1. Population associated with geo-targetting part of domain: California vs. North Dakota; Los Angeles versus Cleveland versus Podunk.
2. Relevance of market/niche targeted to geo-target: Miami + Snowmobiles? Eh? Los Angeles + Homes? Oh, joy!
3. Value of leads to enduser or cosumer of such leads: Party balloons vs. Mortgage refinance.4. Likelihood of lead generation via WWW: Title Insurance (brokers, lawyers word of mouth dominate) vs. Buying new car.
4. Domain subject "turnover": One time client versus recurring income: Funeral service versus Lawn Service.
5. Anything else?
Local online advertising market is projected to grow significantly in the next 2-5 years. Just the other night I overhead people at 2 separate tables, at the local Starbucks, talking about their need to build or improve a website for their local businesses.
I'd suggest that in this realm - local domaining - the best model isn't to merely accumulate domains but, rather, to build and use what you build to help organize and promote the local businesses in your chosen vertical(s).
Then, at some point, should a local business - or listing service - decide that they would benefit "by monopolizing" the website/domain, you will need to set a value. Ergo this thread.
Is there value in this realm?
Well, there was a time when 2 college tuition bills came due and, at the same time someone decided "to inquire" about a few local domains, and in a moment of weakness (weak knees, actually, tuition is scary) I flipped 3 domains.
The net?
Enough to cover tuition for that semester.
[edited by: Webwork at 8:07 pm (utc) on Aug. 26, 2007]
