The domain aftermarket totally sucks, PPC revenues are plunging, valuations are in the toilet. Unless a big, end-user institutional user like a mutual fund wants to spend 3M (and couldn’t put the funds to better use meeting investor redemption requests), these guys are out of luck methinks.

A person experienced in buying and selling of property would recognize the value of this metaphor.

Any infinite space is never ever flat. It always has local minima (blighted or deserted areas where demand is low in terms of commercial real-estate) and maxima (densely populated areas that act as magnets, restricting supply in its vicinity).

I am sure there are many areas from anyone’s house where there is a minima, and a maxima (sometimes in close proximity).

I am sure IBM’s customers can find http://www.inte...essmachines.com, but http://www.ibm.com is better no doubt. And of course, near the “commercial property” of http://www.ibm.com (a very “busy street”), http://www.ibm.org or http://www.ibm.net would be more valuable.

If the new buyer can develop the property to its potential, it could be worth the price.

Names are great for brand association for your product or service. Inherently, they are of little value other than PERCEPTION.

Most successful companies on the web rarely have generic names. When will the fad of acquiring rare names disappear?

On a real street, commercial property gains value by scarcity and proximity to a customer base — there’s only so many good locations available in each good area. Everything on the Internet is more-or-less equally accessible, so address value is about human factors — will people remember the name, is it easy to type it into an address bar, etc.

Does wealth.com really have 2.9 million dollars of human factor advantage over a new $10 domain name? I’m doubting it

That price would probably be even less of a good deal for Wealth Magazine. Their targeted consumers know how to use computers well enough to find the site already. It’s unlikely that shortening the domain name would significantly increase the number of visitors. It would $3 milllion dollars spent for ego.

Paul

The reason you see alot more brands than generics is obvious, there are very few generic domains. And sadly alot of the people who own generics are lazy domainers who don’t want to invest the money in making them a profitable company (or don’t see the profitability in doing so).

Marketing can only take you so far, the same applies to a generic domain. I agree that your product/service has to offer value to your market, but having that generic domain gives you instant brandability and marketshare.

Good luck!