Don’t you just hate domainers?
Don’t you just hate how you get an idea for a great website or brand, only to find any form of the domain name has been bought by domainers, who just leave them parked with Sedo and similar?
I’ve heard domainers argue that they are investing in real estate, but let’s be clear - domaining is about as close to investing in real estate as holiday making German’s claiming deckchairs at sunrise by leaving their towels on them.
Investment requires some form of active development - real estate investors look to make the place habitable, invite tenants in, and pay maintenance for those tenants.
Domainers just buy domains, and then sit on them hoping that someone will want to pay a massive amount of money to get rid of them.
Sedo parked domains are a complete waste of internet real estate, generate little income, but flatter the expectations and egos of domainers who think they can make up random inflated pricing for the domains.
It may not be cyber-squatting in a technical sense - just squatting, plain and simple.
And annoying for us internet publishers looking to actually develop the internet.
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Visited 872 times, 1 so far today since July 24th 2007
If you could buy all of the land in the UK would you?
Comment by Dennis Ray Nestor Jr. — December 19, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
Absolutely agree. I’ve had numerous times that I’ve had a great idea only to have it squashed by everyone imaginable domain being taken (WITH NOT SITE).
Comment by knupNET — December 20, 2007 @ 3:47 am
I placed an offer for a few domains on Sedo earlier this year, all for a pittance of what the sellers want.
I’ve since had the seller come back to me with various counter offers, getting cheaper each time - maybe by this time next year the price will be close to what I’m willing to pay ;)
Comment by Joff — December 21, 2007 @ 9:49 am
If I could, I certainly wouldn’t leave it to rot with Sedo or similar. :)
As for counter offers - I’m going to rebrand Platinax very soon because I don;t think Platinax is brandable. I had 2 domains in mind - a premium keyword domain, and a second semi-keyword domain.
But the company who owned the 2nd demanded almost as much as the preium keyword company was asking for, and wouldn’t negotiate. As a result, I’m buying the premium keyword domain.
Comment by Brian Turner — December 22, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
I disagree and think domains are a great investment, The value of them is only going up in time as nobody wants to turn to rubbish domain names, domains are bought for up to millions of pound so why would they not want to invest?
Comment by Paul — January 3, 2008 @ 11:52 pm
The problem with domainers is the fact they sit on them waiting for a big offer as previously mentioned.
This leaves web designers having to settle for hyphenated domain names. What domainers don’t realise is most of the domains they buy aren’t going to be snapped up by a big corporation, therefore they simple won’t get the extortionate money they are after in most cases.
Also rather than sitting on domain, by putting some useful content on some cheap web space (a few pages of useful content) would help the domain to matture, and be far more attractive to a potential buyer.
Comment by Rob — January 4, 2008 @ 2:40 pm
Agreed, Rob - a domain with even an indexed holding page is going to be worth a lot more for resale IMO. :)
Comment by Brian Turner — January 5, 2008 @ 7:56 pm