DomainHoldings.com recently began publishing a free newsletter that has been providing a lot of interesting tips and information for domain investor/developers. Their latest edition that I received today includes an interview with Michael Berkens, author of popular blog TheDomains.com and one of the three partners who just stunned the industry by selling Meet.me for an astounding $450,000. 

Michael Berkens

Berkens, Rick Schwartz and Ammar Kubba paid  less than $6,000 for Meet.me three years ago. In his interview with DomainHoldings Michael talked about why he thought the trio were able to make such a phenomenal return on their investment with that domain.

"Domain names are, at the end of the day, all about branding," Berkens said. "To get high sale prices you have to be patient." Even so, Berkens admitted the Meet.me sale was extraordinary, noting, "You can’t really expect to buy a domain for $5,000 and sell it for 100X more in a short period of time."

Berkens added, "I invest for the long term. I’m not a flipper. Especially with new extensions you have to give the extension time to mature and for end-users to use domain names in the extension to sites. I would say you have to give an extension years to mature."

Berkens said that .ME is starting to mature for that very reason. ".ME has certainly gotten the attention of the venture capital guys who have put millions behind .ME sites, so that extension has seemed to prove its value and demand, especially for verbs that make call-to-action type of domains. Having said that I think the pool of great .ME domains is limited. I’m not big on keyword.me domains like the ones we saw sell recently at Sedo (like RealEstate.me for $8,050)."

(Posted Nov. 17, 2011)