美國bizjournals報紙上一篇關於域名買賣生意的文章

[哈啦]

在美國bizjournals.com報紙上一篇關於域名買賣生意的文章。我僅就重要的意思簡短翻譯一下。

Players cash in on the domain game
玩家將現金投入域名遊戲中

Hot market for Web 'treasures' brokered on Sedo.com
Lisa van der Pool Journal Staff

Real estate attorney Christian Zouzas has a sideline of collecting domain names, those virtual slivers of cyberspace necessary to businesses that wish to do business on the Internet.

房地產律師Christian Zouzas有一項副業，就是收集域名。

Zouzas recently sold two of his "properties" -- foods.us and jew.us -- for the combined sum of $49,500.

他最近才賣出二項「資產」，foods.us和jew.us共獲得49500美元。

"I went from real estate in the real world to real estate in the virtual world," said Zouzas, 43, president of the law firm Zouzas & Zouzas in Chelmsford.

他說「我從真實世界中的房地產賣到虛擬世界中的房地產。」

Since 2002 Zouzas has bought up over 3,000 dot-us names (an extension previously used by local government Web sites but made available to the general public in 2002), including eBiz.us for $5,000. However, he usually pays between $500 to $1,000 for the names. His collection includes acne.us, America.us, math.us, Greek.us and calorie.us.

從2002年開始他就已陸續買入三千個.US網址，許多是用五百到一千美元的價位買進的，但如ebiz.us則用五千美元買入。他手上還有acne.us, America.us, math.us, Greek.us and calorie.us等。

Zouzas' domain name speculation reflects a growing market for appealing Web addresses that can be bought at a low cost and effectively "flipped," to use real estate parlance, for a considerable profit.

Zouzas的網名投機反應了網域名稱也能如同真實地產般地低買高賣。

And a prominent player in the domain-name brokering business is growing in Cambridge. Most of Zouzas' domain names are listed on Sedo.com LLC in Cambridge, a company that offers a variety of used domain name-related services including a secondary market auction site, deal brokering and "parked" ads through its partner Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), whereby unused domain names carry links to other Web sites, thereby providing income to the owner of the domain name.

另一個在網名界中異軍突起的是在劍橋的sedo.com。他們提供網址交易和停放賺廣告費的服務。

"It's like eBay, but with the niche of domain names," said Sedo Chief Strategy Officer Matt Bentley. "So many businesses need a good domain name but don't know where to get one. If a name is taken, we'll assist the buyer in the same way a real estate agent would."

sedo的策略長Matt Bentley說「sedo就像網名市場中的ebay。許多生意都需要一個好的域名但不知去哪獲得？如果想要的域名已被人註冊，我們就像真實世界中的地產經紀人一般去幫客戶獲得。」

Founded in 2000 in Cologne, Germany, Sedo has grown from three staffers to its current 80. While the company won't disclose revenue, it says it is profitable, and sales have grown from $10 million in 2004 to $25 million in 2005. The company projects about $40 million to $50 million in sales in 2006. Sedo houses 20 employees in its Cambridge headquarters and 60 people in its development office in Cologne. In 2001, the company received an initial round of $400,000 in seed funding from a German company.

於二千年在德國科侖成立，sedo從三位員工擴展至如今的八十位。該公司並未說它們到底賺了多少錢，只說確實有獲利，而且營業額從2004年的一千萬美元增加至2005年的二千五百萬美元 。該公司預計2006年可達四千萬到五千萬的營業額。該公司於2001年從一家德國企業手上獲得約四十萬美元的種子基金。
"There's really no other place like it," said Zouzas of Sedo.

Sedo's success underscores the resurgence of the domain name market, which is growing again after the dot-com bust when the spectacular failure of companies like Pets.com (which went public in 2000 and then filed for bankruptcy later that same year) loomed large in the collective mind-set of entrepreneurs. Driving resurgence of the market are advertisers who are allocating more dollars to the Internet and the growth of the Internet itself.

sedo的成功等於反應了網路泡沫後網名市場的復甦。

In the late 1990s, common words like Pets.com "would be like having real estate in the middle of Times Square," said Ron Jackson, editor and publisher of the industry trade journal DN Journal.com in Tampa, Fla. "Pets.com spent millions of dollars trying to sell 50 pound bags of dog food on the Internet. That's why so many of them blew up. They saw what was coming and they were right that it was going to be an incredibly powerful medium, but they were too ahead of the curve."

「在九十年代，像一般單字pets.com就像在時代廣場中的一塊寶地。」dnjournal的主編Ron Jackson說道，「pets.com花了幾百萬美元在網路上賣五十磅裝的狗食，這也是為什麼他們最後要吹破的原因。他們雖然看到了網路成為一個媒介的強大力量的趨勢，但他們過於超前了這個趨勢。」

In 2005, domain name sales of $10,000 and up numbered 620, up from 303 sales in the same category the year before, according to DN Journal.com, which tracks domain name sales from companies and individual sellers.

在2005年，網名交易起過一萬美元以上的有620筆，而前一年只有303筆。

Sedo's recent high-end sales include annuity.com for $600,000 and recycling.com for $300,000. A typical domain name is purchased by a small business for between $1,000 to $2,000. Users who want to register a new domain name (such as their own) can go to a Web site like Networks Solutions or Register.com and pay about $30 for the privilege. After that, the site will be listed in a domain name database.

sedo最近的高價記錄分別是annuity.com賣了$600,000 而 recycling.com 賣了$300,000。通常一般的小企業買入的域名大約在一至二千美元之間。
Sedo customer Keith Riewe, president of Bice's Florist in Ft. Worth, Texas, paid about $3,500 for Bices.com. Riewe already owns bicesflorist.com, but wanted to increase the chances that customers would land on his company's site. He estimates he has secured 1,100 orders totaling about $67,000 from bices.com.

sedo的客人Keith Riewe花了三千五百美元買下Bices.com(灰藍色，綠色)，而他之前已擁有bicesflorist.com，但他希望能增加客戶到訪他的網站的機會，他估計他已因為買入bices.com而增加了一千一百筆的交易和六萬七千美元的營業額了。

"It's proven to be a good move -- it's more than paid for itself," said Riewe.

他說「這證實了買下這個網名是正確的一步，從它那裡獲得的好處早超過我為它付出的價錢。」

Domain names are a leading indicator of the health of the Internet market in general, said Bentley. "If you look at the Internet over the last couple of years, it's very much in recovery mode," he added. "Anyone who has a domain name and is not doing anything about it -- it's like discovering treasure in your attic."

Bentley說「網域名稱是網路市場健康的先行指標，你可以發現過去幾年網路一直處於恢復的階段。而現在如果你曾經註了好網名但都一直沒使用，現在可就像在你的閣樓裡發現了寶藏一般。」

Sedo's competitors include Afternic.com in Apopka, Fla., and GoDaddy Software Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.

"(Sedo) is the No. 1 aftermarket domain name auction site," said Jackson. "They just crossed 3 million domain names which is huge."

Meanwhile, Zouzas says his recent sales of his dot-us properties are generating buzz surrounding the newer extension. Ideally, as with prime real estate that can be rented out at a premium, Zouzas plans to hold on to his domain names, attract sponsors and live off the income.


"Once you sell it, it's gone and you can't generate money year after year," said Zouzas. "That's the ultimate goal."