What you fail to mention is that the micro-investment area of the stock market is THE LARGEST portion of the stock market, that THIS IS WHERE BUSINESSES START. Yeah, there’s a lot of risk involved, yeah, you have to do your homework but if you can use a little common sense you can help a lot of small businesses and make a lot of money in the process.

Research, research, research, this is what it takes, not some set-and-forget-it fool. Do you set-and-forget your child? Your favorite plants in your garden? Then why would you set-and-forget your financial future? Research these stocks before you buy and buy for the right reasons and you will make PLENTY of money in penny stocks.

Don
donstk88@gmail.com

http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

Clearly Matthew Mayer knows sod all about Domain Names!

The value of a domain name is largely extrinsic — i.e. it’s dependent on the buyer’s perception. Let’s take David’s Rate.com, for example, and assume that he can make $2,000 every month without doing anything other than parking it. Do you think he’d sell that domain for even a very generous 10X valuation ($240,000)? I don’t think so. I think you’d have to move into seven figures before it became enticing, and I think there would be interested buyers far above $240,000. That’s significant extrinsic value.

However, the argument is that the $2,000/month constitutes intrinsic value. That’s not true, either.

The $2,000/month doesn’t come from the domain name itself, but from the extrinsic value of advertisers who are willing to pay to have people click on their advertisements. Because there is not yet an established, stable market for domain names, the only value in a domain name is what money you can make with it with virtually no effort.

For Rate.com today, that number is apparently $2,000/month. However, that number has been on a very real, very significant slide as all real domainers know. And in theory, that number could fall all the way to $0. If it did, the domain would have no value at all other than the extrinsic value assigned by someone who wanted to buy it.

Now in reality, will that number ever slide to $0? I sure hope not. However, the fact that what it can earn is solely based on extrinsic factors like the existence of parking companies and advertisers, and not intrinsic factors like value assigned by a true market, means that by the definition of “intrinsic value” it has none.

Jake, do you know what type in traffic is? It’s traffic that comes to a domain directly from the users typing in a domain name in the address bar. Believe it or not, great one word generic domains such as business.com and others receive plenty of type in traffic which makes them intrinsically valuable. This is indisputable and not well known outside the domaining community as you have demonstrated.

However, we do need to refine our definitions.

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.

Finally, 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.

To say that having a domain name, and setting up a PPC business will yield any significant income is unsupportable at best, and outright false at worst.

Most people do searches to find what they need.
If they land on a page that does not get them exactly what they want, they leave. They are not going to stick around to click on an advertisement. Hence, the PPC rate of under 1%.

“real-world example” Thats like asking for the keys to someones bank vault. That information is rarely made public. Prime examples of recent domain name sales might be more relevant though. Travelzoo Purchases Fly.com Domain Name for $1.8 Million. http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-30-2009/0004963560&EDATE=

Toys.com has just sold for - $1.25 Million.
http://domainnamewire.com/2009/02/05/toyscom-birthdayscom-hobbiescom-sold-at-auction/

To say that domains have no “intrinsic value” just shows that you guys have not done any research about the “intrinsic value” of domain names. Generic domain names are a license to print money, an automatic ATM machine. If you have the right domain names nothing else is required to make money, one laptop pc is all thats needed, no offices, no staff, no expenses/overhead, no nothing. Thats not to say that Livecurrent is a great example. Livecurrent is the best example that i have ever seen of how to lose and destroy money that is related to domain names. This name Cricket.com is worth a considerable amount of dollars $mm,s plus. Even though the US visitor count means little for the term Cricket. The market for this name is the UK, Australia, India, Pakistan and other nations where the game is a religion. The stats below are US visitors only! no dough there for Cricket. Hard to monetize everywhere but the UK and Australia. India & Pakistan have litte value to a PPC company, and thats where the dough is even in these harsh economic times.
Cricket.com 169,978 U.S. visitors per month

Domain names DO have intrinsic value because they get free traffic! Please re-read my post and the explanation of type-in traffic. You do not have to do anything to get this traffic. It is natural because many users come to domains such as laptop.com using the address bar, not Google. The only expense is the cost to register a domain name which is about 8 bucks.

Looooooooooooser!!!

Same thing with domain names. On their own, they are worth nothing. What you suggest still requires marketing, infrastructure, and expense. The domain name owner does not generate sufficient revenue to create a sustainable business that others would pay for.

Let them go bankrupt and liquidate their domain names.