"WHAT AM I BID...?"
USA Today has an article (via memeorandum) reviewing how domain name trading is hot again (remember those good old days?), and laying out some interesting numbers:
"Sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with the sale of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004, says market researcher Zetetic. And the pace is quickening: In the first three months of this year, 1,949 names have generated $14.2 million, says Domain Name Journal magazine."
The piece goes on to quote the President of domain name company GoDaddy.com:
"The domain name is 21st century real estate," says Warren Adelman, president of GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registrar, with 12.9 million. "The economy is being increasingly driven by the Internet sector."
If you want to see for yourself how lively this market is getting, check out the site TDNAM.com, which stands for "The Domain Name Aftermarket.com", affiliated with the aforementioned GoDaddy.com.
Think about TDNAM as a budding eBay of domain names. As of this writing, there are 295,012 domain names listed on the site for buying and selling. There are tens of thousands of names in categories ranging from "Academics" to "Words and Phrases".
Rather than having one dominant marketplace like eBay, in the world of domain trading, there are many such budding domain marketplaces. One of the bigger players in the marketplace space is Sedo.com, with over 3 million domains reportedly for sale. Presumably this space will see some consolidation as the market evolves.
One difference between this resurgent internet domain name gold rush and the last one, is that there are a lot more uses for domain names, thanks in part to the explosive success of paid search advertising.
For example, the article explains how,
"...even frequently misspelled names sell: Mortage.com went for $242,400 this month."
That certainly wouldn't have been true in the last go around.
Finally, although the whole area of domain name-related businesses is bigger than ever, it's still a world just emerging from the shadows. Again, as the USA Today article describes it:
"Some high-profile sales are kept quiet out of fear the buyer will be charged more the next time they acquire a name, says Jay Finnan, marketing director at Sedo.com, which appraises and sells domain names."
It's a phenomenon that bears watching.
Indian online properties are also getting hotter. Read the rest of it here
Posted by: Chetan | Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 02:46 PM