WHAT'S A GOOD NAME WORTH?Much to the delight of high-priced Adj. 1. high-priced - having a high price; "costly jewelry"; "high-priced merchandise"; "much too dear for my pocketbook"; "a pricey restaurant" pricey, pricy, costly, dear naming consultants, software companies always seem to be in desperate need of new product and service names. And with the growing importance of Web URLs, which lock up a potential name for all markets worldwide, it often seems that all the reasonable names--and even some pretty weird ones--have been taken out of circulation. (Earlier this year, Wired News Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Condé Nast later purchased Wired News on 2006-07-11. reported that only 1,760 standard English Stan·dard English n. The variety of English that is generally acknowledged as the model for the speech and writing of educated speakers. Usage Note: People who invoke the term Standard English dictionary words, out of a total of 25,500 words, hadn't yet been registered as dot-com (1) Refers to the period (dot) followed by the abbreviation of the commercial domain (.com) at the end of an Internet address. Since the .com domain is so widely used, the Internet became known as the "dot-com" world, and dot-com companies are those formed to offer services or names.) The good news is that the name shortage has spawned a robust brokering business. At least five firms now carry auction-style listings of domain names, notably GreatDomains.com (180,000 names) and Afternic.com (15,000 names). Many of the available names are of dubious value; thus, the current owners of dingleberry din·gle·ber·ry n. Vulgar Slang 1. A piece of dried feces caught in the hair around the anus. 2. An incompetent, foolish, or stupid person. .com and icecreamsoda.com probably won't get rich even if they manage to find willing buyers. But there are also hundreds of other available names for sale--like Derivatives derivatives In finance, contracts whose value is derived from another asset, which can include stocks, bonds, currencies, interest rates, commodities, and related indexes. Purchasers of derivatives are essentially wagering on the future performance of that asset. .com and WeddingDay.com--that are a marketer's dream, worth tens of thousands of dollars in automatic visibility and positioning. Even more importantly, perhaps, the auction model brings some much- needed reference points for private name sales that don't go through the auction process. Despite a few high-profile deals (Drugs.com for $823,456 and Question.com for $175,000), it turns out that the vast majority of names still change hands at fairly reasonable prices. In fact, GreatDomains.com reports that its average transaction is worth $14,500--less than half the average asking price of $32,338. A good name may be precious, but there's clearly some room to haggle. |
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