Hot market for domain names

Domainers have known this for quite a while but now, the mainstream business world is now taking a second look at the hot market for domain names.

CNN recently published an article about the current state of the domaining business and by all means, it’s on a roll.

The article describes how two domainers, Larry Fisher and his financial backer, Ari Goldberger, battle for the highest bid to land prestigious domains, like “megayachts.com” for a cool 150,000$. During the online bid, Larry and Ari are on the phone discussing ways to land the names they value most. Larry does the bidding from his laptop and Ari runs some background research on the coveted names.

This dynamic “Larry & Ari” duo is the only team of tech-savvy netrepreneurs looking to bank on the rush to buy up quality “type in” domain names.

The better the domain, the more chances web surfers will directly navigate to it, entirely bypassing the search engines while providing a healthy (pay-per-click) revenue stream for the domainers owning the name.

Services such as DomainSponsor, DotzUp and Parked help domainers monetize their domain name portfolio. Their services are especially useful when a domainer owns many domains and can’t optimize them all — external help then makes perfect sense.

The industry is estimated to be generating 2 billion dollars, just related to the buying and selling of domain names. That number is expected to explode to a whopping 4 billion dollars, by 2010. Not too bad for an industry that’s not even a decade old. Needless to point out how exciting this is for domainers, especially those who happen to already own quality web names.

Since domain names are inherently unique, domainvestors see them as a stake in the online world, a virtual real estate lot, if you will. The “.com” names stand to win the most from this growth but different names can have regional (such as “job.ca“) or vanity value (like “greatest.name“) as well.

If a name is bound to be naturally typed in by users, it has value. In a web 2.0 era, perhaps a name like “staffr.com” will someday rise up to become an online brand. Invented words fare well with millions of users looking to explore new business concepts and ways to connect with one another. Domain names are often the foundation for entire business concepts. A name like “flickr.com” proves that point quite well.

If you’re looking to join the millions of domain name owners who are participating in this massive “virtual land grab”, it costs a mere about 8$ per year (everything included) to have a “.com” name. Once you’ve purchased all those you like (which happened to be available), you can sign-up (for free) with DomainSponsor, DotzUp or Parked so they can help you monetize your domain name portfolio — until you figure out what kind of web destinations you’d like to turn you names into.

Happy domaining, everyone!

Tags: domain names, domains, domainers, domaining, monetize, pay-per-click