
19x.net (I let it lapse, but I'm thinking I should have kept it... even for email, a 3-letter domain is cool.)
PeeRat.com !!! (yes!!! Pee Rat! Actually I was thinking Peer At. Shows what registering names at 4 am can cost you.)

I regged a bunch more, some of them probably ok (something with fix.com in it... I forget... hmmm.) I regged at least 50 over the years, and only one has turned out to have any value.

Re:Bah!!!

Oddly enough, I think "mortage.com" could be a clever company name for a mortgage company:

"Mortage: When you need some G's."

Its all bollocks anyway

I mean seriously, I constantly have customers coming in fretting about domain names. One chap sits at the visitor PC and spends hours (literally) trying different iterations of common words, and combinations. This is just silly. I tell them to relax, the name really isn't important. Content is king on the internet, the name doesn't matter a damn.

Lets take our favourite website, slashdot. What exactly does that have to do with technology or news? Nothing, and yet its one of the most successful sites out there. Google is a verb, for gods sake, and its domain name has exactly zero to do with searching. If these guys had their way, it would have been called simplysearch.com or something. One of our most successful websites LIreland [lireland.com] the domain name doesn't mention anything to do with driving or driving schools.

This domain name hunting fad will be consigned to the murky annals of bankruptcy before too long, as more and more useful, content rich sites gain a reputation and a following. Meanwhile, trust me, the name doesn't matter a damn.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

Okay. New rule

No.... No new rules. We have enough, thanks.

People who have no idea HOW SOMETHING WORKS, are no longer allowed to use Slashdot as an outlet for their ignorant ranting.

You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you? Slashdot is one of the biggest rantspaces on the Internet. That said, I understand exactly how the process works as explained below.

Those domains displaying domain parking pages are OWNED. That means someone exchanged goods, services, or currency for property. The property was the registration of the domain name. Still with me?

OK, that is perfectly understandable. Do you have any idea of how these companies "OWN" these domain names? Of course you do as you are trying to use/justify this same model to make money for yourself. For others here that may not know, they buy them up in bulk and find any and all possible relevant combinations of names in the hopes that someone will find a need for that name and then exchange again, more money to buy that domain name at a later date. Simple parasitic business with no real contribution to anything other than lining their own pockets.

1. After registering a domain, your nameservers typically default to some that the registrar provides.

Yes, and that drives more revenue to the domain name registrar who can then run statistics on how much traffic that name gets which then allows them to "valuate" that domain name for cost increases for ownership.

2. These at-the-moment "unused" domains, which number in the millions, get between a little and a LOT of traffic that would otherwise go nowhere.

See above explanation to 1.

3. An enterprising registrar sees this as an opportunity for offsetting costs, and profit (see: capitalism).

Yes, yes.... capitalism. I'm all for it, but hopefully that capitalism actually does something that contributes to society.

1. Someone registers a domain, and puts a program like the aforementioned on it to drive revenue - either while developing a site for it, or they simply are doing so well with it that it is "maximized". (Lingerei.com is an example)

Or.... statistically more likely and factually born out by the evidence, they simply sit on the domain and let it lie fallow until someone comes along that wants to buy it.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

No, what he's showing disdain for is people who profit at the unwilling expense of others, through no effort or cleverness of their own. And i'm sorry but i think there are probably a good number of people who agree with him (myself included)

Besides, using "yeah well they did it first" doesn't mean that it's right, or that other things should be modeled in the same fashion, even if one was to accept that land development is a suitable analogy to domain squatting.

Ok, the time is NOW

I've been holding back on this one but ... OK, that's it.

shavedteenasiancamwhoremyspacediggxenisucks.com is now for sale.

Bidding starts at $500,000.

Capital Gains tax?

If you buy and hold a domain name for more than a year before selling it for thousands of dollars, do you pay the U.S. IRS long-term capital gains tax? =)

Thanks Slashdot!

With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads.

And now, thanks to Slashdot, they've got tons of extra traffic plus a one-way link from a PR9.

bort.

Weight a minute

Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

So how much exactly does a domain name weight? I'm thinking those that paid half a million dollars got ripped off badly.

Shit...

...and to think I just wasted money on a house.

NOT SAFE FOR WORK

That last link Jasmine.com is definitely not safe for work. Slashdot linking to porn on the front page without a warning. Nice going. Oh, wait, no one even reads the F'n articles.

I used to laugh...

I used to laugh at people that said we are experiencing the Dot-Com Bubble all over again, but after reading stories like this... Should those people be dismissed so quickly?

Re:And meanwhile, Microsoft gives away domain name

Question: Do you actually own the domain name Microsoft registers "for" you? Microsoft says you can transfer in a domain if you so choose, but funny enough, they mention nothing about letting you transfer the free domain out if you are unsatisfied with their services.

important questions here...

First, why did the price of registering domain names get so cheap? I mean, how much are these companies paying now to register domain names? $1 each? Less? Where does this money go? Does it go to the people who have to maintain these DNS servers with bogus parking domains? If we think about how spam got out of hand, you could imagine that someday 90% of all domain names are "spam".

Why did we have to make registration so cheap to begin with? I don't see what's wrong with charging $50 for a a year for a domain name. If someone needed it that bad they should pay up. Now with the ultra low cost anyone can buy up a bunch of domain names and sell them back for an excessive fee.

So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking? It's obvious that parking a domain can bring no benefit to the economy or society, it's just an unecessary middleman tactic. Also, registering a domain name and a copyright are two seperate things. If you own the copyright you should definately be able to sue these domain parkers for infringement.

It's just absolutely ridiculus that we got into a situation where every imaginable word, phrase, or typo is now registered.

Scaling domain costs?

First domain - 5 dollars
Second domain - 20 dollars
Third domain - 50 dollars
Fourth domain - 100 dollars
Subsequent domains - 1,000 dollars

Sure, you have the problem of people registering things under other people's names, but that can be solved.

Essentially, your e-mail and personal identity domain should be basically free, your first and second hobby domains should be reasonably priced, your third and fourth domains should have a lot of motivating factor behind them, and if you need 5 or more domains you're probably a very large company with a lot of people working for you.

Google will change Adsense and this will crash

In the beginning, we had banner ads, and advertisers paid for "impressions". Then we had banner ad glut, nobody looked at the banners, and the bottom fell out of banner ads.

Then we had click-through, and advertisers paid for "clicks". Now we have "click glut", very few clicks lead to a sale, and the bottom is falling out of "clicks".

What we're going to end up with is something where advertisers only pay for actual sales. This creates accounting problems, but Yahoo Store and parts of the porno industry already have it working.

The main thing keeping the click trade going is Google. When the day comes that Google stops paying affiliates for clicks, others will follow and the domain spam industry will fall apart. This will probably happen right after Google gets a payment system in place.

Stuff.by.net vs. Things.on.com

Does it seem like Books.by.net and Music.by.net or adult-oriented content addresses like Porn.by.net would be valuable?

It is generally the case that .com names are worth considerably more than .net. But consider a marketing campaign for a company that is selling cars online, by web or by net so to speak. A TV ad could say, "Shop for a new car at Cars by net," while showing "Cars.by.net" on the screen.

Sure, "Cars dot com" works as well or better, but that one's taken, and so is almost every other "Product dot com" domain. So the question is, would "Cars.on.com" be better than "Cars.by.net"?

Which is the more valuable domain space?

I'm asking sincerely, even though I have a self-interested motivation in doing so. I've literally been told by some appraisers that By.net should be worth 10-25% of what By.com would be, and it just doesn't make any sense at all.

books.com, search.com, computers.com, auction.com

Are surely much more valuable domain names than amazon.com, google.com, and ebay.com? The thing no one has explained to me yet is are these idiots making money squatting on all these domains? Or is this like all those "work from home" things, where none of them really make any money, but the meme of the multi-level marketing thing is infectious and spreads prolifically? Same question could be asked about spammers, how many of them make any real profit, and how many more are either spamming at a loss or at a rate less than they could make the kwikky mart per hour? Seems to me if these things are all as usually un-profitable as I imagine we could educate away at least some of the annoyance caused by spam and domain spam etc.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

May god have mercy on me for actually working this out:

Borrowing some figures from another post, I get a value of $1357.15 per kilo. [slashdot.org]

The mass of a single electron is 9.1x10^-31. Putting these two values together gives a value of $1.23x10^-27 per electron. Not something you want to plan your retirement around.

Of course I feel I must point out that this neglects binding energy and such, but hey, it's late, I already feel like enough of a nerd for working this much out.