Lessons from the Million Dollar Sale of Men.com

Late last year, one exceptionally lucky guy in Florida managed to sell his domain name for $1.3 million (he bought men.com in 1997 for $15,000). Now folks are thinking the dot-com gold rush is back on, and they're ready to pounce on stupid domains like mydomainisdumb.com or ibetI'llsellthisformillions.com. I say hold off on the domain squatting. You are not going to get rich.

from Domain hipe because of 1.3 Million dollar sale

The author goes on to say that the reason a Florida Man got lucky in late 2003 with this awesome sale, is that the domain has very broad appeal, and is short & easy to remember. During my research of the past week I've discovered that shorter can often be better, because there are a lot less 3 and 4 letter domains available. Whenever supply is short, prices tend to rise!

But when he states that people shouldn't waste their time thinking up longer domain names, or including dashes, or even trying to get rich with domain names, I think he's wrong.

While I'm not a fan of dashes, Satellite-phone.com just sold for $2188 on Afternic. I bet the guy or gal who owned it paid $9.20 for that URL on Godaddy...And what about that guy who had Ilovetheiraqinformationminister.com? While I have no clue whether he made money on his website, he was featured on all sorts of TV shows for a time there - which couldn't exactly have hurt whatever business the guy is in.

I don't think you can get rich overnight. But there is definitely money to be made in this market, as demonstrated on Sedo.com each day. Maybe you can't sell 1 URL for a million buckaroos, but if you do your research and stay on it like a dog on a bone...you just might be able to develop a long term portfolio of a hundred good domain names that will end up bringing you between $500 and $2000 per name. And those numbers would average out to $125,000. Those are really rough figures and don't include your registration fees, but I think you can get the idea.

Certainly you're going to buy some stinkers which you end up sitting on forever, or even ditch. But you may even find a gem that commands some nice money - maybe not $1.3 million, but maybe $20 or 30K. And with opportunities opening up in the ccTLD market (I'm personally a bit excited about the possibilities in China w/ their .cn extension), as well as the never ending process of new lingo, current events, etc. - there are always going to be openings in the domain name market for a careful watcher who's not afraid to take an educated gamble.

And the lesson I got from the sale of Men.com is that while the market is way more cautious than it used to be, the waiting game can payout. Imagine - this Florida guy waited 6 years to sell that name! I bet he got tempted to sell it a heck of a lot cheaper at least once, and lucky for him he knew that his name would command a higher value once the market matured. Along these lines I'm hoping my IDN Iré.com ("I will go" in Spanish) has a bright & lucrative future!