Sweet Charity: Dot-Com Domains (Web Addresses) Going for Millions in Current Auction

Sept. 26, 2008 - PRLog -- "Politicians are focused on the worsening economy, but in the narrow world of domain sales -- where Internet addresses are created, bought and sold in a day – profits are soaring," says Bill Edwards, marketing director at WebTalkerPR.

In an online domain auction that started September 25 and runs through Oct 2, bids broke above $1 million dollars for many names in the opening hours. By the first afternoon three bidders for the address CharityAuction.com had run the price up to nearly $6 million. And that was with a week of bidding left!

One fellow who’s particularly excited by that news is Bill Geiger, the founder of Oregon Mint Snuff Company, through which he owns the domain CharityPoker.com. “I created the domain years ago because we were setting up charity events to support good causes and publicize Mint Snuff,” he says. Given that poker is probably an order of magnitude more popular than auctions, Geiger’s domain (which is not in the current auction) could fetch in excess of $10 million. “I’d have to consider a reasonable offer,” he says with a straight face.

This weekend’s auction is called T.R.A.F.F.I.C New York (information and the current bid list are at marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction). Roughly 2,000 domains are up for bid, with low bids around $360 for names like TheMiracleDrug.com.

What do buyers do with their new domains? Many are acquired by businesses or budding entrepreneurs eager to set up full-blown websites to market products or promote services.

It’s not uncommon for companies that have already established their web presence to buy up product-related domains that consumers are likely to type into search engines. The businesses set those consumer-friendly domains to automatically take visitors directly to the company’s regular home page.

For example, a company marketing anti-aging creams or vitamins might buy FirstSignsOfAging.com at the auction, and bring anyone who types those words  directly to their product page.

Plenty of domaineers, as they’re known, will buy up baskets of names in the coming days in the hope they will appreciate and do well in resale in the weeks or years ahead. These domains are often “parked”, meaning that a standard template page is created for the domain – one that may include lots of ads with embedded links to actual merchant websites. When visitors click on those ads, the owner of the parked domain earns payments that can range from pennies to several dollars.

"If the prospect of easy money has you panting, drop in on the current online auction, or start registering your own creative domains. For as little as $9 a shot, what have you got to lose?" Edwards says.