4 ms·

How does it differ from real-estate speculation in your mind? Do you develop every domain name you purchase?

by icey 16y ago

DrJokepu 16y ago
There's quite a lot of difference between buying a domain with the intention or prospect of putting something of value it and buying up a large array of domains without any intention whatsoever to ever put any content on it or make any use of it besides squatting. The second is a blatant waste of preciously limited resources and should not be allowed in my opinion.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- icey 16y ago
  What would you propose? Require an essay declaring your intentions for every domain prior to purchase? How is it less valuable if the purchaser wants to make $100 from selling the domain versus making $100 on it selling trinkets? I own a lot of domains that I may or may not do something with in the future. What should the cutoff point be? Should I be penalized after my 10th domain? 30th? 100th? (I don't like squatters in general, but that doesn't mean I think they should be outlawed.)
  - there 16y ago
    similarly, i own domains that i've used in the past that are now sitting dormant. i don't want to let them expire and immediately get snatched up by a squatter, so what am i to do? if i put up a "for sale" page on them, am i a squatter now?
  - DrJokepu 16y ago
    In my opinion, the difference between trinkets and domain names is that you can manufacture an unlimited number of trinkets, however, there is a very limited number of useful domain names. Normally, very limited resources (such as radio frequencies) are regulated so this is not an entirely new concept. Obviously it's hard to come up with a definition of what should and what shouldn't be allowed because chances are that it would be either unfair, easily circumvented or both. None the less, I believe there should be some way to take away domains from obvious squatters.
    - icey 16y ago
      Some of the newer TLDs seem to have reduced the prominence of squatters by increasing prices enough to make squatting prohibitively expensive. I guess that would be one solution to the "squatting problem" for the more mainstream TLDs... Although, I don't think there will ever be a fair system to take domain names away from one entity and give them to another.
  - Devilboy 16y ago
    I just think domain names are too cheap. If the price of a .com increased to $100 per year you'll see a significant reduction in squatting.
_delirium 16y ago
Also a morally bankrupt business. ;-) (And also, via inflating a property bubble, in no small part responsible for current economic difficulties.)
- billswift 16y ago
  You have the causality backwards. There is always "speculation" anytime there is an opportunity to buy something that one thinks can be resold at a profit. The real estate bubble, by inflating the prices of homes, increased the opportunities for successful speculation. The main cause of the bubble was cheap mortgages which allowed the price inflation to get so out of control. The speculation was a result of the problems, not their cause. And most real estate speculators were hammered worse than anyone else, except their creditors, when the bubble burst - always a risk with speculation.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
anigbrowl 16y ago
real-estate speculation ...something which has not worked out so well for many economies. I don't want to make it illegal or anything - although I could live with some sort of -use-it-or-lose-it clause that kicks in after a year, and which proved a decent rule of thumb in the real world. Indeed, the term 'squatting' in relation to real estate describes gaining ownership by continuous occupation of property - which is a lot more work than going to the public records office and writings 'dibs!' on the land register. Domain squatting is just a waste of productive resources, based entirely on the hope of extracting an economic rent from someone else later; and that rent is in proportion to the productive use a site developer (not the squatter) could make of a given domain name. The only investment squatters make in a domain name is usually to stick an ad page on there and track accidental visitors, which may give a useful data point to the buyer; but even then, the buyer is almost certainly not purchasing the domain because of such random traffic. Although registering a domain has a nominal cost, it's not really an investment in any economic sense; indeed, an ad-farm or 'coming soon' page on a domain which receives any significant amount of random traffic is polluted before it becomes branded, albeit very lightly and in a fairly harmless way. The rational economic price for a domain you own which is not making any money is the cost to date of holding the domain plus $1. Any profit beyond that is predicated on the buyer's project being sufficiently advanced and well-capitalized that writing a large check to the squatter is less painful than picking a different name. The only economic benefit I've ever heard a squatter claim to justify their asking price was that they had made it uneconomical for someone to put porn there. Can you imagine this if domains were actually real estate? 'Yes, I do want a million dollars for this barren patch of desert with a weatherbeaten billboard and a cow skull - you should be grateful there ain't a saloon or a whorehouse here already.'
- ohashi 16y ago
  You clearly misunderstand the entire business models of the industry. Those 'accidental' visitors are actually quite 'regular.' A certain stream of people type in domain names to find what they want every day. Just because you don't behave a certain way to navigate to things doesn't mean others don't. It's called Direct Navigation in the industry. That's what has fueled the growth of domain investing since about 2003ish when PPC parking systems actually created an easy to monetize method for domain holders that scaled incredibly well across virtually all niches. Google pumped it even higher until about 2007. Those people who directly navigate to a website are amazingly consistent. I have held names for many many years and the type in numbers have remained almost constant for most of them. What is the value of X potential customers coming to you without any work every day? What is the value of a more memorable brand name? What is the value of a domain that is an exact match to a super high value keyword term that defines an industry and google puts a giant bonus on in SERPs? Very few domain sales ever reach the million dollar mark and especially not new registrations (http://ohashi.info/article/there-money-fresh-domain-name-registrations http://ohashi.info/article/there-money-fresh-domain-name-reg...). You're confusing a billboard in the middle of nowhere and a billboard in times square. The value of the billboard is the distance from times square. There are a lot of unreasonable people, but that's life, there are just as many professionals who know what their domains are worth. Just because you have one value doesn't mean others don't see the value differently.

How does it differ from real-estate speculation in your mind? Do you develop every domain name you purchase?

by icey 16y ago

How does it differ from real-estate speculation in your mind? Do you develop every domain name you purchase?

There's quite a lot of difference between buying a domain with the intention or prospect of putting something of value it and buying up a large array of domains without any intention whatsoever to ever put any content on it or make any use of it besides squatting. The second is a blatant waste of preciously limited resources and should not be allowed in my opinion.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
icey 16y ago
What would you propose? Require an essay declaring your intentions for every domain prior to purchase? How is it less valuable if the purchaser wants to make $100 from selling the domain versus making $100 on it selling trinkets? I own a lot of domains that I may or may not do something with in the future. What should the cutoff point be? Should I be penalized after my 10th domain? 30th? 100th? (I don't like squatters in general, but that doesn't mean I think they should be outlawed.)
- there 16y ago
  similarly, i own domains that i've used in the past that are now sitting dormant. i don't want to let them expire and immediately get snatched up by a squatter, so what am i to do? if i put up a "for sale" page on them, am i a squatter now?
- DrJokepu 16y ago
  In my opinion, the difference between trinkets and domain names is that you can manufacture an unlimited number of trinkets, however, there is a very limited number of useful domain names. Normally, very limited resources (such as radio frequencies) are regulated so this is not an entirely new concept. Obviously it's hard to come up with a definition of what should and what shouldn't be allowed because chances are that it would be either unfair, easily circumvented or both. None the less, I believe there should be some way to take away domains from obvious squatters.
  - icey 16y ago
    Some of the newer TLDs seem to have reduced the prominence of squatters by increasing prices enough to make squatting prohibitively expensive. I guess that would be one solution to the "squatting problem" for the more mainstream TLDs... Although, I don't think there will ever be a fair system to take domain names away from one entity and give them to another.
- Devilboy 16y ago
  I just think domain names are too cheap. If the price of a .com increased to $100 per year you'll see a significant reduction in squatting.

_delirium 16y ago

Also a morally bankrupt business. ;-) (And also, via inflating a property bubble, in no small part responsible for current economic difficulties.)

billswift 16y ago
You have the causality backwards. There is always "speculation" anytime there is an opportunity to buy something that one thinks can be resold at a profit. The real estate bubble, by inflating the prices of homes, increased the opportunities for successful speculation. The main cause of the bubble was cheap mortgages which allowed the price inflation to get so out of control. The speculation was a result of the problems, not their cause. And most real estate speculators were hammered worse than anyone else, except their creditors, when the bubble burst - always a risk with speculation.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

anigbrowl 16y ago

real-estate speculation ...something which has not worked out so well for many economies. I don't want to make it illegal or anything - although I could live with some sort of -use-it-or-lose-it clause that kicks in after a year, and which proved a decent rule of thumb in the real world. Indeed, the term 'squatting' in relation to real estate describes gaining ownership by continuous occupation of property - which is a lot more work than going to the public records office and writings 'dibs!' on the land register. Domain squatting is just a waste of productive resources, based entirely on the hope of extracting an economic rent from someone else later; and that rent is in proportion to the productive use a site developer (not the squatter) could make of a given domain name. The only investment squatters make in a domain name is usually to stick an ad page on there and track accidental visitors, which may give a useful data point to the buyer; but even then, the buyer is almost certainly not purchasing the domain because of such random traffic. Although registering a domain has a nominal cost, it's not really an investment in any economic sense; indeed, an ad-farm or 'coming soon' page on a domain which receives any significant amount of random traffic is polluted before it becomes branded, albeit very lightly and in a fairly harmless way. The rational economic price for a domain you own which is not making any money is the cost to date of holding the domain plus $1. Any profit beyond that is predicated on the buyer's project being sufficiently advanced and well-capitalized that writing a large check to the squatter is less painful than picking a different name. The only economic benefit I've ever heard a squatter claim to justify their asking price was that they had made it uneconomical for someone to put porn there. Can you imagine this if domains were actually real estate? 'Yes, I do want a million dollars for this barren patch of desert with a weatherbeaten billboard and a cow skull - you should be grateful there ain't a saloon or a whorehouse here already.'

ohashi 16y ago
You clearly misunderstand the entire business models of the industry. Those 'accidental' visitors are actually quite 'regular.' A certain stream of people type in domain names to find what they want every day. Just because you don't behave a certain way to navigate to things doesn't mean others don't. It's called Direct Navigation in the industry. That's what has fueled the growth of domain investing since about 2003ish when PPC parking systems actually created an easy to monetize method for domain holders that scaled incredibly well across virtually all niches. Google pumped it even higher until about 2007. Those people who directly navigate to a website are amazingly consistent. I have held names for many many years and the type in numbers have remained almost constant for most of them. What is the value of X potential customers coming to you without any work every day? What is the value of a more memorable brand name? What is the value of a domain that is an exact match to a super high value keyword term that defines an industry and google puts a giant bonus on in SERPs? Very few domain sales ever reach the million dollar mark and especially not new registrations (http://ohashi.info/article/there-money-fresh-domain-name-registrations http://ohashi.info/article/there-money-fresh-domain-name-reg...). You're confusing a billboard in the middle of nowhere and a billboard in times square. The value of the billboard is the distance from times square. There are a lot of unreasonable people, but that's life, there are just as many professionals who know what their domains are worth. Just because you have one value doesn't mean others don't see the value differently.