Matt Kramer of The Bulletin, a local Philadelphia newspaper, discusses the 15 most valuable assets a business owns that many owners don’t understand. Among assets such as Customer List (#1), Building (#5) and Trademark (#8) is a company’s Domain Names (#9). According to Matt:
“A client of mine bought hundreds of domain names that would attract individuals looking for a mortgage. As the mortgage market declined, so did his business. One day, one of the biggest mortgage banks in the country came in and made him an offer of millions of dollars for all of his domain names. My client knows that the mortgage business is cyclical, but the amount that was offered allowed him to retire.” –Source: The Bulletin
This writer is on point. With targeted generic domain names becoming more valuable over time, sometimes a company’s domain name may be worth much more than a company realizes. There are many examples of companies using their domain names simply for email addresses and not having a website. This may be due to the owner’s reticence to spend the time and money developing an online business plan. Whatever the case may be, the company is almost certainly leaving money on the table. While a domain name may simply be an afterthought to some companies, others are willing and able to use the domain name as the centerpiece of their business. This is the root cause of a domain name being an overlooked source of value for a company, but in reality, it could be a large part of its net worth.
Many companies are not even using the domain names they have for what they could be and might consider splitting the enter page with a sub-tennant. Example best.com which was my isp in California, got acquired by Verio and now the domain is buried in the mix. They might not even remember the have it. Register.com which could register people for anything- great advertising call to action. Xerox has Documents.com and never hooked it up because they didn’t want to be typecast as documents in a paperless world. Right. I could go on and on…