The 'rich households' Internet domain name

Kevin Ham is considered the most powerful character in the field of domain business when holding the number of web addresses totaling $ 300 million. For people like Ham who own domain names, that means controlling part of the Internet.

Whenever buying a domain name, Ham, 37, of Korean origin and now living in Vancouver (Canada), always wonders if it is an easy-to-remember address that people will directly type in the browser toolbar instead of asking depend on search engine? Should you choose keywords in plural or singular? Do many people mistype the word?

Ham graduated from the Medical University of British Columbia in 1998 and two years later became head of internal medicine at a London hospital. That position helped him not to be busy with emergency departments and have time to access the Internet and learn how to create websites.

The web hosting information was still scattered and Ham decided to catalog suppliers through Hostglobal.com. Only six months later, he earned $ 10,000 a month by advertising - a convincing start to him to give up his medical career, return to Canada and switch to the domain name business.

Ham is always assertive, like willing to spend $ 10,000 to buy Weddingcatering.com. And although Greeting.com is not as attractive as the Greetings.com plural domain, he still buys it for $ 350,000. Ham's domain repository also has God.com and Satan.com because he is a devout man.

I also anticipate the words that people use or type incorrectly, such as .cm instead of .com, and buy those variations right away. This is a wise investment because .cm is Cameroon's country code and has almost no registered .cm address, similar to .om (Oman), .ne (Niger) or .et (Ethiopia). .

Kevin Ham. Photo: CNN .

Ham still buys 30-100 domain names every day, but the price is more expensive, such as Fruitgiftbaskets.com is $ 26,250 and Hoteldeals.com is up to $ 171,250. Many people believe that he is "distraught" to spend large sums of money and then start collecting each cent from the advertisement.

But look beyond that. " Owning a domain name means you are controlling a part of the Internet ".

Not only Ham, but many people are making money by investing in "land" on the Internet. Garry Chernoff bought Netincome.com in 1995. Four years later, he quit his job as an electrician to focus on the domain business and now he lives on a 4-hectare plot of land in British Columbia (Canada).

From a watermelon farmer in Waurika, Oklahoma (USA), Scott Day discovered the Internet's strong appeal in 1997 when he bought Watermelons.com for $ 3,000. Currently, he owns one of the most admirable domains in the world.

Meanwhile, Craig Lovik began discovering the 'gold mine' from misidentification of domain names since 1998. He owns more than 200,000 different domains, including misspelled addresses like Peircings.com ( piercings) or Pheonix.com (phoenix)

Adventurous but quickly rich

The company that currently holds the most domain names is NameMedia in Massachusetts (USA) with 725,000 domains, while Dark Blue Sea Limited (Australia) ranks second with 550,000 names. These two companies are taking up more than 1% of domains worldwide.

Dan Warner, Dark Blue Sea's chief strategy officer, said about two years ago, only 18 to 19 companies owned more than 10,000 domain names, but now that number was over 50.

Investing in a domain name is reasonable because the business now revolves around the website address that each company has chosen. Another factor driving this trend is the effectiveness of CPC advertising strategy initiated by Yahoo and Google. Attractive domain names will catch the attention of consumers, thereby increasing the number of clicks and bringing profits to website owners.

Some people think that a website that lacks rich content will not be able to attract visitors, but investors have taken advantage of natural search. That is, users believe that they will find relevant content if typing a domain name sounds 'obvious', such as shark.com would contain information about sharks.

" Many people complain that it is a good idea to buy a domain name, but there are many opportunities. As long as you have a bit of creativity. Every day, we still register 5 to 10 domains related to the fields. that people think is not important, but later become popular, "Warner said.

5 cases of buying and selling the most popular domain names in 2006 :

1. Diamond.com , $ 7.5 million: Online jewelry maker Ice.com acquired from Odimo.

2. Vodka.com , 3 million USD: Currently in the hands of billionaire entrepreneur Roustam Tariko.

3. Cameras.com , 1.5 million USD: Sold to Sig Solares in an online domain auction.

4. NAV.no , 717,978 USD: The Norwegian government buys this domain name to build a social welfare website.

5. On.com , 635,000 USD: This domain is used to redirect (redirect) to a personal website.

Hai Nguyen