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You Paid What for That URL?!
By Alexis Gutzman
June 6, 2000

In the late hours of the night, when I should be working on a book or an article, or even sleeping , I often surf my way over to Network Solutions to hunt for really great domain names. Ones that have been overlooked. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I buy one, just in case I need it later. (Ridiculous, I know, but there are probably worse vices a person could have). Periodically, I get in a cleaning and filing mood and tear through my office filing or discarding everything in sight. This weekend was one of those occasions, and the one thing I decided I needed to really clean up was my stash of domain names.

So, I took a trip to one of the larger after market sites for domain names. In theory, this is where other geniuses who had the foresight to purchase killer domain names make their millions - selling clever domain names to those who were too slow or too cautious to buy the domains they needed when they were available. When I arrived at Afternic.com, a nicely organized site for auctioning off domain names, I was greeted by a headline on their home page reporting that Engineering.org had been sold on their site for $198,895. Very cool, I thought. Maybe we''ll just buy that new mini-van with my upcoming windfall!

Before I put a price on my domain names, I thought I''d peruse the ongoing auctions to see what other similar domains were going for. The stark reality was that the vast majority of the domain names listed had reserve requirements that weren''t met -- even after the auction closed! Those greedy sellers! For the most part, the ones that were selling were seeing bids in the under-$1000 price range. After an examination of the domain names that had bids versus those that didn''t, the only difference I could distinguish was that those that had bids were frequently .coms as opposed to .nets, .orgs, or .ws or something equally unknown (outside of Internet junkie circles). That doesn''t mean that the .coms were going at all, however.

The Going Rates
Here are some examples of domain names - not particularly exciting ones, but then they would be if someone had a business idea that relied on it, such as WafflesByMail.com - and what the minimum bids were:

Myths.net: $150
Instantwin.org: $30 (which is $5 less than it costs to register for a year!)
OceanSideApts.com: $8500 (but no bids placed yet with only 4 days to go)

And some domains that have sold in recent days - I tried to pick out the ones I thought had some sex appeal:

WebBizForSale.com: $580
InstantFinancing.com: $1,155
AChristmasWish.com : $540
AssuredLoans.com: $530
BabySoap.com: $315
Videos.com: $525

You can see that the dollar figures, even for the better names, aren''t that impressive. There are a lot of domains listed -- the vast majority in the categories I was looking in -- that don''t even have a single bid placed because the minimum bid set by the seller is well outside the price range for comparable domains. I''m sure the seller thinks his/her domain is worth the asking price, but no one else does.

Some examples of these overly bloated domain name price tags (with their minimum bids, which haven''t been placed yet) include:

GiftNet.com: $3,000,000 (no kidding!)
TerifficBuy.com: $750,000
FiftyDollarsOrLess.net: $75,000

You get the idea. No one is paying this kind of money for anything short of a completely generic name, so businesses shouldn''t be scared off by the hype that''s surrounded the few domains that have gone for really big bucks. The record on Afternic is the sale of Engineering.org mentioned on their home page.

Pick a Domain Name That Makes a Statement
The after-market for domains is soft, and that''s a good thing for new businesses - if not for clever entrepreneurs like myself. Businesses who want to make a footprint online need to do it with catchy domain names, not AnotherObscureBusiness.com. It''s the lament of most large dot coms that have shoveled millions into branding efforts that dot com brands don''t seem to stick with consumers. PriceThis.com gets muddled together with PriceThat.com in my brain, and I spend all day at this stuff - how''s a regular consumer who devotes only a fraction of the brain cells to online stores to remember the difference?

It seems that most of the after-market frenzy has been resolved by the U.S. Congress decision to give businesses a preemptive right to domain names that reasonably match their own names. This means that there was a time when owning Acme.com would fetch a "squatter" a pretty penny from Acme grocery store, unless he could prove that he was also doing business as Acme Shoe Shine, or some such. Today, having had the foresight to purchase Acme.com would earn you a letter from a lawyer and probably a frozen domain from Network Solutions, when Acme took its claim to them.

Despite the difficulty in maintaining brand awareness among consumers, it is worthwhile for businesses to purchase - in the after-market if necessary - good domain names that don''t make them look like they were the LastOneToTheParty.com.

Resources
The Open Directory Project is a good place to start for after-market domain name vendors and auctions.

Before you purchase from a reseller directly, watch the auction market for that category of names for a while so you''re familiar with the going rates.

For more information on securing a top-level domain name, check out internet.com''s DomainNotes.com.

Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com