Cdntrader... This tulip mania has been going on for more than 10 years... and growing. Actually Verisign not only survived the dot-com crash, but continues to have a steady cash flow from domains and market power to once again raise .com prices. Market cap is a mere 6 billion dollars. Godaddy brought in close to one billion dollars in fees in 2009... and will soon be sold to a price that will be north of one billion dollars. What evidence do you have to compare this to a tulip mania? Virtual real estate has held up much better than physical real estate year after year.
I think the comparison is valid, because the aviable names are growing, instead of just being a limited supply. If you don't mind that your website ends in .co .bz .info .net or something not so obvious, you can have a webaddress for dirt cheap. Godaddy has something like 60 different endings for domain names, that is lots of variations to cover just for one single name for those who like to hunt for fashionable names...I think actually every country has its own domain ending, that is like 200 or so endings.... There was even talk to allow .xxx for adult sites....
.ly is very popular as well. Like Bit.ly and Vb.ly But....Libya owns .ly .... Bummer! It just killed Vb.ly http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security/2010/10/06/libyan-authorities-seize-vbly-domain-40090431/
Thats actually a very good point Pekelo. The supply dilutes the average value of a domain name. But the counter argument is that a premier location, aka .com, will be worth even more to distinguish it from other extentions. There are arguments for and against this, and it's better left to those websites that deal with domaining industry. However the real question is whether established websites like Elitetrader could be threatened by domain names specifically targeted towards our industry. It would take a lot for Daytrading.com to build a website with this many members and diverse content to ever compete with Elitetrader. But if you have the money backing it.. Daytrading.com would be the perfect domain name to try to go against Elitetrader. Going back to the value of Elitetrader, I would put it well north of the 5 million dollar mark.
....5 mill? you people are smoking something? By the way, this POS website (www.websitevaluecalculator.com) was down all night. I am sure a few curious ET'ers checked it out a little too much and the server crashed. Another great business idea down the toilette.... and how would you, pray tell, accurately measure a website's worth? By advertising revenue I am sure Baron is down a great deal from his peak, albeit he may claim more traffic or hit, which I doubt..... the best measure, Try to sell on godaddy.com and it is worth exactly the price is what someone will pay for it. No more no less.... The whole daytrading forum biz op idea is so passe, it was hot at one point but like everything of a mania it has jumped the shark a while back....you do not buy only domain names anymore and a forum name with elitetrader and elitetraders (easy to confuse) are just too long of a domain name for serious money.
Even with .com endings, one can make up cheap names with a The or a Now in it, and still keep the main idea. ------------------------------ I have argued in this thread that a website's value also depends on how much it costs to replicate it. The cost of the software and 1 year server for a start up similar to ET would be under 100K. (my guess) Now the site needs to attract posters/traffic before it can charge for ads. So one can spend the money instead of buying an already existing site on advertising the new site... Every website/domain name worths as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Yahoo paid 6 billions for Broadcast.com. Oh wait, wrong example! P.S.: http://www.forumdr.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-a-forum/864/
$5 million doesn't seem all that unreasonable considering elitetrader is one of the most popular finance/trading forums in the world, although it would be hard to estimate without some traffic figures.
Wrong. Since I started this site in 1997, there has never been a year that was down from the previous year from a revenue standpoint. That's 13 consecutive years of growth. And it's double digit growth at that Here's another datapoint to chew on: I was offered $4.5 million for this site about 4 months ago and I turned it down. Now please continue the discussion. I find it entertaining
from Alexa.com: "Based on internet averages, elitetrader.com is visited more frequently by males who are over 65 years old and browse this site from home." the traffic picked up as the bull leg unfolded. then flattened out/went down somewhat. most recently notice that we just reached new high at the end of September. it is possible that Baron's revenues are about to get trimmed somewhat.