There are so many ways to develop a domain, monetize it, build its value, sell it, use it for promoting your own company, etc, I don’t want to list them all here because I get paid for showing companies how to take their domains and get the best value that meets their expectations and needs.

Just speaking as a rep for WhyPark, for less than a dollar, every domainer can get content on their domain to AT LEAST ATTEMPT TO GET IT INDEXED. This is the first value that all domain owners should attempt to achieve. Parking a domain may get good (or bad) revenue, but it will DEFINITELY NOT get your domain indexed by the search engines.

Each domain in a portfolio must be evaluated in order to determine if they are domains that should be developed, parked, sold in the aftermarket (and how that sale should proceed), built into a directory, or simply just indexed with relevant content cheaply to build organic traffic.

Matthew makes valid points, but those points, if they are well-taken, just direct domain owners with questions to domain consultants like Adam Strong, Brian Benko, Rob Sequin, yourself and maybe myself – along with others (sorry I didn’t mention you here). All of us have made good money from utilizing domains with their “intrinsic value”. The value can only be determined by expert evaluation first.. but even longtails have value, as seen in some of the Moniker auction sales at Domainfest09. I sold three domains for a total of $4000 that I only had about $200 invested. That’s a nice return…

Domains have intrinsic value once you understand the many paths to that value.

I’m sure David would be happy to talk to you about it. But here are two points:

1. The site doesn’t sell advertising on the unproductive CPM basis.

2. You need to stop looking at Alexa. It’s essentially worthless. Compete.com shows 39,000 uniques and a rank of 51,000. Assuming that’s right, I suspect that means the site gets nearly 3,000 page views a day.

I an the senior editor for Blogger News, the spot where this whole debacle started. I am oh so curious about this statement:

However, our PalmSprings.com generates over $100,000 a month as a developed site. Does the name PalmSprings.com have intrinsic value? Yes, because I know for a fact that the name itself played a big part in attracting advertisers from Day 1.

A simple Alexa search shows this site with a rating in the 180,000 range, in other words your grandmothers blog is going to have more traffic than this. At a 180k, maybe it is getting 100 hits a day (though I doubt it). How can it possibly be generating $100k per month?

As the senior editor for BNN I would invite Mr. ‘Rich’ to contact me, clearly his is a story that is newsworthy.

Simon Barrett zzsimonb@gmail.com

[...] great blog posts have been written on the topic lately as [...]

But let’s be ultra-specific. Some may see it as splitting hairs, but I don’t want to mislead people.

The question should be whether domain names have objective intrinsic value.
The answer is no.
Neither do diamonds.

However, some domain names may have subjective intrinsic value. I may not see value in a certain domain name, but you might. If you have money and want to be a sucker, you can purchase it. If you decide to buy into the diamond myth, you do the same.

If generic names were a “license to print money”, then Live Current Media would be making quite a bit more money with their names than they have — which so far has been zero, save perfume.com and the sale of Malaysia.com.

If generic names were a “license to print money”, then a stable and lucrative market would exist for them. It doesn’t. Never has. It’s like the Pet Rock fad.

A diamond is precious because 1) A marketing company said so, and 2) Supply is restricted. Hence, subjective value.

Fly.com is not intrinsically valuable. It requires development. That takes money. Travelzoo already has a brand name associated with itself. Therefore, the development associated with Fly.com may be less expensive if they can attach it to the Travelzoo brand name.

I will say that you guys know more than I do about generating PPC income. While I’m sure that David is happy about generating $1500-2000 monthly (if true), and that’s a lovely bit of passive income, it is not what I consider a fully fledged business.