Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

prostoalex writes "So far in 2006 domain name on.com fetched $635,000, Macau.com was sold for $550,000, blue.com was sold for half a million, and Jasmin.com was bought for $310,000. With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads. USA Today talks about revived interest to domain name trade, and companies like Marchex, a 'leader in vertical and local traffic', which happens to own a .com domain for every single zip code in the United States. There's also a report that in the few days that .eu domain names were made available, 1,454,218 European domains were registered."

Comments

Bah!!!

[BWJones]

To all those companies that are being so helpful in "parking" domain names for me and then charging outrageous prices to "register" them........ FSCK YOU!!!. Seriously though, how many of you have tried to go out and register even the most obscure of domain names for your website only to have companies like Marchex or GoDaddy say "Sure, we'll get that domain for you for the low, low price of $5000.00" (or more). This is the concept of the middle man taken to criminal levels. Can someone enlighten me as to what benefit(s) they provide? What services do they provide? Is there anything good at all about these companies or are they simply parasitic ticks feeding off the belly of the Internet?

And what does it say about the market audience when domain names with misspelled words (like Mortage.com) can go for $242,000?

Oh, I forgot.... at least one domain level parking company provides Microsoft with advertising because they "parked" all of their unused domains on IIS servers....which......appear at some level to be able to handle those traffic loads. :-)

Re:Bah!!!

[QuickFox]

I'm amazed that Google accepts and encourages the domain-squatting parasites. They are link farms! How are those inane squatter pages better than the link farms that Google frowns upon?

-- --
  Terrorists can destroy our trains and buildings, but they can't destroy our rights and freedom. Only we and our lawmakers can destroy that.

Re:Bah!!!

[NilObject]

Oddly enough, I think "mortage.com" could be a clever company name for a mortgage company:

"Mortage: When you need some G's."

Capital Gains tax?

[Laven]

If you buy and hold a domain name for more than a year before selling it for thousands of dollars, do you pay the U.S. IRS long-term capital gains tax? =)

Thanks Slashdot!

[bort27]

With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads.

And now, thanks to Slashdot, they've got tons of extra traffic plus a one-way link from a PR9.

bort.

Weight a minute

[Tx]

Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

So how much exactly does a domain name weight? I'm thinking those that paid half a million dollars got ripped off badly.

NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[minus_273]

That last link Jasmine.com is definitely not safe for work. Slashdot linking to porn on the front page without a warning. Nice going. Oh, wait, no one even reads the F'n articles.

important questions here...

[Doppler00]

First, why did the price of registering domain names get so cheap? I mean, how much are these companies paying now to register domain names? $1 each? Less? Where does this money go? Does it go to the people who have to maintain these DNS servers with bogus parking domains? If we think about how spam got out of hand, you could imagine that someday 90% of all domain names are "spam".

Why did we have to make registration so cheap to begin with? I don't see what's wrong with charging $50 for a a year for a domain name. If someone needed it that bad they should pay up. Now with the ultra low cost anyone can buy up a bunch of domain names and sell them back for an excessive fee.

So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking? It's obvious that parking a domain can bring no benefit to the economy or society, it's just an unecessary middleman tactic. Also, registering a domain name and a copyright are two seperate things. If you own the copyright you should definately be able to sue these domain parkers for infringement.

It's just absolutely ridiculus that we got into a situation where every imaginable word, phrase, or typo is now registered.

I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Jafafa Hots]

Here's a few of the names I registered and never made a cent on:

BudgetDSL.com
BudgetDSL.net
Artoo-Detoo.com
See-Threepio.com
InstantOnPC.com
NoBootPC.com
EarnPage.com (wow that's dumb!)
DSLCheap.com
DSLCheap.net
MartianSprings.com
19x.net (I let it lapse, but I'm thinking I should have kept it... even for email, a 3-letter domain is cool.)
PeeRat.com !!! (yes!!! Pee Rat! Actually I was thinking Peer At. Shows what registering names at 4 am can cost you.)

I regged a bunch more, some of them probably ok (something with fix.com in it... I forget... hmmm.) I regged at least 50 over the years, and only one has turned out to have any value.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[ZombieWomble]

May god have mercy on me for actually working this out:

Borrowing some figures from another post, I get a value of $1357.15 per kilo.

The mass of a single electron is 9.1x10^-31. Putting these two values together gives a value of $1.23x10^-27 per electron. Not something you want to plan your retirement around.

Of course I feel I must point out that this neglects binding energy and such, but hey, it's late, I already feel like enough of a nerd for working this much out.

Re:And meanwhile, Microsoft gives away domain name

[TheSpoom]

Question: Do you actually own the domain name Microsoft registers "for" you? Microsoft says you can transfer in a domain if you so choose, but funny enough, they mention nothing about letting you transfer the free domain out if you are unsatisfied with their services.