Digital Real Estate
We are all familiar with .com, .net, .org, .gov, and the rest of the hundreds of domain extensions out there but besides them being connected to a website somewhere, what is there really else to know? Well, domains are kind of like addresses or a room number in a giant hotel. The first thing to know is that you do not own your domain name, you are leasing it with literally the freedom to do whatever you like while you have it, even sell it to someone for any price they are willing to pay. Domains are hosted on servers that are owned by web hosting companies like GoDaddy™. ( The Giant Hotel) once the subscription on the domain expires the domain will remain unavailable for 90 days then be re-released to the public. Generally, domains are $9.99 – $19.99 yearly but depending on what the domain name is could massively hike up the value.
It seems unbelievable that a unique or clever .com can be bought for $10 to $20 and be sold for $2000 or more but if you have any understanding of how real estate works it will start to get pretty clear. If you purchase a prime piece of commercial real estate in a high traffic area with lots of billboards and signs in the area, the odds are your business will succeed, but if you build a house on your prime piece of commercial property or nothing at all, that property will decrease in value and eventually become a monthly or yearly bill. Domains are digital real estate and hold different value to different people, companies, or organizations. If I was in the bakery business then cakesandpies.com would be much more valuable to me than if I was a hairstylist or mechanic. That rule applies to every online business so the more familiar the phase the more it will likely cost. FYI: As of today, cakesandpies.com is currently $5,000.00.
See more about domains at The Digital Shakedown ( Buying & Selling Domains)
There are a lot of ways to use domain names but one of the more traditional methods besides websites and blogs are landing pages. These pages serve a number of purposes but the owner of the domain can use them for businesses to promote or advertise their page or product for a monthly fee to the owner of the landing page. For example, If I purchased abc123.com and built a landing page for it, the commonality of the domain name would likely generate high traffic in a web search so placing ads and links for an elementary school or a kid store would make sense because anyone searching for ABC or 123 is most likely be to searching for information about schools or something related to children.
