Following the recent Moniker auction, Forbes looks at the biggest sales of domain names. At the Moniker auction, Creditcheck.com sold for US$3 million and Seniors.com for $1.8 million. In total, 218 domain names were bid for, and $10.8 million exchanged hands. Part of this is supply and demand – it’s now extraordinarily difficult to get a memorable domain name in the .com name space. Forbes says, “During the tech boom, top-selling domains were based on brand appeal. Now it’s all about searchable keywords that are both generic and descriptive.” And the reason – well, a big reason is with “online ad spending increasing at a rate of 30% a year, owning domain names has become a business in itself. Entrepreneurs can flip them, like Miami condominiums, or they can sit on them and collect rent.”http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/06/28/google-news-corp-ent-tech-cx_ll_0629webaddresses.htmlAlso see:
Dictionary.com Shows the Rational Side of the Internet
… All of which suggests that the real value of the company comes from its generic and highly-trafficked domain names. One has to give credit to the folks at Lexico, who first launched the dictionary.com and thesaurus.com websites in May, 1995, when the Web was in its true infancy.
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2007/07/16/dictionarycom-shows-the-rational-side-of-the-internet/