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An short story appeared on the Deseret News, on how Ryan DeLuca started BodyBuilding.com and turned it into “the Internet most-visited body building and fitness site”

My favorite quote from the article:

“He took a huge risk by getting a $20,000 loan to buy the domain name BodyBuilding.com”

Bodybuilding.com is ranked by Compete.com as having just under 1.5 Million visitors a month.

Not bad for $20K.

Fortunately for Mr. DeLuca he didn’t follow some of the suggestions contained in another article out today, in the WebWorkerDaily.com, which talks about what to do when the .com you want is taken.

Some of the suggestions included:

Pick A Different Name

Add Dashes or Numbers.

Use an alternative extension like .net, .org, .biz, or .info.

In all fairness the article does also list as an option buy the .com from the owner if its not in use, but the article clearly failed to recognize what Mr. DeLuca learned.

There is no replacement for a category killer .com

Many domain name sellers, including myself depend on the two most popular domain listing services Sedo.com and Afternic.com while listing domain names for sale. When an offer does come in using these services, the seller is at a large disadvantage not knowing who the buyer is!
No seller ever want’s to "leave some on the table" [...]

We grew up being told by our parents that crime doesn’t pay, yet after  today’s report, sometimes it does.

ThePiratebay.org, a huge file sharing site, reportedly sold today to a Internet gaming software company for $7.8 Million dollars.

Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has signed a deal to acquire The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish Kronor ($7.8 million), including $3.9 million in cash.

GGF, which operates software for a range of Internet cafes and gaming venues, said it plans to keep Pirate Bay in operation, but make the site legal by ensuring copyright owners get paid for material shared on the service.

GGF also announced a 100 million Swedish Kronor ($13 million) deal to buy Peerialism, an IT company that has developed a new file sharing technology.

A couple of months ago, four men who were the founders of the The Pirate Bay,  were found guilty of violating copyright law for assisting the illegal downloading of protected material and sentenced to one year in prison and fines totaling 30 million Swedish Kronor ($3.9 million).

Yesterday the Swedish court turned down their appeal for a new trial.

Note that the cash being paid in this transaction equals the fine the founders received.  So basically the buyer is paying off the founders fines and giving the founders stock in the new venture.

Not bad.

Maybe the lesson is if you have a site with huge traffic, it has substantial value, no matter how you got the traffic.

WARNING: I am in NO WAY saying to do this or advising you to try this. This is a fictional story based on something that could happen!
Let’s say a online domain name auction service offered bidding services on expired domain names. It cost’s $5 to sign up to use the service.
Since no detailed investigation is [...]

This week over at Bido.com it looks to be an exciting week. They have quite a few .coms, a .info, and a great geo .us domain. With Bido.com starting to get traction i think this is shaping up to be an above average week with the type of names they have going. Here is what [...]

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