I-Sales Digest
"Data -> Information -> Knowledge -> Wisdom"
Moderator:John Audette
ja@audettemedia.com
October 9, 2000 Issue # 1184
"Domain Name Valuation"
~ Rod Aries
TOPIC: DOMAIN NAME VALUATION
>
Ralph wrote:
>> Remember back in December 1999, <<long, long ago >> when the domain name business.com sold for $7.5M? Ladies and
gentlemen, that was dot com's pinnacle, its *peak*, its greatest moment. Why? Because it is very unlikely that a dot com domain name only will ever achieve anything like that kind of money again.
Hmm, regarding peaking, here are some other great quotes, from long,
long ago that come to mind: "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." (Popular
Mechanics, 1949)
"Will the last one out, please turn off the lights." (Seattle billboard, 1970, after Boeing had a massive layoff)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." (Thomas
Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943)
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." (Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977)
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981)
"I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder." (Stephen Wright - I just liked this one)
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" (H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927)
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."(Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.)
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
(Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.)
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." (Charles H.
Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.)
"Because it is very unlikely that a dot com domain name only will ever achieve anything like that kind of money again." (Ralph I-Sales
Digest #1183 - sorry guy)
Even Nostradamus was wrong on occasion :)
And this my friends is for two reasons: 1. Dot Com is gaining bad connotations. A number of companies are removing "Dot com" from
their company names to distance themselves from the backlash over poor stock performance.
Hmm, first, I think I would rather have a 'bad connotation' *.com
domain, than a good *.net, *.org, *.ws, *.md or whatever other third
class domain suffix. Tell anyone the name of your site is
discount-long-distance.net and, unless they can click on it, they will type in www.discountlongdistance.com (I own a *.net name with
200,000 visits a year - I always wonder how many visits I would have
had with the *.com version)
Second, "Profit is the price of staying in business" (Peter
Drucker)... maybe a few of the dotcom CEO's missed that class at B-school. I will agree there has been a lot of hype and broken
bubbles (and ego's) over dotcoms that have gone belly up, but according to Darwin's (updated) law of Virtual Survival of the
Fittest, are you surprised that not all survived? This internet thing is an evolution in progress - you must expect attrition. In
our lifetime, the *.com will not go by the wayside, unless man goes by the wayside...
Furthermore, a quick visit to http://www.dotcom.com/facts/quickstats.html shows that 80% of all
domains taken end in *.com. Just because there initially were three domain options (*.com, *.net, *.org) doesn't mean that it is a horse
race.
That jingling sound you can hear is the 50 cents in my pocket that I
am going to bet you that the only reason 12% of the domains end in *.net and 8% in *.org is that because most of these domain these
buyers really wanted was a *.com that had already been taken - so the settled for the next best thing... some horse race.
>> And even Microsoft is heavily promoting a Dot Net initiative. <<
That is a brand building strategy, not an indictment of the *.com
domain names.
>> It seems like companies such as amazon.com can survive without
the "Dot com" because people recognize the brand name Amazon even without the dot com at the end. <<
It amazing what a half billion+ of dollars in investment and press
will get you these days.
>> Dot Com's monopoly is ending. Heck, open the floodgates give us
.everything; .shop, .biz, .food, .dir, .news, .on-and-on! <<
Well, that is one way to look at it... I would suggest that these
new extensions (while needed to help decipher the internet a bit better and also because all the good *.com names are all gone)
really are a pretty smart business model - marketing ploy created by
a, umm - you guessed it, dotcom company.
Do you think that entrepreneurs saw what was made on domain name registrations saw a gold mine. Little islands like Tuvalu
(*.tv) have turned domain extensions into the nations largest export. The
new list of extensions, are going to be an economic windfall for some... and, the byproduct will be new extensions for domains. Oh
yeah, there are going to be some disappointed owners of names like loans.xyz who see "their" traffic going to
loans.com.
So, I got my money on the internet, more specifically the *.com names, to win, place and show.
At your service,
Rod Aries
HowToInternet.com generates highly targeted traffic for corporate
clients.
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