07-27-2005, 07:14 PM
I have been hanging out on domain forums recently. It certainly has been eye opening.
Money is starting to come into the field from venture capital companies. Registrars are keeping un-renewed domains for themselves. All English dictionary words and all two, three, and four letter combinations are taken in .com and finding any meaningful general term is difficult. Companies are buying 100,000 names at a time.
Some observations:
Most of the speculation is in .com. While people who build websites and, most importantly, those who visit them, are slowly learning that there are many extensions, the big money investors are mostly focusing on .com, assuming that it will remain the prestige address.
Prices may go a lot higher. The biggest reported sale this year is website.com for $750,000. While that is a pretty good bit of money to us peasants, it would buy you about 20 seconds of ad time during the Superbowl. If the internet is the business media of the future, and if (big if) .coms remain the prestige address, then the most sought-after domains will eventually reflect the value of prime major city real estate. Think Fifth Avenue.
There may (big maybe, again) be space for the little guy here. When a town grows the central areas start commanding flashy prices. But sometimes the real percentage gain is in the outlying areas in the path of growth. The trick is to find those areas that are next to move from unregistered or cheaply purchased domains into sought after regions.
There are people making good money selling and developing domains. There likely will come a time when speculators will rush into this field with bigger money wanting a piece of the action. 100,000 new domains cost less than a million dollars per year. This is literally pennies to the investment community. Hang on, this could get wild - and remember that speculators will jump out of a market far faster than they jump in.
So it was with tulips! Great digs BBH!
Money is starting to come into the field from venture capital companies. Registrars are keeping un-renewed domains for themselves. All English dictionary words and all two, three, and four letter combinations are taken in .com and finding any meaningful general term is difficult. Companies are buying 100,000 names at a time.
Some observations:
Most of the speculation is in .com. While people who build websites and, most importantly, those who visit them, are slowly learning that there are many extensions, the big money investors are mostly focusing on .com, assuming that it will remain the prestige address.
Prices may go a lot higher. The biggest reported sale this year is website.com for $750,000. While that is a pretty good bit of money to us peasants, it would buy you about 20 seconds of ad time during the Superbowl. If the internet is the business media of the future, and if (big if) .coms remain the prestige address, then the most sought-after domains will eventually reflect the value of prime major city real estate. Think Fifth Avenue.
There may (big maybe, again) be space for the little guy here. When a town grows the central areas start commanding flashy prices. But sometimes the real percentage gain is in the outlying areas in the path of growth. The trick is to find those areas that are next to move from unregistered or cheaply purchased domains into sought after regions.
There are people making good money selling and developing domains. There likely will come a time when speculators will rush into this field with bigger money wanting a piece of the action. 100,000 new domains cost less than a million dollars per year. This is literally pennies to the investment community. Hang on, this could get wild - and remember that speculators will jump out of a market far faster than they jump in.
So it was with tulips! Great digs BBH!