The Unemployed Alcoholic Blog

The recent sale of pizza.com got me thinking… what really makes this particular domain name so valuable… or, at least, what makes it so valuable to SOMEONE. Sure, pizza is a type of food, and yes it is pretty popular in some parts of the world. However, it is only a single type of food (consider the many other things you could be consuming for basic sustenance), and it is considered a luxury, not a necessity food type in most parts of the world, is it? Surely it can’t be nearly as valuable as an item irreplaceable for human existance, such as “water.com” for example… It’s not an inherent part of most people’s every day lives… such as “business.com” or “jobs.com” It’s not something that is clearly essential for survival… and I’d say that when seeing a piece of pizza, most people can really take it or leave it if they wish… So then really, why is pizza.com worth 2.6M USD today?

What are your thoughts?

When you first get into domain name acquisition and development business, the first question that should inevitably pop into your mind is “Why do people go online?”… “What do they care about when they are browsing the internet? What are they looking for?” The answers to these questions will help you determine which product and service categories to specialize in, targetting your domain and website portfolio to these niches. I have come to the conclusion that there are primarily 7 areas of interest for potential consumers browsing the web. They are:

1) Money & Banking. This should be a no-brainer. There is money in working with money.

2) Health and Medicine. People get sick. That is a fact of life, and it will stay that way. There will never be a “miracle cure” for all human ailments, no magical panacea. The more people on the planet, the more health problems, and the greater number of expensive treatments for them.

3) Love and Adult Entertainment. Another no-brainer, but it must be mentioned. You can do very well by running an online personals site, judging by the sheer number of them out there, and their relative popularity. This is assuming that you have a good business and marketing plan, obviously. What will you offer that no one else does? How will you position your service to stand out from the rest?

4) Information Technology. The most frequent users of the web are the people directly involved in the IT industry, though this is slowly changing. One drawback to trying to cater your portfolio to this group of people, is that they are the most likely to know the difference between a parking page and a “real” website.

5) Specific product and service search. Your floor tiles, ladies watches, legal services, etc. would fall under this heading.

6) Careers. Almost every single person on the planet will need to look for a job multiple times throughout their lives. Why not make their lives easier and make a small return along the way?

7) Leisure. Here I would include everything from social networking to parks & recreation to book recommendations. This is a huge and varied niche, though it would be more difficult to sell high volumes of expensive products by focusing on this category compared to catering to niches #2 and #3 listed above, for example.

These are my thoughts, and I eventually seek to develop websites to cater to every single one of these niches separately, though it may be better to focus your efforts on one or two specific, narrower markets, which you are most familiar with, where you’ve had prior experience, or that simply interest you most. The dominant strategy then, is to register, or acquire (if you are well-capitalized) the category-defining domain names within the niches you identify, the more the better, and begin creating your own little media empire. Best of luck to you, me, and everyone else. There is a lot of good to go around.

 I hope this was useful.