Domain names: a market of great and growing importance
Buying and selling domain names is big business. The nature of the birth of the Internet is one of the big reasons why domain names have become so important and have attracted so much monetary attention.
This year, 15 names used in Internet addresses have been resold for at least six figures to businesses and individuals hoping to access large audiences. On.com earned $635,000. Macau.com made $550,000.
Sex.com sold a record $12 million in cash and stock to adult entertainment company Escom in January, according to industry trade reports and sources with knowledge of the deal, who declined to be named due to the private nature. of the sale.
As the Internet started to grow and became more and more important, more and more ordinary businessmen realized the potential of this new tool. However, many of these businessmen and women logged in to find their trademarked phrases and titles already used by other users with different intentions. Under these pretexts the domain name market was born.
Today, the market is dominated by this foray between the big established companies and those that came first to the Internet. We see a lot of transfers between companies like those that were able to get their names first, sell their URLs to big companies that have been slower to join the World Wide Web.
These transactions represent big business and are creating a very important market of their own. Sales of 5,851 domain names brought in $29 million in 2005, compared with 3,813 names sold for $15 million in 2004, says market researcher Zetetic. And the pace is picking up: In the first three months of this year, 1,949 names brought in $14.2 million, he says. Domain Name Journal magazine.
“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 driven more and more by the Internet sector.”
