The Online Road to Riches?: South Walton Resident Hopes to Cash in on Www.30A.Com
By Kari C. Barlow, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach
Feb. 22–SANTA ROSA BEACH –What’s in an Internet domain name? Mike Ragsdale hopes it’s big bucks.
The South Walton entrepreneur placed his www.30A.com up for sale Feb. 14. Since then, he’s had more than 20 inquiries — some from “pretty well-known corporate entities.”
Meanwhile, he’s having the name appraised and holding out for just the right offer for the designation for County Road 30A.
“If it has a dot-com extension, it’s always going to be more valuable than a dotnet or dot-org,” said Ragsdale, who owned an interactive entertainment company that built online communities for AOL and Microsoft in the 1990s. “I really don’t know what it will go for. It’s worth what someone will pay for it.”
That amount could easily reach five figures, according to Monte Cahn, founder and CEO of Moniker.com, the firm that’s giving Ragsdale an appraisal of the domain name.
“It’s a three-character dot-com with meaning,” said Cahn, whose company has brokered deals, such as Cameras.com for $1.5 million and On.com for $635,000. “It’s virtual real estate.”
A domain name like 30A.com has navigational value, he adds.
“It’s an investment property,” Cahn said. “You either sell it or monetize it or develop it yourself. Very few people hold onto their domain names anymore.”
Sales of domain names since January include Tandberg. com for $1.5 million, RealEstate. net for $300,000, Yearbook.com for $237,500, TeenModels.com for $80,000, Frisbee.com for $30,000 and NeverWorkAgain.com for $25,250, according to DN Journal, an industry news magazine.
“It’s a very big emerging market,” Cahn said. “It’s growing like crazy.”
Ragsdale found 30A.com at domainmarketplace.com — a holding company where thousands of domain names change hands.
“I was specifically looking for Emerald Coast-related domain names,” said Ragsdale, who moved to Santa Rosa Beach from Birmingham, Ala., with his wife and four children last September. “To me (County Road 30A) is one of the up-and-coming, upscale beach communities. It’s an amazing brand.”
From resorts and restaurants to the Gulf Coast beaches, 30A has value locally and abroad, he added.
“You’ve got so much money invested in that area, to have that URL, I can’t think of anything more premium,” he said.
Drawn to the water, Ragsdale came south to write or “do something creative” in 2007. Depending on the offers that come in, that might include developing 30A. com. himself.
“It’s a great platform to build a destination portal about the area,” Ragsdale said.
As of now, he plans to entertain offers until about March 1.
“I’m not drawing this out,” he said. “I’m either going to sell it for a decent amount or I’m going to use it as a platform for my own business.”
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Copyright (c) 2007, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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