David Falchek of the Scranton Times Tribune in Scranton, Pennsylvania, had an interesting article this morning about the founders of the Houdini Museum, who became domain investors by chance. The article mirrors the story of so many others who buy domain names out of need and later realize that the domain assets have significant value in their own right.
According to the article, John Bravo and Dorothy Dietrich wanted to do advertising for the Houdini Museum along with the other attractions in the Poconos. They wanted to advertise with the Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau, but because the Museum was located just outside of the Bureau’s marketing range, they weren’t able to do so.
As a result, the duo ended up buying Ponoco Mountain related domain names instead, in order to build their own marketing efforts online. This effort has paid off, as they now own some fairly valuable domain names that have increased in value since purchasing them. They also purchased other valuable domain names along the way.
In addition to Museum domain names like Houdini.org, the founders own domain names like PoconoHotels.com, Scranton.org, Pocono.org, iPony.com, and many others.
It’s always interesting to read about how people and companies began investing in domain names.
… quite a few .org domains in their portfolio.
I registered Houdini.com back in 1996 for a friend that loved magic. He later sold it to The magic shop in the New York New York Casino in Vegas for just $300. That one still bothers me to this day! I just showed him your article.