Ask HN: Are Domain Names Worth Anything Anymore?

They have good value for personal email and projects for personal reasons as well as in situations where a link is not clicked.

Personal Reasons: Gmail starts sucking? Change email hosts, and all is mostly well with little to no interruption to your email service. Also, they can be good for personal branding.

Professional Reasons: A billboard, an ad, a business card. It looks foolish when a company is @gmail.com, for example. There are security reasons as well.

I use google apps for my personal email. If Google were to drop IMAP support or enforce terms of service that were unacceptable, I would have the option of easily pointing my MX records to another email host. If I was on @gmail.com, I would have a difficult time switching. For me, <$10/yr is more than worth it.

Yes. They are still useful for SEO.

rentacar.com will get a free ranking boost on 'rent cars' that 'shertz.com' will not.

Since you can google from your addressbar in the browser I see normal users only use Google. Instead of typing www.example.com they type 'example website' and then reach it through Google (or Bing depending on their browser).

I think it's still of value to have a good domain name, in the end there will be a big subset of users who will use it to reach your website. If you're running a webshop on the domain this could be damaging if they land on one of you competitors and get the product they want with them.

Yes. Domains are worth hundreds, or in some cases thousands, based on SEO. Having the right title can drive traffic to your site. They can increase an existing revenue stream as a result.

Unfortunately, there are still people holding onto things they bought 15 years ago, squatting them because they think they're worth millions. (Screw you, Barry.)

I really don't think they're worth what some think or what they used to be as it's getting kinda common to see other TLD's as a company's main domain.

E.g. I can't get the .com or .co.uk I want but I don't mind much as I can get the .me or .us that I want.

I wonder how many people were upset with the whole .co TLD. There must be a heap of people who either paid lots of money to buy off domain squatters to get their desired .com / or they chose a less desirable .com address...

If you mean are they worth anything to sell in a domain market place? Yes, but they're only worth what someone is willing to pay. I know people that have a domain they think is worth thousands or millions (they're not) and won't even entertain sensible offers. They've held these domains since the 90's and are waiting for their big pay day that will likely never come because no amount will ever be enough.

Meanwhile, I know other people selling many many domains for a couple of hundred per domain who have made hundreds of thousands in profit.

So yes... domains are worth anything, but the value is generally determined by the buyer, and big domain sales like those that occurred in the early 2000's are becoming rarer.

Depends. For whom?

* Employed individuals, probably not.

* Self employed individuals, yep.

* Businesses, yes but it's mostly subjective, interpretational, perceived importance.

And remember, there are always exceptions to every rule. :)

Are you talking about value to your business or value in terms of reselling domains?

or in fact, are names themselves worth anything?

Good question. I host stuff on free blogs like Tumblr these days. I am not sure if a full-blown domain name is as valuable to me as it was in the past.