But considering that Schilling’s traffic generated more than 1 percent of Yahoo’s $3.6 billion [...]
The December issue of Business 2.0 features an article about the Master$ of their Domain$ by Paul Sloan. A great piece and well worth the read. As Peter Ejtel already hinted in his blog, the publicity of recent sales was only the start. There also was an article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Thanks to web ads, some find new money in Domain Names".
The article overall is written in an entertaining and positive style, so it should help to promote the industry. However we probably don't have to wait a long time to see more articles, some of them probably not this positive. All in all a great start for the big wave of publicity that this industry is going to receive. Maybe even I can find the time to write an article.
Some exerpts:
Today,
Schwartz owns about 5,000 names, with less than a third falling into
the “adult” category. [...] he claims, that[’s] are earning him $2
million a year.
[...]The secret? It has to do with what’s known as type-in traffic, or, in
Wall Street jargon, direct navigation. Though it may seem odd in the
era of powerful search engines, it turns out that millions of Internet
surfers don’t use search at all. Instead, they type what they’re
looking for right into the top of their Web browser. Looking to buy
candy? Type in Candy.com, a name Schwartz bought in May 2002 for
$108,000. A page filled with links to candy-related products comes up.
Click on one of the ads and the advertiser pays Google, which in turn
sends a share to Schwartz and the company that runs Candy.com. Some
days Candy.com makes Schwartz $300 in profits; the site paid for itself
in a year and a half.
[...]
Besides some of the more or less well known domainers, the UltSearch portfolio sale, the "factcheck.com" story, the article also features an investor in this industry, one of the founders of Internet REIT (Internet Real Estate), also featured in the Wall Street Journal article.
Rabin teamed up a year ago with a Harvard-trained finance whiz named
Bob Martin and domain speculator Marc Ostrofsky. They named their
company Internet REIT and, according to Ostrofsky, are spending $250
million, probably far more, buying out domain owners as fast as they
can find good names. (Ostrofsky, for the record, was the man who pulled
off the much-publicized sale of Business.com for a reported $7.5
million in December 1999.)
[...]Ostrofsky pulls aside Bahlitzanakis, the Ye worshiper. Bahlitzanakis,
who works from his apartment in Queens, N.Y., owns fewer than 100
names, but at least one is a gem: Cellphones.com. The site -- a plain
page with relevant links --
makes an average of $1,300 a day.
[...]
He returns to his hotel room in the early morning to find a contract under his door. Total price: $4.2 million. He paid $90 for the name in 1996.
Very good timing, considering Rick Schwartz has just announced his preliminary schedule for the Silicon Valley TRAFFIC conference.makes an average of $1,300 a day.
[...]
He returns to his hotel room in the early morning to find a contract under his door. Total price: $4.2 million. He paid $90 for the name in 1996.
