People's names as domain names

Is there a future in this area?

[FireHorse]

A while ago, I invested in a number of domains that were regular people's names (not anyone famous nor any business that is well-known or famous, nor any branded goods) and I saw that others had done the same, including one large domain owner that still holds theirs and is still buying more.

I had originally thought that the time would come when individuals would want to use the web for self-serving/promoting purposes, in a similar way to how businesses uses the web, such as career development, e.g. demonstrating or giving examples of their skill-set, previous work/projects, imaginative resumes, as well as for purely egotistically centered reasons. There would be other uses I am sure.

Whilst I have seen some examples of people using the web in this way (including some superb efforts and web designs), the idea hasn't really caught on in a big-ish way as I had thought (perhaps it still might).

There was also the propsect that very common combinations of forenames and surnames (e.g.such as john smith - (not mine though) etc) might be worth a premium due to the number of people with very common name combinations.

Perhaps the likes of myspace.com has served some of the above purposes, although I hadn't heard of this site until recently and it seems aimed at a younger market - do I need to get out more or mix with the young folk? - (gets a chill/goosebumps just thinking about the scary youngsters in his area :O :(( )

Is there any mileage/future in owning/holding such domain names?

[BasedSolutions]

Since a few months ago I have been purchasing domains with people's names for two reasons:

1- Those names are chosen pen names that being registered (and nobody else using) pretend to be an ownership proof over both, the name and the work published under each of them.

2- Those pen names correspond to real people who are developing an online portfolio accordingly

Other than that, remember that dot.NAME domains were marketed as a way of getting a personalized identity online, not so successfully as expected.

[FireHorse]

BasedSolutions: I don't think the comparsion with .NAME is very useful, since the extension never took off rather than there being anything inherently wrong with people using personal names as domain names.

It seesm that every suffix that was introduced after the initial suffixes, have all suffered the same kind of fate - poor uptake and acceptance by the public. The reasons? Well, just think about it yourself. How are you going to remember which suffix someone has appended to their domain name (that you don't visit regularly), which isn't heavily promoted nor caught the imagination of masses of people, or become a popular cult-like site, such as craigslist.org?

You will try .com and .net and then perhaps a couple of country codes that you think might apply and if by then you haven't found your site, then you'll probably go to G or another search engine to try and find your site.

It is highly unlikely that a person, in this day and age, will sit down and wade through all the other suffixes, one by one. It doesn't really happen and the more suffixes are introduced, the less likely they are to be used and gain acceptance.

The additional suffixes were primarily created to generate revenue, under the guise of 'expanding the electronic space", which as many know, is just hooey.

[wolfadeus]

This is a fascinating thread...I wouldn't even have thought of registering name-domains at all; I wonder about the legal implications, too, especially if the name is not that common and it is obvious that you registered it solely for low financial purposes :) Isn't that a bit like registering unregistered brand-like or company names? I thought I had heard that they can be taken from owners who don't put appropriate content, eg. reviews of the relevant product online.

But since we are already thinking evil: If you think that this could make you money, why not getting university yearbooks and registering the names in there? Wouln't the probabilty for a sale lateron be much higher than with random names? Thinking of online CVs, portfolios and alike - people with an academic backround are more likely to have such things than Mr. Layman, the chief-greeter at WalMart.

Still, can't see real money here...not with the effort involved, in time and money...teach me wrong.

[FireHorse]

wolfadeus The names I registered have not been randomly chosen, and I did not say this in any of my posts. The names were selected on a few criteria, one of which is the commonality of the individual names and also on the names combined. Registering something like actual university student's names is not something I did (or would) consider, as I was not interested in targetting anyone in particular. I had generic source information and that was adequate.

I am not evil nor thinking evil - it is best to leave such comments away from these forums as they are inappropriate.

If you read my original post, you will see that I already explained what I thought the domains could be used for. We can lead a horse to water, but....

[wolfadeus]

I didn't mean to offend you firehorse (my apologies if I did), I just never considered to buy domains for selling them and thought that pre-selecting them according to "potential" would increase the probability of success.

[gpmgroup]

Firehorse wrote

The names I registered have not been randomly chosen, and I did not say this in any of my posts. The names were selected on a few criteria, one of which is the commonality of the individual names and also on the names combined. Registering something like actual university student's names is not something I did (or would) consider, as I was not interested in targetting anyone in particular. I had generic source information and that was adequate.

I am not evil nor thinking evil - it is best to leave such comments away from these forums as they are inappropriate.

The source of your list of names is immaterial, there is no way of getting away from it no matter how you choose to dress it up - if you are registering firstnamelastename.whatever names with the intention of selling it back to a person with that name you are cybersquatting.

Just because you have somehow managed to justify in your own mind that that you can make bigger bucks from names which are more prevalent like johnsmith it does not change anything you are cybersquatting.

[wolfadeus]

"not targetting anyone in particular": Registering names of real people with the intention of making money is of course ethically sensitive and DOES target someone in particular (the person with the name that might have an interest in the domain - however you chose your names in the first place). That's what my lighthearted comment was targeted at.

But the point is that I didn't mean to insult anyone with my post.

[FireHorse]

Wolfdeus: "pre-selecting them according to "potential" would increase the probability of success".

This is exactly what I have done.

[wolfadeus]

I know. But why do you think that this is fundamentally different from targeting people whose names you get from other sources?

Again: I am not after an argument, only interested in your opinion.

Best,

W.

[wmuser]

Webwork is correct and i have received such a email from people saying "Hey its mine give it to me etc"

[Mr_Matt]

To reply to your original post, I concur with GaryK's comment that people aren't generally that interested in having their own domain name. that they're willing to pay extra. I recently went looking to buy my domain name but .com and .net were taken. I never thought about buying it off someone else. Luckily though, the .ca name was available and I got that one. But even if .ca wasn't available I would have just come up with some combination, maybe my middle initial or only X first letters of my last name, until I found something that was available.

[oneguy]

Just because you have somehow managed to justify in your own mind that that you can make bigger bucks from names which are more prevalent like johnsmith it does not change anything you are cybersquatting.

Well, it has to be more likely that a person named johnsmith is more likely to become famous (instead of johngdjfyhg) and such a domain name could have commercial viability as a fan site.

What if my name is smith and I would sell smith.com for the right price? Does that make me cybersquatting? If we find someone named Google, do they have a claim on google.com? No. The rules are mostly that you need to get there first.

Isn't there an email service that registered a ton of common last names with an eye toward selling those people personalized email addresses? Wrong? I dunno. What if they are making 20 smiths happy when there would otherwise only be one happy smith?

Webwork is correct and i have received such a email from people saying "Hey its mine give it to me etc"

Registering expired names will get a lot of that for you too. Just because someone claims it is theirs doesn't mean it is or should be.

Every few days, there's post in this forum from someone thinking they can steal someone else's domain name by creating a product with the same name or something else.

I personally wouldn't look for any firstnamelastname domains.

I could go along with the general idea that someone named johnsmith has a right to johnsmith.com, but which johnsmith? And is johnsmith a company or a person? Unless someone wants to propose some workable rule changes, the best we can do is what we have. I say it is too late anyway. Nobody is policing the use of .com or .net or .org. If nobody will police a tld, who's going to police johnsmith and what is everyone willing to pay for some new level of bureaucracy to nitpick registrations? And who will be happy with what they do?

[Rx Recruiters]

Here are my own experiences to the original question .... When my children were born, I registered each of their names. My thought is one day in the future they might use them - it's not everybody who has their name registered as a dot com domain name. Truthfully, not many of us can register our own name, most names, and especially the more common ones are already taken.

My own name is registered by one of the big and more respected domainer companies, with an offer to sell on the landing page. My first thought wasn't "to sue them to get my name because it belonged to me. Probably my first thought was that I wish I had thought of it sooner, just as I did with my kid's names.

Since I registered the domains, my son's in 1999, and my daughter's in 2002 - I have probably recieved 15 to 20 offers on each domain name. The latest offer was from an artist with the same name who wanted to use it to showcase his work. His offer was $10,000. Of course, I'm not going to sell it at any price (I guess that's a misnomer - everything has a price!) But $10,000 on a $15 domain name would be a pretty good profit for someone else who didn't have an emotional attachment to the domain name.

Consequently, all the domain extensions for my kids names are now taken. My dot com domains get decent traffic (for parked pages), although I really don't know where the traffic originates. I'm probably going to set them up websites, so they can post school projects, pictures, sports interests, etc.for their friends and grandparents to see. Maybe put a few advertisements on it as well to addd to the college fund!

So ... personal names as domain names can be profitable, it is according to how you approach the situation. As most domainers will tell you, when you are paying a premium price for a domain name, a large portion of the premium is a "fee" that you are paying to the person who was smart enough to register that domain before anyone else did!

[edited by: Rx_Recruiters at 4:52 am (utc) on Oct. 19, 2006]

[Bennie]

While I can see this practice has a little merit, personally I am against it. I can see a domain that ranks on someone's name in Google as valuable though. I have often thought about doing this, but the 'negative energy' is not worth it. Even for s**ts and giggles sake.

There are so many other ways to profit from domain names without pi$$ing people off, why not profit elseware.

The practice gives domainers a bad name. ;)

Domainers have a good name?

:D

[motorhaven]

There were folks 10 years ago who mistakenly thought personal domain names would be big business. It just as lame now.

While people are vain... they are also cheap. Just look at how many crappy Yahoo and Hotmail ids business people use because they are free.