You
could be a MILLIONAIRE with the right domain name!
Selling domain names - that's the business to be in.
It's a licence to print money. We're talking
telephone numbers here; the domain name Business.com
was sold for a staggering $8 million. That makes it
the most expensive domain name in the world.
Previous record holders include Compaq who paid nigh
on $3.3 million for the Altavista.com name.
It's the .com addresses that are pulling in the big
money. Out of the 32 million or so domain names
registered worldwide over 22 million of them are .coms.
The second most popular is .net, with a paltry 5
million domains registered. In a business world that
no longer relies on flashy offices and smart suits
to create the right image, a .com domain can say a
lot about your business. Get the right domain name,
spend a bit of money on producing a professional web
site and visitors to the site will probably assume
you're a large, established, international business.
That's why .coms are so valuable.
But isn't it a bit late to grab those really great
domain names and to turn yourself into an overnight
millionaire by auctioning them off? Well yes, the
truth is, all the good .com domains were gone long
ago, snatched up by Internet pioneers who realized
their potential value. In fact some 97 per cent of
the words in Webster's dictionary have already been
registered.
Don't give up hope though. Changes in the domain
name industry have opened up a whole new world of
potential. You can now register names containing
anything up to 67 characters (the previous maximum
was 26). San Diego lawyer Michael Eddy was quick to
jump on this particular bandwagon and he
successfully registered
www.attorneyreferralservice.com and
www.hotelreservationservice.com soon after the new
ruling came into action.
And don't forget there are the 243 country suffixes
to explore. Dot com might be the most desirable
suffix but there are some quirky addresses elsewhere
in the world that could come in useful. For example,
the Italian government recently ruled that
non-Italian organisations could now register an .it
domain - anybody for buy.it, sell.it or want.it?
Other popular countries are Turkmenistan with its
.tm address, the Kingdom of Tonga's .to (fly.to,
takeatrip.to etc), Austria with .at and American
Samoa with the potentially useful .as.
If you're dead set on a .com you could always take a
look at the domains that have been repossessed.
Every year or couple of years people have to pay up
to renew their domain name - inevitably some forget
or simply can't afford it anymore. These domain
names are repossessed and available for sale again
at the usual price. We have done our research to
offer you some of the best expired names available
here. Good names available recently includes:
shop-a-deal.com, buy-online.com, car-catalogue.com,
travel-advise.com, baby-giftshop.com, and many
others!
So how
much are they worth?
Business.com holds the record as the most valuable
domain on the Net. It was bought for a whopping $8
million by the Californian business eCompanies.
ECompanies specialises in launching Internet
start-ups and they plan to turn Business.com into a
business-to-business portal site. Jake Winebaum,
co-founder of eCompanies, is excited about the
purchase, "Business.com is the highest order
business-to-business domain name and is a perfect
match with the service we're planning… we plan to
make Business.com the Internet's pre-eminent
business brand." Marc Ostrofsky, a Houston based
media entrepreneur, is the now very rich man who
sold the Business.com address.
But Business.com could soon be toppled from its top
place position. The owners of the domain
Year2000.com got very excited when they received a
$10 million bid for the name, which they were
auctioning off through eBay. The bid seemed high for
a URL that now seems past its sell-by date and
surprise, surprise, the $10 million bid turned out
to be a hoax. However, a bid of $2 million had been
genuine, unfortunately for Year2000.com the $2
million bidder withdrew before the end of the
auction. To prevent the same thing happening again,
the domain were being auctioned off privately;
estimates of a $1 million price tag look much more
realistic.
Domain name speculators are also keeping an eye on
Banks.com, being auctioned off by the UK company
Names123.com. They expected a £1 million price tag
for this little lovely. Bids were standing at around
£100,000 and the auction closed on March 1st 2000.
It's feared this name could be overpriced, after all
the much better name Bank.com has already gone and
that site is being developed as a community banking
resource.
The Bestseller's list
Business.com
$8 million
The details: Bought by the Californian-based
eCompanies. They plan to develop the site as a
business-to-business service.
AsSeenOnTv.com
$5.1 million
The details: Bought for an extortionate sum and now
the place to buy all your As Seen On TV products.
Altavista.com
$3.3 million
The details: Bought by Compaq for its search engine
Altavista. It means you no longer had to type in the
cumbersome URL www.digital.com/altavista.
Wine.com
$2.9 million
The details: Not only did VirtualVineyard.com
acquire the domain name wine.com back in September
1999 but it also bought a live site. However it's
the URL that VirtualVineyards really wanted, the
VirtualVineyard's content was immediately swapped
over to the Wine.com domain.
Autos.com
$2.2 million
The details: The sale of this domain was conducted
by Hit Domains. The URL was bought by CarsDirect.com,
the number one car buying site on the web. Autos.com
is now the front door for the company's various auto
services.
Express.com
$1.8 million
The details: Now home to the online audio and video
retailer DVD Express.
Wallstreet.com
$1m
The details: This domain was sold in April 1999 by
Ehud Gavron, who runs an ISP business in Arizona.
Online casino Players Sportsbooks and Casino bought
Wallstreet.com and they run a stockmarket gambling
service on the site. Players Sportsbooks and Casino
are based on a tiny island in Venezuela - presumably
for tax reasons.
Rock.com
$1m
The details: Yes, you've guessed it, this site is
now devoted to all matters rock music related.
Websites.com
$970,000
The details: This desirable domain was auctioned off
by Great Domains and now is home to Verio, a company
that provides Internet and web hosting services to
businesses.
Drugs.com
$830,000
The details: Drugs.com was bought from Eric MacIver
in May 1999. MacIver had originally planned to set
up a pharmaceutical distribution site at Drugs.com.
Internet start-up incubator Venture Frogs bought the
domain and is now running a drugs and pharmacy
portal from there.
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