Spotlight on British Columbia's Domainers

[Kristijntje]

The wealthiest of them all is a man named Kevin Ham, a medical doctor and devout Christian whose portfolio of 300,000 names -- including god.com and satan. com -- is estimated at US$300-million. He is the godfather of domainers, a controversial figure who is nonetheless revered for his virtually unparalleled knack at acquiring stellar names.

At the heart of a domainer's profitability is the potency of generic, non-trademarked names. Take, for example, attorney.com or laptop.com -- both owned by Dr. Ham's company Reinvent Technology. An Internet user looking for one of those services -- a lawyer or a new computer -- might skip typing the term into a search engine and instead browse directly to one of Dr. Ham's Web sites, which are bristling with ads. Every time a user clicks on one of those ads, Dr. Ham is paid.

Because domainers like him are paid by the click, the payoff -- it can be anywhere from 25? per click to $70 -- is closely tied to how much traffic the Web site gets. It's much like real estate: some locations are far more popular than others. Simple generic domain names are like a storefront on Fifth Avenue: valuable because of the traffic they attract...

full article: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/finan...2bdbb8a641&k=19571