Making Money From Domain Names
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Sinta Makah October 03, 2006
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When the DNS was new, domain registrations were free. A domain owner
can generally give away or sell infinite [[subdomain]]s of their
domain, e.g. the owner of example.edu could provide domains that are
subdomains, such as foo.example.edu and foo.bar.example.edu.
An economic effect of the widespread usage of cheap domain names has
been the resale market for generic domain names that has sprung up in
the last decade. Certain domains, especially those related to business,
gambling, pornography, and other commercially lucrative fields have
become very much in demand to corporations and entrepreneurs due to
their intrinsic value in attracting clients. In fact, the most
expensive Internet domain name to date, according to Guinness World
Records, is business.com which was resold in 1999 for $7.5 million.
Another high value domain name, sex.com, was stolen from its rightful
owner by means of a forged transfer instruction via fax. During
the height of the dot-com era, the domain was earning millions of
dollars per month in advertising revenue from the large influx of
visitors that arrived daily. Two long-running U.S. lawsuits resulted,
one against the thief and one against the domain registrar VeriSign[1].
In one of the cases, Kremen v. Network Solutions, the court found in
favor of the plaintiff, leading to an unprecendented ruling that
classified domain names as property, granting them the same legal
protections. In 1999, Microsoft traded the valuable name Bob.com for
the name Windows2000.com which was the name of their new operating
system.[2]
One of the reasons for the value of domain names is that even
without advertising or marketing, they attract clients seeking services
and products who simply type in the generic name. Furthermore, generic
domain names such as Rent.com or Books.com are extremely easy for
potential customers to remember, increasing the probability that they
become repeat customers or regular clients.
Although the current domain market is nowhere as strong as it was
during the dot-com heyday, it remains strong and is currently
experiencing solid growth again. Annually tens of millions of dollars
change hands due to the resale of domains. Large numbers of registered
domain names lapse and are deleted each year. On average 25,000 domain
names drop (are deleted) every day.
It is high time that YOU (yes I mean you!) consider getting yourself
a cheap domain name as well. You can do that at iPower.com or at the
World's Largest Registrar - GoDaddy.com but you need to do that soon. |