Real State in the Internet

It was last April when I heard about Chris Clark, a 43-year old from Maryland and his pizza.com. After hearing that vodka.com was sold $3M, he went on selling his 14-year old domain and got a $2.6M fortune. From another case, just recently, an unconfirmed source said that bankaholic.com was acquired by Bankrate for $15M. Though this new was not confirmed, surely, it is so fascinating how technology particularly the Internet changed the way people think, do business and acquire wealth.

I used to be involved in real state business. Back when I am in my college years, I tried to make my fortune in brokering some lands. Unfortunately, I did not make any sale but I learned a lot in that experience. One of the things that I learned is that a land doesn’t depreciate in value. The price of the land property goes higher and higher as time goes by. As long as there is no very, very unfortunate event that will happen to the land, such as it becomes a lake, its price value will go up. Of course, the appreciation depends on many factors but if you know what you are doing, buying and selling of land property is a good business with high return.

That’s the time I said to myself that someday I will invest my money on real state and make business with it. Now, I already have one piece of land but the problem in this business is that you really need to have big amount of investment to make high return. So probably, in someone like me that doesn’t have big money to invest, I will probably make it in this game after another lifetime. But Internet changed the game plan.

Chris Clark bought pizza.com in 1994 for only $20 and he just paid the yearly fee, probably the same amount to keep it in his name. So probably, his investment in only not more than $300 but it came out more than $2M. It really inspires me when I remember his story so for the last two weeks I’ve been trying to hunt some domain names that I think will have a potential for sale later. But the thing is, today it is very very hard to find an available domain name, especially .com that is only one word, common and short. I even ask myself why I wasn’t born earlier. Back in 1994, I was just in elementary grade and knew nothing about computer. Now, I sometimes envy those people who have bought those common one word domains. Those names are like diamonds today in web 2.0. It is rare and is very high in value.

But of course, if you want to play in this game, still there is some chance that you will earn decent amount of income. This business is not yet saturated and it is still possible to make money from it. Probably, all words in the dictionary are now not available for domain name but you can still invest in some words and hopefully make from it. I just checked sedo.com, a marketplace for buying and selling domain name and looking at their recent sales, this business is still promising. Turbopoker.com was sold $5000 and yii.com was sold $7000. The thing is if you got the right combination of words or even letters, there is still chance that you can sell it for higher price someday. If you made times five return of investment, it’s not bad already.

Are you planning to sell your domain name someday? Do you think it will sell? Are you in buying and selling domain names? Let your thought be heard. Post your comments. And if ever you have a domain name for sale, you are allowed to promote it here also in the comments section.

[Original Photo by Per Ola Wiberg]

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