Looking to make a quick buck by registering a name and turning it over to someone else for a profit? While some domainers still do this, the once easy practice now requires a great deal of creativity. Just look at a post today written at The Domains:

The Social Security Administration publishes an annual list of the 1,000 most popular baby names for boys and girls and just released its list for 2009. It may not surprise you to learn that every matching .com for each of the 1,000 most popular boys and 1,000 most popular girls is taken.

Out of the 2,000 names, 1,600 were registered before the year 2000. Just about every city in the United States and Europe is registered as a domain. All future hurricane names, which are published years ahead of time by the National Hurricane Center, are taken as well.

What does that leave us with? Diddly squat, unfortunately. However, there will always be a chance to grab premium-keyword domains are new TLDs are launched. If the upcoming gTLDs are as popular as proponents predict, expect a huge rush of new domain speculation to come.

Photo | channah

Continue reading: Domain speculation is getting harder and harder

With the imminent launch of the iPad, speculators are scrambling to register any iPad domain they can think of. These names are now starting to trickle onto eBay, and as you can expect, the sellers have some pretty outrageous asking prices.

For TheiPadShoppe.com, one seller wants $60. Not withstanding the fact that the name is easily confused with “ThaiPadShoppe.com,” the name isn’t anything special to begin with. If you’re looking for a real deal, theAppleiPads.com, BuyiPad3GS.com, iPad3G4U.com, and iPad3GBUY.com are available in a 4-pack for $4999.

Any money spent on iPad domains is money wasted. These names are all violations of the iPad trademark and if Apple wants to gain control of them, Steve Jobs won’t give a damn how much you paid.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Speculators scramble for Apple iPad domains

The second news about Chile’s horrific earthquake got out on Saturday, domainers around the world rushed to their computers to get their hands on possibly valuable domains. Some of the names registered include earthquakechile.com, chileanearthquake.com, and donatechileearthquake.com.

These domains will probably be sold on eBay or other auction sites very soon to cash-in on the post-quake hype. It’s a shame to see people take advantage of a situation like this to make money. Most of the names registered, take chile-earthquake.org for instance, will probably earn their “investors” little or no money.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Domainers flock to register Chile earthquake domains

Gangsters.com is still at $6,800 on eBay, but there are still 5 days left to place a bid. Perhaps prospective buyers don’t feel comfortable using eBay?

There have been no significant sales in the last two days. A number of smaller sales have occurred, however:

tradingadvantage.com- $9,000
anchoragehotel.com- $7,000
siopa.com- $5,000
firehole.com- $5,000
breadline.com- $5,000
dallasfurniture.com- $4,999
profounder.com- $4,500
rubberseal.com- $4,000
localvibe.com- $3,750

Though not as exciting as six-figure auctions, smaller sales should never be ignored as these are how most domainers make money. They are also great for analyzing domain industry trends.

Are the listed names really worth their sale price? In my opinion, no. While breadline.com is a catchy and memorable name, what applications does it have outside of the current economic times? And what about Profounder.com? According Wikitionary, “profounder” is an obsolete word, having been replaced with the expression “more profound” some time ago.

Source | Domain Name News
Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Domain auction recap

Yesterday, American documentary maker Michael Moore presented his latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, at the Venice film festival. The tag line of the movie is “Capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil.”

Moore already owns capitalismalovestory.com, but could did not register capitalismisevil.com. Not only does it match the central theme of the movie, but is catchy and so controversial everyone will remember it.

I think it would have made a better name than capitalismalovestory.com, but after the movie premiere, a slick domainer registered and parked it. He is currently accepting offers from interested buyers.

The lesson here? Think outside the box when it comes to brand management and online identity. Don’t just register your business or site name only. For example, if I lived in Kent and owned a plumbing business named Ed’s Plumbing, I’d be sure to register not only edsplumbing.com, but also kentplumbing.com.

Source | The Domains

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Michael Moore misses out on movie domain

On June 1, 2009, Air France Flight 447 created a new page in history when it crashed off the coast of Brazil on its way to Paris. Eager to cash in on public interest, domainers flocked to register any domain bearing the flight’s name. Many were surprised to find out, however, that flight447.com was unavailable, registered since 2007.

The owner is Kari Bian, an Iranian film producer residing in the United States whose unfortunate registration choice has led some to speculate that he was somehow involved with the crash. “I have nothing to do with this and I feel very bad for this flight,” he said.

Bian has yet to be investigated or questioned by authorities regarding the accident. He owns a number of other airline flight domains, and has no intention of selling flight447.com.

Source | EFE

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Flight447.com registered two years before plane crash

The death of Michael Jackson last month spurred a flurry of domain activity. All sorts of names were bought up by speculators looking to cash in, but would you believe that one domain, MichaelJacksonIsDead.com, has been registered since 2005?

Domain Name News ran a piece about the story today. The name is registered to Tony Hinch, a physically disabled man who said he had a hunch the pop star was going to die in the near future and registered the domain as “a cheep [sic] investment that might pay off for a guy like me.”

He also owned RonaldReaganisdead.com and Richardpryorisdead.com, registering both before the two celebrities died. However, he was been unable to profit from them. No one was interested in buying either name when he tried to sell them several years ago. They met the same fate as their namesakes: expiration.

Hinch has received more than 20 offers for MichaelJacksonIsDead.com, but few have been legitimate and no one has been willing to pay his $100,000 USD price. The highest offer he’s received from a serious buyer is $9,000. He wants to sell his domain and seems willing to accept any offer, but time is running out. Michael Jackson is quickly becoming old news, and it may very well be too late to sell it.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: The Tale Behind MichaelJacksonIsDead.com

With the economy at rock-bottom, stock prices have fallen dramatically over the last year. One might expect domains to follow a similar trend, however, the average auction price for a name has increased- from £1,282 last year to £1,757!

This year has also seen quite a few high-price domain sales, such as toys.com for £3.11 million ($5.1 million USD) and candy.com for £1.8 million ($3 million USD). The number of domain sales as well as the prices best resemble the 1999 .com boom.

I don’t know if the rise in prices is a sign of investors turning to the Internet in light of the poor stock market, a realization that the web exists and is actually profitable, or both. As I have stated in the past, I think the rampant speculation that is plaguing the domain market will be its downfall. We will see another .com bubble burst similar to what happened in 2001.

Continue reading: Despite poor economy, domain prices on the rise

Since the early days of the web, enterprising individuals have been buying up and hoarding potentially valuable domains in droves. Called domain speculators, many associate these people with the gold miners of the old American West.

EURid, the non-profit registry of the .eu TLD, estimates that as many as 50% of domain name registrations are made by speculators with no interest in developing a website. Some of these names belong to everyday people trying to cash in on a valuable piece of web real estate, but the vast majority of these them are registered by domain tasters.

These “tasters” register as many as one million names per day, taking advantage of a loophole in ICANN regulations that allows them to drop a name within five days for a refund. The same domain can be “tasted” by various entities for months on end. If a name turns out to be valuable- usually because it has some level of traffic- it is kept, often unavailable to the average webmaster for several years.

Continue reading: Is Domain Speculation Fair?