Expensive parked .com domain names. Are they sitting on a gold mine or just being naive?
About me:
My name is Mike Martin and I am the owner of OceanView Webdesign. I have been active on the Internet since 1997. I was fascinated about this new hype called the WWW and started to learn more about it. I had just finished my business school including Marketing, Public Relations, Business plans, Personnel and Organization, Financial Management, Operational Management and Logistics.
I have been involved into several online design studios and have operated all kinds of websites.
Some history:
The internet Bizz was booming back then. The most beautiful .com domain names could be sold for over 100 grant with ease. There were not so many TLD’s like you have now so to have a premium name was really desirable for top firms. Let me rephrase that. EVERYBODY wanted a premium name! Not only top firms. What is a premium name? Well, an amazing name back then was example: Shopping.com or Movies.com or Fashion.com etc. etc. but also names with “free” in it. Google actually was not even a player back then. AltaVista, Yahoo and Lycos ran the show. They looked what kind of name you had and if the name was adding up with the search request the doors to unlimited traffic and money went open.
To have an amazing name was everything. Later things became more complicated. Google came into play and was looking at keywords. That changed the game to what we have now. If you are not in the top ten with your top keywords you can basically forget about it. There are 10 other companies in the top then that are probably cheaper, better than your product will ever be. Do not expect a potential client to click up to page 80 and make a sale there. He has seen what he wants in the top 20 and will not waste any more time.
Present day:
If you are still here reading, I would like to thank you. Let me cut to the point.
I was looking for a .com domain name and I found one of these so called premium .com domain names. It was parked and had nothing of value on it. Some privacy text and a small link to a company. I was interested in who was operating the name and gave them an email.
I asked them if the domain name was for sale and if I could acquire it. After a couple of days, I received a one sentence response. The person was not sending me away but tried to figure out if I was some big shot firm or a rich person. Ok, I thought. Let me explain this guy right away I am not going to pay 50 grants for a .com domain name in 2016. I asked the guy to work together and made him some offers. Well, after he noticed I was no big fish, and we could not come to some sort of agreement we both went our way.
So, this beautiful .com domain is still looking like some sort of graveyard stone, and nothing is done with it. I myself am still surprised why .com domain still have so much power for some people. Google does not care what tld you are on. People can easily find the same name on another tld’s. So why is a .com name still so magical? I am old school, yes. For me it still is but I am just wondering if the domain sellers who have billions of names parked actually have nothing. Are they sitting on a gold mine or are they just being ignorant? Will someone in 2040 come for their premium .com domain name?
All these empty parked domain names. It used to be someone’s dream idea that did not worked out. Now parked and doing nothing, looking dead. Should there not come a law that a domain name should be operated and functional within 6 months? If not, it will be released again? Why do names get grabbed and nothing happens with them? Am I missing something?
I always say. “I have the .com so I am the real one and others are just fake”
I would be thrilled if some of you can shed some light on my questions and maybe explain things to me.
I hope you guys liked my blog. I am not much of a writer, but I wanted to put my thoughts on paper.
I have some more blogs in the pipeline. In some I am just sharing my feelings. In most there is actually something to learn. Please sign up to my newsletter so I can give you a message when I have something new.
Thx and if some of you need help or advice or just want to talk you can always contact me.
“You cannot bend the wind, you can only adjust your sails”