An interesting story today in the NewYorkTimes.com on the owner of Chicago.com’s plan to sell sub domains and eMail Addresses ending in Chicago.com
“In 2001 Mr. Josh Metnick beat out The Tribune Company and bought chicago.com for $500,000″
“Now his four-person operation is retooling the site to offer e-mail addresses with chicago.com domains.”
“He has sold a few names to friends and prominent businessmen whose identities I agreed not to disclose. Businesses include Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, the restaurant chain, which bought lettuce@chicago.com, and Seyfarth Shaw L.L.P., a big law firm, which got seyfarth@chicago.com”.
“Mr. Metnick believes that individuals and companies may be willing to spend substantial sums.”
“Initial pricing for individuals’ names will be $295 for a year, $735 for three years, $975 for five years and $1,750 for 10 years. A buyer will have right of first refusal when its time expires.”
“Just as many people crave vanity license plates — Mr. Metnick prefers the word “identity” to “vanity” — they may desire a personalized chicago.com address. As for the maximum 26 addresses using a letter of the alphabet, he thinks they could fetch $250,000 each.”
The one thing neither the article nor the author discussed is the looming possibility of a .Chicago new gTLD owned by the city of Chicago and the effect it could have on this plan to sell domain names or email addresses ending in Chicago.com.
Big FAIL – @myname dot com is way better.
“As for the maximum 26 addresses using a letter of the alphabet, he thinks they could fetch $250,000 each.”
Yeah right.
Brad
Interesting article. Until today we have thought of premium domain names as valuable assets be we haven’t thought that, under each one of them, there are a number of premium email address. Let’s take Chicago.com: what about someone running a hotel/pizza delivery or in Chicago who owns hotel@chicago.com/pizza@chicago.com? Or a Chicago lawyer who owns lawyer@chicago.com? These are certainly the most desirable email addresses they could own.
Interesting article. Until today we have thought of premium domain names as valuable assets be we haven’t thought that, under each one of them, there are a number of premium email address. Let’s take Chicago.com: what about someone running a hotel/pizza delivery or in Chicago who owns hotel @ chicago.com/pizza @ chicago.com? Or a Chicago lawyer who owns lawyer @ chicago.com? These are certainly the most desirable email addresses they could own.
I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell, anyone interested? 😀
Its DejaVuAllOverAgain.com
Somewhere along the line I think this is a statement that Twitter – at the levels it is at now – may be short lived
It’s a huge lesson of the value of a great dot com! While newspapers are on the decline, The Tribune has to be sorry it didn’t hold out to win the winning dot com of Chicago.com. If Chicago weren’t a world-class destination city for business and vacation, @ Brad & @ Gnames would have a point, but Chicago is a brand on its own, like Paris, New York, or Vegas. Josh Metnick, you go! And teach the geo domain world another application for a great city dot com! I’m sure the GeoPublishing group are salivating over this news . . .
In “honor” of his “project” i shall reward the owner of Chicago.com for his stupidity with a more useful and free sub domain:
http://Mr.Josh.Metnick.tries.to.fawk.me
njoy.
I feel like someone just poured a big bowl of stupid into my brain after reading that article.
FAIL.
@HornJacker
I would agree if the email gimmick is all this amounts to – my guess it is marketing hype that will ultimately have no relevance to a real estate, community information, travel, convention site that will operate there.
bs at “BullS” dot com draws lots of attention.
so he’s taking a http://www.leftofthedot.com model
Has Chicago.com even made $250K since the purchase?
Isn’t Facebook killing e-mail?
Paying for email addresses would be like paying for oxygen…
However, even if he does absolutely nothing with Chicago.com, he’s still way ahead as it is worth probably at least 20x what he paid for it.
@Tony –
You said it much more eloquantly thatn me.
The real model they appantantly do not want to reveal is if you advertise with Chicogo.com you get a real decent email address (for free)
“Has Chicago.com even made $250K since the purchase?”
Haha.
Seriously?
I think it is novel on a big geo like that. I wish him all the luck.
I think there are many folks that would like to have an email like one of these.
Think about this : You are a small company and want to appear big. You have a meeting with a client but you have no office. What do you do? You rent a nice meeting room in the city and impress your customer.
How is owning hotels@chicago.com any different. It sure as heck helps if you are a small hotel wanting to look bigger. If the pricing is right it’s just another business expenditure, everyone is happy.
I see no reason why this won’t have some success. How much? Who really knows, but probably enough to make some real money if marketed/priced right.
This model can work for businesses with rights to an important subdomain. IE: RealEstate.Chicago.com with the corresponding email RealEstate@Chicago.com but more like $25k a year. (if that)
I could see vanity emails @ $30 a year. But that’s going to be a tough sell for David Really Long Name That’s Hard To Spell.
Twitter handles go for four and five figures regularly. But thats a one time fee and it’s Twitter. Extremely unlikely that they get six figures for anything. Great way to grab headlines though. Wouldn’t be a NYT story without the absurd pricing.
What’s with all the haters? The value of domains just went up not down.
We are letting the market set the price. Our customers have been super happy paying $4k per email because we aren’t forcing anybody to buy these names. This is actually happening. Now we can build a real site, not this 2096 vintage piece of junk we have as a site.
Lawyer@chicago.com may be worth six figurss. We just don’t know.
It’s funny, people used to hate domainers the same way. Some still do.
josh
.. That was 2006.. 🙂
Josh
Josh
Thanks for the thoughts?
So how will the likely application and approval of a .Chicago new gTLD figure into your model?
Following your example when your trying to sell lawyer@chicago.com they will have the alternative of buying lawyer.chicago as well.
thoughts
@MHB
How does lawyer.chicago compare to lawyer@chicago.com? The former is a second level domain while the latter is an email address. A possible email address should be info@lawyer.chicago which is horrible IMO.
Joe
Well if your going to try to sell an email address for six figures and a buyer can buy lawyer.chicago for $100K and then do whatever they want with the domain, I’m, just saying
Once you control lawyer.chicago you can set up any email address you want to the left.
@Tony Years ago if someone had said the bottled water business would be a billion dollars industry today the response would have been “Why would anyone pay for water when its free?”.
michael: yes but you are still comparing apples and pears. lawyer@chicago.com is better than anything@lawyer.chicago and chicago.com is way better than lawyer.chicago
Don’t you agree?
Maybe the trib would like to offer johnSmith@chicago.me as an email. They have the circulation and web traffic to truly promote Josh’s wonderful idea.
“first come first serve!!” check availabity today !! John@Chicago.me taken… Check yours today.
I love Josh’s plan and Media exposure!! I just like the Chicago.me for the email address better. But I’m probably a itch biased.
@Galleria mall – its that time of the month and year – I will take the flaundering Andersom Oprah 360 lib bait.
– very simple – where are the bottled water proponents now – occupying wall street ?
in the end no one has respect for the loud voices that ultimately run for the hills !!!
its all about tents and underworld activity !!
The bottled water proponents have moved on to protesting the large volume of unrecycled plastic occupying landfills. #occupylandfills
The occupy movement might be more credible if most of them didn’t have iPads and $300 jeans. They need to get back in class. My blood pressure rises thinking about those clowns.
IMO an entire generation is being lost (mostly under 25 yrs) because:
1. They lack a real work ethic. Something that is instilled during childhood and seldom learned or acquired later in life. You either have it or you don’t.
2. Immense sense of entitlement. We are entitled to nothing in this world, all must be earned. These kids literally get our of college (with no experience) and expect that with a degree they are ready to manage people. They look at any normal entry level job as beneath them.
3. Most have never known true hardship. They’ve all had iphones, credit cards, etc, their entire lives all paid for by parents. Growing up my mother had 1 pair of shoes and holes in the floor of the family car where you could see the road.
4. They lack the ability to sit still, maintain eye contact and have a normal conversation. An increasingly rare and valuable skill is the simple ability to stay focused on one task.
5. Reality TV has completely warped their minds. My 10 year old little cousin thinks Kim Kardashian is a “very hard worker” and “respects her for working so hard”. I wish I were joking.
6. A college degree now means little more than “had the financial means to attend”.
*throws microphone down*
*steps away from podium*
Alright, back to work.
@Galleria mall – generation is being lost….
true stuff.. you’re describing my kids 🙁
however, i can’t help but think that a lot of us successful baby boomers contributed to this by being enablers without even seeing it happen
*sorry to contribute off topic… just hit home..
@ MHB: “lawyer.chicago” just made me realize it’s going to be messy with the email addresses. It’s bad enough to have to remember two values: the one BEFORE the ampersand, and the one AFTER, but now you have to worry about three! the one BEFORE the ampersand, and the one AFTER the ampersand, and one one AFTER the dot! What do you have to comment about that?
ampersat (@), not ampersand (&) 🙂
Esibot
I remove your comment totally off topic here
Louise
That is what I have been saying, that in time people will have to learn what they type to the right of the dot is as important as the left of the dot.
No doubt is going to be messy but with hundreds maybe thousands of these launching within the same 2-3 year period the learning curve is going to be reduced
Right of the dot would still work for branding websites, though.
“That is what I have been saying, that in time people will have to learn what they type to the right of the dot is as important as the left of the dot.”
Not necessarily. When I saw you write in the comments “lawyer.chicago”, I almost thought you had left out the dotcom at the end, ie, lawyer.chicago.com. It will take a long time for Joe Q Public to digest that these new extensions are domains that really don’t have a dotcom at the end. They just seem incomplete.
what this suggests to me is there are still some very serious noobs who do not know the history of domains but are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them.
the vanity email idea has been tried many years ago. history has shown it is not the best way to maximise the value of a domain.
good luck.
@Michael –
“that in time people will have to learn what they type to the right of the dot is as important as the left of the dot.”
And when that happens – which it will in several years – Al Gore’s internet will not be as we know it today – as it will be something else where nothing to the right, left, center, upsidedown or whatever of the dot will matter.
And that dangerous game is not the life-of-brian as I will be long gone then
Michael,
You bring up a good point. These other TLDs are something we have thought about-/ I don’t know how this is going to play out. There are advantages and disadvantages being first to market.
Somebody will want alex@chicago.com, and somebody will want alex@mail.chicago. I would argue that the latent demand for the former, at least at it relates to selling a premium email
product in part because of it’s non-confusabiljty,
it’s simplicity, is a big advantage over the latter. For websites– who knows.
It’s a big enough city that there is enough room for both.
Some people spend more on upgraded Warcraft armor in a year or Farmville– I think these digital assets we are selling are worth significantly more than all sorts of things people buy, but that’s just me and I gave up Warcraft some time ago !!
Josh
Josh
Problem I see with it is if someone buys their email let’s say lawyer(at)chicago.com and keeps it renewed for a few years and the price is high then falls on hard times and can’t pay the renewal. How many emails will still be flowing in from clients containing possible sensitive information. Not like a domain expiring where a new owner if up to no good might have to guess what the old email addresses were. I see this as if you’re not going to keep it renewed forever don’t buy it as someone else will own it eventually and no mystery to what the email address you owned was so any of your old emails will flow to the new buyer which could be very dangerous depending on what you use it for.
Branding your email on a domain you don’t own or can’t renew for years seems dangerous to me unless prices are locked and 20-30 year plans are offered as an increase in demand may cause prices to rise yearly which could price you out of your address. Good luck with it but without a 20-30 year plan available don’t think branding yourself for 10 years without a future price guarantee would be a smart move for any business if their emails contain client information.
@Jay
At 6 figures, I don’t really think he’s going to charge it on a yearly basis. I think it is a one-time fee.
I totally support Josh on this project. I disagree with the optimistic valuations he is stating, however this is something I have been thinking about for quite some time with Scottsdale.com….just not to the degree Josh is attempting. There are issues with this….customer service, bandwidth, potential use of spam, and more….but they can all be addressed and handled. I truly believe people would love to have email addresses with their hometown city.com in the name…personal, vanity, and business related. I will be looking at the results closely, amd I am rooting for Josh and this project to succeed. In my opinion, this is a solid $295 to $795 (personal….business) product that not only will be profitable as I believe 1000 can be sold, but it also promotes the City.com the more these emails are used. Fred.
sorry…..name is still FRED….not FREC!!!
Similarly, Namely is about to launch few top suffixes in .me.
Check http://ing.me/
Emails like interest@ing.me and web-sites like buy.ing.me? Anyone?
Okay here we go how about: Domain.Magnate.Me or Oil.Magnate.Me or Gold.Magnate.Me for vanity Sub-Domains and email addresses to match it ?
I think is great idea and it shows originality and creative use of a great City name over the internet, Chicago.com.
Great article and certainly a heads up to the other domaineers/companies that own other GEO names. I was surprised to see the haters also. Left of the Dot will work well here. Innovation and careful marketing is not dirty words.
@ Josh Metnick, I suggest you reserve left-of-the-dot addresses of Chicago.com in view of the choices which would be considered premium around a .chicago extension, such as:
restaurant.chicago.com
pizza.chicago.com
hotel.chicago.com
and post content on all of those. What is the deal with posting content? It doesn’t have to be an Amazon on every page! A paragraph or two and some nice links for each category would suffice.
Because, you want to catch all the traffic that would be generated from the .chicago extension, when people forget and type in, carrental.chicago.com instead of carrental.chicago. You should have your content there in advance, so you don’t get sued. Then you could convert that traffic.
Good idea!
Oh man.!. just typed out a response that was about a paragraph and accidentally deleted it. We have spent nearly a year focused 100pct on this product. No amount off posts here will convey a methodology that that is exacting on a number of levels. If people think we are lying about selling emails for $4,000 each on five year terms- well good, keep believing that while you witness the sites that do add these types of models.
As far as .CHICAGO, we are keeping an eyes on that. But in the final analysis they are an inferior brand and there may be antitrust lawsuit headed their way. I don’t care if it takes ten years in court, but we will make the owners of that gTLD go through a living hell in every legal way possible. It is a clear antitrust issue in my opinion, and we don’t plan on rolling over to some closed door, back room politics way of allocating an inferior digital name to connect people.
Or plan, metaphorically of course, is to eviscerate anybody and everybody involved with .CHICAGO and have them float up in the Chicago River. We will make .CHICAGO’s liF hell, we aren’t rolling over.
Jon
Josh
So your saying the city of Chicago doesn’t have a right to operate or license the operation of a .Chicago extension.
and your ready to take the city on in a lawsuit.
Hope you got DEEP pockets
Well, it is Chicago… I think the best possible outcome for us is if a city takes it over because they will be restricted as to what they can do with it. And yah, depending on how transparent and fair the bidding process and anti-competitive nature of this whole endeavor plays out, it might be easier to open a case with the FTC or justice department and let them figure it out. If it is rolled out In a fair manner– all cool. If we sense or take note of any shady back room deals, we will sue and file all sorts of complaints.
This is America, not the USSR. Governments aren’t allowed to compete with private businesses in most cases. What are they going to do next, open City of Chicago Burger Joints to compete with McDonalds? Maybe City of Chicago Gas Stations? It’s a slippery slope but there is not a snowball’s chance in hell we won’t open up all the information and deals done for that gTLD.
I can’t give away all of our strategy now.. 🙂
Josh
No one can get .Chicago without the city approval, pretty clear from the Guidebook.
The city provides transportation like in the form of buses already doesn’t it.
I’m sure there are private bus companies in Chicago as well.
The city provides housing programs to some people, while there are privately owned apartment buildings in Chicago.
So some functions of government do compete with “private industry”
If .CHICAGO is managed like Chicago manages its public housing, the only customers will be crack whores and destitute people down on their luck. Maybe they can launch paydayloans.chicago or welfare.chicago or something.
Chicago goes by many names. Maybe we’ll get .MAFIA or .OUTFIT, maybe something more efficient like .CGO. Maybe get .MYCHICAGO and offer whatever they offer but for free. Lots of options to make it interesting. I really don’t know all that much about the transparency of the ICANN process so can’t really comment, we will probably get a boost in traffic from people going to paydayloans.chicago.com when they see paydayloans.chicago and think its a typo. Over 5, 10 years this will change, but by then we will have hundreds of thousands of email subscribers and we could probably care less about .CHICAGO in a city that is cutting back teachers and core functions they needs. The city should get Chicago.gov, not waste millions on a domain that may or may not work out while we need more police officers and after school programs for kids. You all have quite a racket there… I’m actually probably jealous at some level 🙂
Namely has just announced about the official launch of ful.me, ing.me and other top 30 suffixes in .me – all scheduled for January 2011… waiting for the release: http://name.ly/2011/12/25/happy-premium-christmas-gifts-from-name-ly/
It’s a good idea, that I guess can only be done if you have a top
tier name like Chicago.com.
Remember, Josh’s scheme is not just about email addresses, i.e.
a method for contacting someone. It is a marketing innovation,
and quite a good one at that!
e.g. What Chicago-based lawyer would not want to be contacted
at: lawyer@chicago.com. An email address that is supported by
a proper agreement for use/ownership is still a form of IP, and
in this way, it may be thought of as “an identity within an identity”.
Good luck,