It’s Better Than Real Estate Stupid

When explaining domain names and their value to people I usually start with a real estate reference, billboard location reference, etc and then go from there in how a domain name is even better for various reasons (probably should do a post on that....).  Well tomorrow it will be really interesting since I have to actually explain this to an end user buyer who has investors from the real estate community. Let me explain a bit.

Early last year I picked up an expired name that only someone local to St. Louis, MO would get the value of, but if you were from St. Louis you would get it in a second and if you happened to be in the entertainment or live music business you would get more attention from this name based on its history than almost any other. Plus the links to the name were from some of the top radio stations, etc in St. Louis and the region.

Well, in August I received an unsolicited email from someone interested in buying the name. The person was launching a business and was using the exact same name as the name I had based on the history that I mentioned earlier.  We negotiated a price, he budgeted for this in his plan and then he went to get financing. After initial approval the economy did what it did and the deal got put on hold. Thats fine the name pays for itself in ad revenue per month.

Fast forward 5 to 6 months and I get an email this morning saying that the project is back on and he now has external investors (from the real estate community) that are working with him to launch in July. He gets the value of the name but "the investors do not think the expense is necassary".  I almost laughed, people in real estate, specifically commercial real estate should get the value more than anyone outside our domainer community. Its all about location and thats what I have for them.

Now, let me say, I think domainers are naive many times when complaining about people just not getting the value of x name or y name. But in this case (and I wish I could release the name and it would make sense) there is no other name that works, period. It is the brand in this case. 

I sent back an email outlining that we could discuss this tomorrow and that the value of high end relavent domain names are still high even during this down turn (and referred to DNJournals YTD sales) and that every type in visitor or linked visitor they miss is a customer they missed out on. 

I am actually looking forward to the dicussion outlining why the category killer domain is valuable to their business, should be an interesting conversation if anything.