Name Awards

Value of a domain name – extreme views are normal

It amused me to read the recent Business Week article about YouTorrent, the new index site to give the video and music companies heartache. Can you imagine someone who is running such a popular site, as he hides from the law, actually ponied up $20,000 to buy the domain YouTorrent.com? When you are providing a free path to contraband, and not charging for it, wouldn’t any old name have worked? Why did he have to do guerilla marketing off YouTube and BitTorrent? With millions of hits a month, that he is self-funding with no revenue model in site, this especially doesn’t make sense.

But then again, neither does it make sense to me when every few months someone tries to buy the domain Roseann.com off me for under $500. My sister, Roseann, and I, once ran a business with this name. Plus there are a number of congresswoman with this name, and it is of course close to the name of comedienne Roseanne (Barr) who is always on some rerun TV channel somewhere. To make sure I wasn’t too biased, I had GoDaddy appraise the domain and they came back with a range of $6,822 to $17,000! Me, I’d be happy to get half the lower end of that range… but in the meantime it is worth more to our family.

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