Hi Joel,
I had actually written this last in response to your clarification of
the previous question. I think you closed that one while I was
writing the (free) clarification response, though, because it wouldn't
allow me to post. (That'll teach me to lock my questions when I'm
talking to my customers, won't it?)
It's truly not a matter of the price you're offering, Joel. I'm
always happy to see our "regulars" come back for a visit. (And you're
very sweet, quite lavish with your praise, which makes you very nice
to work for.)
The problem is that there's really no centralized or even partial
listing for all domain names and how much they were acquired for. As
I noted previously, there are hundreds of businesses through which you
can register a domain name. First registration (that is, directly
through a registrar) can go for as little as $7/year to the obscene
$45/year. Every registrar has it's own price. By way of example, my
best friend and I co-own two domain names - a .com and a .net. One of
them, our original domain name, was $45/year and the registrar
required a 2 year minimum. We lost it shortly after the term expired,
thanks to a glitch.
We acquired a different domain name for $10/year, and recently
re-acquired our old one, also for $10/year, with a different
registrar. I was also recently gifted with a .info domain. When the
current registration expires, that domain will be $8/year with still
another registrar.
I've paid several different prices for domain names - two different
prices for the same name at different times! I doubt my current
registrar could tell you what I originally paid for my first domain
name, and I've been unable to find any evidence that anyone keeps
track of that. Domain names get recycled regularly - the name that
was $45 from NetSol is only $10 through Gandi, and should I ever let
it go, might end up at $7 through someone else.
Does this make sense to you?
Then we get into the more complicated area of privately re-selling a
domain. Company or individual A has purchased several hundred domain
names with the intention of selling them to other people or companies.
Company or individual B wants a domain name that reflects their
company or organization name, or even their nickname, so they go to
their favorite registrar to try to register the name. Drat! Taken!
But Company B REALLY wants this name - let's call the name
wonderwidgets.com - because that's the name of the company, and if the
URL is the same as the name of the company, it will be easy to
remember and WonderWidgets will get more business. He HAS TO have
that name!
So WonderWidgets goes back to the registrar and feeds the domain name
to WHOIS to find out who owns the name, and he looks to see if the
name is actually being used, or if the domain owner just has it - he
goes to www.wonderwidgets.com, and finds that there is only a
placeholder page that says the domain is registered to DomainReseller
A and is for sale.
Hm.
So WonderWidgets contacts the guy with his name and asks him how much
he is willing to sell it for.
...and that's where things get really crazy. Maybe the guy with
wonderwidgets.com is just a plain old reseller, and he'll let it go
for $10. Maybe WonderWidgets has offered him $500 for it, but he
wants $1000. Or $10,000, because now that someone *wants* this name,
it suddenly has a value. Or a couple million, as in these examples:
Loans.com Domain Auction Fetches Record $3M
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/2471.html
Say for the moment that the fella holding WonderWidgets.com decides he
won't let it go for any less than a million dollars, even though he
has no intentions of using the domain himself, he only ever intended
to sell it. WonderWidgets (the company) balks, and files a dispute
with ICANN (the internet naming authority) and alleges trademark
violation. They go to arbitration, and because the holder can
demonstrate no reasonable claim to the trademarked name, WonderWidgets
wins...and gets his name for arbitration costs ($1000)...and $10/year.
The fella who originally had it and tried to hold on to it? He gets
to pay arbitration costs too ($1000 for him, too. Each side has to
pay for arbitration.), and gets bupkis out of it.
If it's a celebrated dispute, the end price will end up being reported
somewhere (as in the examples cited above), but for the vast majority
of domain names, no one is paying it any mind. If you check a
domain's WHOIS record, you can see which registrar they went through,
visit that site, and see what they're currently charging for domains -
but that might not be what a particular domain owner paid for the name
when they first registered. WHOIS records only the current
registrar, and neither WHOIS nor the current registrar records the
amount a purchaser might have paid for the rights to the name outside
of the standard registration fees.
Does *this* part make sense?
The upshot of all of this is that because of the de-centralized nature
of domain registration, there's no single database available that will
tell you who paid how much for which of a bazillion domains.
At least, nowhere I've been able to find. The information would be
great just from the curious Researcher's standpoint, and would be much
more efficient than searching WHOIS on specific domains to find
registrar information!
--Missy
P.S. You note in your Request for Answer Clarification that you can't
pay for an answer that doesn't meet your needs. I'm sorry it's not
what you needed. To request a repost or a refund, go here:
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=refundrequest |
