Dynamic duo part of domain name gold rush BY ADAM GOLDMAN The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Inside a midtown hotel, Larry Fischer is on his cell phone with a financial backer as his partner Ari Goldberger does quick research on a laptop computer. They are bidding furiously at this auction of Internet domain names, with hopes of snagging megayachts. com. The duo won’t be deterred. They want this name. “$110,000, yes or no? Quick,” Fischer barks at Eli, the investor at the end of the phone. Someone else makes a bid for $120,000. Fischer and Goldberger up the ante, and then again. Going once, going twice sold to Fischer and Goldberger for $150,000. “You got it,” a smiling Fischer tells Eli. Mazel tovs are exchanged. These are boom times in an estimated $2 billion industry that involves the buying and selling of domain names and pay-per-click advertising revenue for the owners of the names. “This industry is like the wild, wild west right now and people have no idea how fast it’s growing,” said Jerry Nolte, managing partner of Domainer’s Magazine, a new trade publication devoted to this little-known world. Experts believe the industry’s market value could reach $4 billion by 2010 as people continue to purchase approximately 90,000 names a day. At the end of first quarter 2007, at least 128 million domain names had been registered worldwide, a 31 percent increase over the previous year, according to VeriSign, a company that tracks the industry. “It’s like real estate,” said Monte Cahn, founder and CEO of Moniker.com, a company that specializes in domain asset management and ran the Manhattan auction. “This industry is only about a decade old. People looked at domain names as a commodity. It’s a piece of real estate on the Web that can’t be replaced. It’s your stake in the ground, your stake in the Internet.” At the Manhattan auction, Fischer and Goldberger snatched up four names for more than $1.2 million and a fifth for a client, representing only a handful of the names sold for a total of $12.4 million during both the live and a silent auction. One name — creditcheck.com — went for $3 million but paled in comparison to the sale of sex.com, which Cahn said sold for $12 million last year. Fischer, 44, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Goldberger, 46, of Cherry Hill, N.J., figured there was money to be made early. Goldberger’s entry into the business was unorthodox to say the least. In 1996, the Hearst Corp. sued him, alleging trademark infringement after Goldberger registered esqwire.com, which resembles one of the company’s magazines. The two sides eventually settled and Goldberger, a lawyer, was allowed to keep the name. Word got out that Goldberger knew something about the thorny legal issues involving Internet domain names and people began approaching him for advice. Goldberger’s fascination with the burgeoning industry was sealed. “I was an entrepreneur strapped into this suit-and-tie job,” Goldberger said. He eventually left the respected Philadelphia law firm where he worked in 1997 and joined a small startup in Manhattan called mail. com, which was buying up domain names. Goldberger began collaborating with Fischer in 2001, building their portfolio of domain names. Together, they became a formidable yet quirky team. Two years later, they created a company called smartname.com, which they sold earlier this year. The company took names and monetized them for owners, getting a cut of the advertising revenue. At one point, smartname. com represented 150 owners with about 150,000 domain names, generating 50 million unique visitors a month.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
I was talking with Joe from Hostpc the other day. He told me that he's sold quite a few domains on "speculation". There's good money in it I guess if you get the good names before everyone else. I can't imagine there's many left though.
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