The significance of domain names

Did any of you watch Dragon’s Den last night? If so, you saw just how significant a domain name can be when you’re promoting a Web site. The developers of UniversityParty.ca got turned down for financing largely because they don’t own UniversityParty.com (a company in New York owns it). Not only did they blow the financing, they also increased the value of UniversityParty.com by an enormous amount by going on national television and talking about it. Short-sighted doesn’t begin to describe that combination of decisions!

Many years ago when YukonAlaska.com was my primary site, I thought about buying AlaskaYukon.com and YukonAlaska.ca as well, but “saved” $30 by not registering them. Oh well – there’s a reason I now own almost 40 domains. In the past week I’ve added 2 more, SledDog Watch.com for mushing information (that will intercept a lot of traffic headed for the anti-mushing site with a similar but longer name) and CouponExplorers.com as an addition to my shopping sites.

The domain gold rush of a few years ago is long over, but you might still be able to buy domain names as an investment – be careful that you choose a registrar that allows to to easily redirect and transfer them.

Also on last night’s Dragon’s Den, Robin Round, the first entrepreneur from Whitehorse to appear on the show, got a cameo appearance for being trashed by the Dragons for both her invention and how much she says she’s invested in it. Ouch! The other person who got badly trashed is putting his whole company up for auction at eBay on November 29th – the multi-billionaire Dragons didn’t want a piece of it for $150,000, maybe somebody wants it for $5,000 (which will be the starting bid).