A new article from PCWorld.com talks about domain names in general and the Live DomainFest domain Auction today in particular.
“Forget real estate, the stock market or Internet startups, the new way to make fast money is to invest in domain names, argues a domain name brokerage that will auction off a passel of domain names on Wednesday in New York.”
“Domains, really, are almost like commercial real estate. They’re investments on their own,” Kupietzky said. He called them “Internet real-estate.” Purchasers can buy a name with no intent on attaching it to some enterprise, but rather hold on to it, or perhaps run some ads on the site, and then resell it a few years later, hopefully at a profit.””People could be buying, either for the sake of development, or because they expect to sell the name to somebody else,” Kupietzky said. Verisign estimated that there are about 193 million top-level domain names registered across the Internet.
“The domain name aftermarket seems to be a growing one. Another domain name broker, Sedo, has estimated that domain name resales generate about $500 million a year, and that the market grew in the second quarter of this year by 38 percent. At least one investment fund has been started ostensibly devoted only to investing in domain names.”
“In May, the company sold Slots.com for $5.5 million, and dating.com for $1.75 million, both on the same day. On Tuesday, the company sold a set of t-shirt related domain names (Tshirt.com, T-shirt.com, T-shirts.com, Tee-shirts.com) for $1.265 million.”
not for all, unfortunately… 🙁
Couldn’t agree with Jeff more.
Great and positive article on the Domain Industry. A hotspot in an otherwise lackluster economy. Can only be good!
Very cool.
Great exposure.
Good news
Going forward I can only imagine the risk factors and technology changes though in long run
Facebook seeing more URL being advertised on tv
Google and the impact there doing on things
The big guys taking some cash off the table as well
Something to ponder over but yes its great news for all of us for time being
It is good but is it more that asking prices in general have gone down for premium domains?
It seems that many top domains are being put on market at relatively reasonable prices.
Is it because the demand is suddenly growing?
Or the sellers are thinking that soon their will be .anything and supply will be way more than demand, and then as we all know prices drop drastically. I hope I am wrong and its just that domains are becoming more mainstream.
@Moris
I predict the new TLDs will affect dotCom (and most ccTlds) like this:
1) When they are released there will be plenty of dopey “Death of dotCom” articles that may make some hesitant to buy dotCom and they will elect a wait-and-see position.
2) Within 6-12 months it will become obvious that, regardless of major advertising support campaigns, most people are still defaulting to the dotCom version (or ccTLD in some countries) when trying to remember a brand name. This will result in driving dotCom prices through the roof.
each new tld will add 10% to .com value
D.C. and sa +1
more crud injected into the namespace will only serve to highlight the relatively small amount of “quality” that remains and does not rely on hype to draw traffic.
but don’t forget those selling the new tlds and those “non-profit” organisations who charge them fees to sell these names, will profit. articles like this help their cause (=hype).
i have a question for forward-thinking domainers: if domains really are equatable with other typesof investments, to what extent should information detailing an investor’s “holdings” be accessible to the public? before you answer, you might consider the cases of potentially analogous investments, e.g.,
real estate: how easily is the public (cf. real estate oriented professionals or the press) able or likely to determine the chain of ownership in a parcel of real estate?
shares or bonds: can the public (cf. financial industry oriented professionals or the press) determine a market investor’s portfolio? do they care?
in these cases, is the public is more immediately focused on the *management* of the investments more than those own interests in them? (e.g. more concerned the “content” offered through a domain, and who manages the computers that serve it, versus who owns the domain)
a second question: is the “PR problem” domainers talk about is for real? does anyone outside of people who follow the internet (“geeks” or whatever we choose to call ourselves) even care if someone owns a portfolio of domain names? assuming they are not infringing IP or engaged in illegal activity, does anyone besides “geeks” really care?
do people care what companies warren buffet invests in except to try to learn from him strategies they can apply themselves?
stepping back from the internet, and recalling the birth of “yellow journalism” and how we got to the hype-based hypertexted media of the present… do people really care about the hearsts, the murdochs, and others many have never heard of, or are people more focused on the media products that are produced by the companies they own?
Thanks for the good news.
I always sleep like a baby with my domains.
—“assuming they are not infringing IP or engaged in illegal activity, does anyone besides “geeks” really care?”
You are infringing on trademarks. Everything, including ‘rain’ is trademarked.
@David
I hope you are right. I can decide to pay 5.5 mill for slots.com or become the owner of .slots for lets say a million-2mill. Now I have available 3.5-4.5 mill to spend on marketing and build my brand .slots.
If I’m smart I will save some major keywords for my own core slots business. Other top names I will then auction or give to companies who will further strengthen my brand and the association that my company=slots. The people who will get my domains will either be my suppliers or companies/people who will help brand me as Mr. Slots.
.com ie. Verisign wants .com to continue. Every sale of a.com strengthens their brand.
Every company wants to strengthen their brand(and obviously make more money). Now companies can do that with domains too and the registrars/registries lose their exclusivity..
Why would someone spend for a .com 5.5 mill when they can just become the .whatever it is they want..?? Its cheaper and its an easier a way to strengthen their own brand.
If people get used to the fact that they can be mike.slots or joe.canon even if the majority launches are not successful, I have a feeling it will take away from the .com value and we will see a major decline in prices. I hope I am wrong.
Me: infringement is a question of fact. “domaining”, i.e. registering domains, per se, is not an infringing activity. registering names that are confusingly similar to tm’s is merely one application of domaining; alas, it seems to be a very popular one. but it is not the *only* one. everyone acknowledges this, including usa’s federal courts. in regards to “everything” incl. rain being registered (in every country and for every tm class), those statements are simply not true and there are data to prove it. i see that “rain” has several diff. owners across the major gtld’s and cctld’s. do each of them have a tm covering “rain”? have they been subjected to udrp? check the facts. maybe it’s not as bleak as you think.
Oh well. My post somehow didn’t get posted. Lets try and rewrite.
@david
If I had the choice of buying slots.com for 5.5 mill or having .slots for 1-2mill -I’m not sure .com is much better. You could use the rest of the money to brand & market your .slots. If you are smart you would save the best for your company and some of the other top names auction or give to suppliers who will help build your brand, so slots will be associated with you.
Verisign promotes .com and every person who buys a .com is in essence a contributor/promoter to the building of .com brand. Same as anybody who uses google for searches is in essence making it what it is and promoting it by default.
So when you have a .anything the people who will be using it will be promoting the specific company and brand behind it. If until now the registries and registrars had an exclusivity as far as domains now any major company can have a hand in it too and use it to sell domains, but most importantly to strengthen their brand/product/name. New companies will be invading the domain space, which actually will make domains more main stream but take away a lot of the limited supply that exists today.
So at the end of the day, will someone in a years time spend 5.5 for slots.com ??
I don’t think so but I hope I’m wrong.
In addition, even if many .anything fail , it will be common to have jo.slots and mike.cake, so within time the .com potential buyers will realize that the options are endless , so why bother spending big bucks on .coms…
This will happen as more big corporations spend money and get others to use their .canon or whatever.
Again , I hope I am wrong!