Domain king’s rivers of gold
In Rick Schwartz’s thriving real-estate business there are no rising interest rates to fret over, no land taxes to deal with and foreclosures are few and far between. Yet Schwartz rakes in millions of dollars in annual income from his 6000-odd properties and recently sold one for $US750,000 after buying it in 1997 for about $US100.
It sounds too good to be true but Schwartz, the self-appointed “domain king” and full-time trader of internet real estate, says he is shocked more people haven’t tapped into the rivers of gold flowing through the domain name trading business. “I have a great lifestyle because the dollars come in the same whether I work or not,” Schwartz said in an email interview after selling the domain iReport.com to CNN for $US750,000 this month.
Andrew Allemann, operator of the Domain Name Wire blog, cautions that Schwartz’s success is partly due to him “getting in early” when values weren’t so high. But he said it was “still relatively easy” to buy domains for a couple of thousand dollars and to sell them for five times that. He said sedo.com, afternic.com and tdnma.com were some of the best places to buy after-market names. But stay away from company names and trademarks, Keay-Smith advised, as buying these domains is known as “cyber-squatting” and rights owners can snatch the name back through the courts.