Domain Buying and Selling Could Grow By 600 Percent or More
By Anna Johnson on March 8th, 2010Domain name trading – i.e. the buying and selling of domain names – is a fraction of what it could be, especially when compared with commercial real estate trading, reckons Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of Oversee.net.
In an interview with Benjamin F. Kuo of SocalTECH, Jeff Kupietzky likened Oversee’s business to that of a real estate company where the company’s focus is on increasing the value of Internet real estate (i.e. domain names) via developing domains into websites, monetizing them post-development, and leasing them out.
Oversee’s main monetization business is parking via its brand DomainSponsor, while its other main domain name businesses are domain aftermarket auction site, SnapNames, and domain name registrar Moniker, both acquisitions.
According to Kupietzky, very few domain names are traded which should be traded. Whilst less than half of a percent of domain names are traded each year, 3-5 percent of commercial real estate is traded per year, indicating that domain name buying and selling has the capacity to grow by 600 to 1,000 percent (or more).
Lack of transparency is a major barrier to trading. Kupietzky points out that while domains are easy to transfer:
“there is not lots of transparency on what a name is worth, so people are not as comfortable in buying or selling those names. Our view is that more transparency, and more data, will create more comfort so that people will know what they’re buying is at the right place.”
Oversee is not just involved in offering domain name registration, parking and aftermarket services; it’s also involved in developing domain names into commercial websites. Similar to Demand Media – which has interests in both domain names (e.g. eNom) and content (e.g. eHow) – Oversee’s “third and most interesting and exciting” business is building out the domain names it owns.
Kupietzky reckons that while:
“it’s great to have a name start as a parked page, or it’s great to buy or sell a name, ultimately, all names should be developed. The business you put on them, is the most value you can create. So, we’ve started to do that organically, and through some acquisitions. I’m very optimistic that there is a huge opportunity to create long-standing businesses on some of the domain names we own.”
Jeff Kupietzky sees three main opportunities in terms of developing domains: as performance marketing vehicles, for lead generation, and to engage users on a sustained basis.
Oversee has a million domain names in its portfolio, so that’s a lot of names to develop! But the 150-employee company has by no means hit its limit. According to Kupietzky, Oversee has an aggressive business development effort under way, where it is looking for properties it can buy and scale. An example is travel site, Lowfares.com, which Oversee has acquired and grown five-fold.
Source: Benjamin F. Kuo, “Interview with Jeff Kupietzky, Oversee.net,” SocalTECH, February 26, 2010
