It’s not true: it’s not only .com domains that have resell value. I see .info TLDs (Top Level Domains) selling like hotcakes. Some registrars have a sale on them, and people are buying them up on one year’s registration and reselling for a small profit.
Some people are even building a static website using a cheap multi-site hosting account, adding about 10-20 pages of content having Google AdSense ads, and then selling them for $150-$200 at Sitepoint Marketplace, or one of the numerous other places. Not a bad return for a bit of work and low startup costs. (Hint: hobby and health topics seem to sell the most.) My observation is that .net and .info TLDs seem to be popular for this activity.
The .tv TLD is an area that I think will become hot. (Is that hard to see; not exactly prophetic, since Internet TV is growing huge.) Because the yearly registration costs range from $25-$39.99, there are still tons of great choices. Actually, the reason for the availability is due to a historic problem. The .tv TLD stands for the island nation of Tuvalu. If I understand correctly, a company did a deal with the country, but couldn’t guarantee registrants what the yearly registration fee would be. So some people paid big money (thousands) and are worried that that’ll be the yearly fee. Others have been reluctant to register. Unfortunate but true.
Regardless, I’ve registered 3-4 or myself, and one uses clever wording - if I do say so myself - in a popular blogging niche. (Sorry, won’t reveal it until the site is ready to launch.) My feeling is that if I can develop some screencast how-to tutorial videos for it, I could probably sell it for 5 figures next year. But without any content, the domain may go unnoticed. (You have to weigh several factors before you decide whether or not to develop a domain.)
One other trend I’m seeing is that more bloggers who are or want to become Pro Bloggers are getting “vanity” domains. These consist of their name and .com, .net or .biz, depending on what they do besides blogging. Some use a variation of their name. A domain name can be a personal brand, whether you use a .com or a .name TLD.
[Raj Dash is a full-time blogger who’s dipping a pinky toe into the domaining world and writing about it at nameSonar.]
6 responses so far ↓
1 Dan Schawbel // Jun 1, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Basically, at this time you really need to purchase your own domain name, represented in your full name.
2 Andy // Jun 4, 2007 at 9:50 am
Yep, especially if you want to build up your own brand. My name has been gone for quite some time now.
3 Raj // Jun 7, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Dan, do you think variations on name domains are bad? For example, I like BoydCreative. AndyBoyd would work, but a variation, if appropriate seems just as useful.
4 Dan Schawbel // Jun 8, 2007 at 12:00 am
Variations are useful, but you need to baseline to build off of. It’s very necessary to buy your domain.com and the subdomains right now. They are hot and if you don’t, others with similar names will purchase them.
5 Andy // Jun 8, 2007 at 10:55 am
It’s interesting that you have touched on acquiring subdomains like yourname.wordpress.com and yourname.blogspot.com. Now we’re into the whole reputation management area, which is kinda important if you are in any way well known online or offline.
This doesn’t just apply to individuals, companies should be doing the exact same thing and they should be doing it today!
6 Chet Kent // Dec 8, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Hi Andy,
Greetings from a fellow non-Grrrrgle lover!
Thought I’d jump in with a “hot domain” tip.
Check out Nemeas (www.nemeas.com if you don’t want to Grrrgle it
This program helps you choose domain names likely to rank better by comparing it with high (and low I suppose) ranking domain names.
Hope this helps,
Chet
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