Before Domain Names

[Curt]

Hey all, random question:

If you could go back to the time before domain names were being registered, and you had the chance to register 1 and only 1 domain name, what would it be and why?

 

[boxfish]

I'd probably go for travel.com

Interesting, lucrative, developable, saleable

 

[DomainM]

sex.com, easy. I would then simply sell it in 2010 for $13 million

 

[boxfish]

sex.com, easy. I would then simply sell it in 2010 for $13 million

And advise the new owner to try and do something more inventive than a pinterest clone?

 

[nameholic]

Buy it Right and rent out anything thats Left of the .

???????? . uk.com

 

[Edwin]

London.com

Big enough to be worth megabucks if done right, small enough to be "manageable", right extension given the 50 million overseas tourists who flock there each year.

 

[doodlebug]

Money.com

The commission you can make from these type of aff programmes can be great whereas with Sex.com people tend to want porn without paying so Money.com would be much easier to monetise.

 

[dragon]

loans.com

 

[DomainM]

Money.com

The commission you can make from these type of aff programmes can be great whereas with Sex.com people tend to want porn without paying so Money.com would be much easier to monetise.

True, however if you'er simply after a lottery type domain win $13 million is a good sum for who ever perviously owned it. Would I like to develop such a site? NO! It's not my type of project nor area of interest.

 

[murph]

Loans.com +1

 

[thadeas]

my first thought would of been Apple, Amazon or Google but the first would probably been subject to a domain ownership dispute by apple computers. The other 2 might just have called themselves something different if their desired domains were not available so probably not worth what they are today under those circumstances. I think as above london, travel or sex .com's are all great and maybe something also like commerce, hotels, car or shopping would also be top of my list.

 

[DomainM]

Brand-able domains such as Amazon, Tesco, eBay etc are only worth money because of the marketing to build the brand. On their own they have very little value and would have most likely joined the millions of other similar domains collecting registration dust.

Correction: 'Amazon' could have been worth something as its a GEO

 

[thadeas]

If what we see in the film is true i wonder if facebook would have been worth registering since it was originally called thefacebook, if it still grew into the company it is now then sitting on that domain could have been very profitable.

 

[peter_w]

If what we see in the film is true i wonder if facebook would have been worth registering since it was originally called thefacebook, if it still grew into the company it is now then sitting on that domain could have been very profitable.

They only paid $200,000 for facebook.com. The seller presumably though it was a good price at the time (it was, really). With hindsight he probably wishes he did a share deal.

 

[Curt]

interesting no one has said porn .com?

 

[Curt]

They only paid $200,000 for facebook.com. The seller presumably though it was a good price at the time (it was, really). With hindsight he probably wishes he did a share deal.

What they pay for fb.com? $8.5m?

 

[storebuilder]

Casino.com

 

[storebuilder]

It's a very interesting topic. Back in the day there were a lot of domains available but the registration fees were a lot more than they are now especially in 1998/9 so there was not the speculation there is now.

If I could go back to the start the one thing I would do again is to start building the one site I wanted to be my main one and not keep getting sidetracked by all of the opportunities that came along.

But really, apart from the aftermarket domain names becoming much more expensive and scarce it's still possible to build a brand from a nothing domain if you are prepared to put the content writing into it.

 

[storebuilder]

Oh! And I look eight years older than my profile pic LOL

 

[doodlebug]

Going with what Storebuilder said I know that even if I was fully aware of domains as a speculation investment I never would have had about £90 per domain anyway so I have no regrets.

The money game now is making a sucessful app !