America.com up for sale!

An ultimate geo domain,  America.com is on auction at Sedo.com and the domaining arena is abuzz with speculations that it could easily fetch one of the highest prices ever paid for a domain name.

There has to be a very strong interest among prospective buyers for such a premium domain and it remains to be seen if the final sale price exceeds the estimated $12 million paid for Sex.com a few years ago and considered to be the highest price paid for any domain name.

Geo domains, that contain the names of cities, states, or countries, have emerged as one of the strongest interest area for serious domainers and Sedo brokered Chinese.com for $1.1 million last year. The sale of America.com could turn out the largest sale ever for Sedo, which managed the auction of Vodka.com, its largest sale till date, for $3 million by a Russian vodka company planning to enter North America.

The potential of this domain name seems to be virtually unlimited as the buyer will be able to conduct almost any business from the domain, from hotel rooms to vacation packages and air tickets to real estate! You can be sure that the final buyer’s multi-million investment will be recovered within the first few years itself if he implements a sound business strategy.

In fact, I believe he could be making more money off this compared to any other business he could think of! Just imagine if he had a whole lot of subdomains like newyork.america.com, losangeles.america.com, vacations.america.com, realestate.america.com, onlinecasino.america.com, poker.america.com, sex.america.com, insurance.america.com and more… with each subdomain having its own business strategy headed by experts! The potential is indeed UNLIMITED, I say!

With a domain like that he wouldn’t even required any publicity to build his business. What do you say, guys?

Sunrise period for .me domains till May 20

The sunrise registration period for the newly launched .me domain names, the generic top-level domain of the country of Montenegro, is on till May 20 and companies having their company names and product names as registered trademarks can book them before the registrations are open for all on a first come first served basis.

The .me registry claims to have received thousands of domain name registrations in the first week of the announcement of the availability of the .me domains.

The sunrise applicants include companies Apple, which registered apple.me, ipod.me and itunes.me. Microsoft, Skype, Digg, MTV and BMW have also registered their .me domain names.

I have my reservations about this pricey domain name, available from 110 to 200 Euros per year for a minimum of five years, which is predicted to be very popular.

With that kind of money being involved, not very many domainers would like to register too many domains. What do you guys say?

Domain Names costlier! .org hiked by 10%

Public Interest Registry, the registry for .org domain names, has notified ICANN that it is increasing the wholesale prices for .org domain names by 10%. The annual wholesale price for .org domain name registrations will be $6.75, slightly below the $6.86 rate that .com domains are expected to be available at later this year. As the profit margins are thin on domain registrations, the price hike will pinch not your favorite domain registrar’s pocket but yours!

Public Interest Registry has given no rational for the price increase to ICANN. As far as I can make out, it has the most obvious business interest in its mind – profits!

One can’t really blame Public Interest Registry for thinking about ways to increase its profits. After all, it has monopolistic control over the .org domain names! In fact, when .biz registry NeuStar raised prices last year, it was belligerent enough to state the reason for the price hike as – everyone else was doing it. What bullshit!

Also, there are talks that Afilias is all set to hike prices of .info and that NeuStar is already planning another hike in .biz prices.

I have always believed that this whole system of ICANN and domain name registries is rotten to the core. They all have a cartel of sorts. Why does the government allow such monopolistic market conditions to emerge? I wish some intelligent guy in the US will hire good lawyers and file a lawsuit against all this!

Why am I mad? Well, the simple reason is that I have loads of domains that I need to get renewed every year and even now it is quite a lot of money I have to spend. With the price increase it will be a whole lot of new burden.

Yes, yes… I know… you will ask me to monetize the domain to sustain themselves. But bro, monetization doesn’t work on its own. It requires a lot of time, skills and effort, which again costs money. A domainer like me is not a programmer or web designer or an SEO expert. To hire them, I would need to spend money. Domaining is getting costlier by the day. Tsk… Tsk…

if I keep it spending on sustenance, when do I get to enjoy it?

Jerry Seinfeld wins domain dispute over JerrySeinfeld.com

Another domain dispute has been resolved by the intervention of UDRP.

Noted comedian, Jerry Seinfeld won control of the domain name JerrySeinfeld.com after his lawyers launched an appeal to get the control of the domain name from a company called Anything.com, which used the site to host little but advertisements.

I wonder how much money did Anything.com was able to make through the advertising on the website considering that Jerry Seinfeld has quite a following!

Anything.com has agreed to hand over the domain name that it had owned for ten years even before the dispute went to arbitration.

Virtual Real Estate market is booming!

The real estate market may be facing a real tough time these days, but the market for virtual real estate properties, the domain names is flourishing with people making heavy investments in acquiring prized premium domains.

According to DN Journal, domain sales worth $38,029,543 were reported In the first quarter of 2008, which is a 78% increase over the $21,253,105 in domain sales reported for the first quarter of 2007! The average sale is reported to be with average sale at $10,103 and the total number of reported sales was 3,764.

Amazing… I would say

The largest sale reported was that of the $10 million sale of Fund.com during the first quarter of the year! Other prominent sales included $2.6 million for Pizza.com and $1.7 million for DataRecovery.com

I am thrilled with this all. Seems like I am in the right business after all