The Daily Dinar

The June issue of Business 2.0 is going to have an interesting cover story on the phenomena known as domaining. This is, essentially, the speculative purchase of domain name with the expectation that given their scarcity they will appreciate in value and make some money in the mean time from the placement of advertising on the parked domain. It’s long but it’s worth a read.

Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of. Here’s how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire.

KEVIN HAM LEANS FORWARD, sits up tall, closes his eyes, and begins to type into the air. He’s seated along the rear wall of a packed ballroom in Las Vegas’s Venetian Hotel. Up front, an auctioneer is running through a list of Internet domain names, building excitement the same way he might if vintage cars were on the block. As names come up that interest Ham, he occasionally air-types. It’s the ultimate gut check. Is the name one that people might enter directly into their Web browser, bypassing the search engine box entirely, as Ham wants? Is it better in plural or singular form? If it’s a typo, is it a mistake a lot of people would make? Or does the name, like a stunning beachfront property, just feel like a winner?

When Ham wants a domain, he leans over and quietly instructs an associate to bid on his behalf. He likes wedding names, so his guy lifts the white paddle and snags Weddingcatering.com for $10,000. Greeting.com is not nearly as good as the plural Greetings.com, but Ham grabs it anyway, for $350,000. Ham is a devout Christian, and he spends $31,000 to add Christianrock.com to his collection, which already includes God.com and Satan.com. When it’s all over, Ham strolls to the table near the exit and writes a check for $650,000. It’s a cheap afternoon.