You may or may not be aware, but the sale of domain names is a potentially lucrative endeavor. Get the right name - and find someone who really wants it - and you can cash in. Among the most expensive of all time as beer.com ($7 million), porn.com ($9.5 million) and the all-time champ, insure.com, which went for $16 million in 2009. But even at the smaller end of the spectrum, you can make some money: it costs only about ten bucks to register a domain name, and you can then sell it on to an interested party for many times that, to make an instant profit. Which brings us to the latest Diamondbacks Thing of the Week
JOSH COLLMENTER .com Diamondbacks Baseball Domain Name
$197.00 is what the seller - presumably, domain owner Nick Doherty - wants for the name, which is pretty cheap when compared to some of the other prices. For example, the $21 million being sought by the owner of 1600PennsylvaniaAveNW.com. Good luck with that. But one wonders why Doherty, who lives in Lititz, PA, according to the domain registration info, bothered to buy the name. It's not as if Josh is a local kid [from Homer, Michigan, in case you had forgotten]. One can only presume it was a speculative endeavor of some kind. Interestingly, it was bought on June 4, almost two months after his major-league debut.
If Josh did want his own website, then he doesn't need to fork out a couple of hundred bucks for it, just be a little flexible on the name. For while joshcollmenter.com is taken, joshcollmenter.org, .info, .us or even joshcollmenter.tv are all available at the standard, off-the-shelf pricing. Really, most people will be going through a search engine anyway: if you simply type in a player's name, add .com to the end, and hit "go", who knows what you might find? Well, actually, I do: because for each other member of the current 25-man roster, I did exactly that.
Most are registered, but boring: no active site, and are often just place-holders, or being offered for sale. Falling into that category would be DavidHernandez.com, DanielHudson.com,.MicahOwings.com, JoePaterson.com, JoeSaunders.com, BrandonAllen.com, GeoffBlum.com, XavierNady.com, WillieBloomquist.com, GerardoParra.com and JustinUpton.com But here are the more interesting results found:
- Alberto Castllo: AlbertoCastillo.com was registered in December - by someone in Korea. The owner info is at "KyongJu-City Dongguk Univ". Who knew fringe bullpen guys were popular worldwide?
- Ryan Cook. If the latest D-back wants his domain name, he's out of luck. ryancook.com has been registered since 2003, and does at least appear to be a real, if pretty spartan, site.
- Ian Kennedy. Sorry, Ian: you're too late. iankennedy.com is owned by "Producer, Filmmaker, Engineer" Ian M. Kennedy, who has had it since 2005, when you were still at USC.
- Bryan Shaw. This bryanshaw.com is in the heavy metal biz, running mfnrocks.com, a rock music webzine. There is an AZ connection though, as according to his resume, in 2007 he was producer of the Alice Cooper Show on KDKB 93.3 for a while.
- Henry Blanco and Sean Burroughs. Not sure what to make of henryblanco.com and seanburroughs.com. Both seem to be active, but are an odd mix of articles and Youtube videos culled from elsewhere - for the former, including one which is a single sentence taken from the Lake Havasu Herald, about the D-backs.
- Miguel Montero. Like Castillo, he seems to have an overseas fanbase; this one is registered out of Queensland, Australia. However, it has only been active since October 2010. What kept them?
- Kelly Johnson. The oldest of the domains in question, this has been owned since all the way back in January 1998. Did they have the Internet then? Though nothing of interest is on kellyjohnson.com, it is at least owned by a Kelly Johnson, so we can't begrudge him the domain.
- Ryan Roberts. Well, going by ryanroberts.com, Tatman's interest in aesthetics extends further than his skin, as it's a fashion design site. He was named Menswear Designer of the Year by the City of Toronto in 1996. when our Ryro was still at Bell High School, in Hurst, Texas.
- Chris Young. Probably the most common name on the team, no surprise to learn it's not owned by our outfielder. Instead, chrisyoung.com is the personal site of the actor/director best known for playing boy genius Bryce Lynch on the Max Headroom TV series.
- Stephen Drew. Not on the roster, but stephendrew.com wasn't actually registered until February last year. It belongs to a student at the Manchester School of Architecture in the UK.
So what we learn is that not one player on the team appears to own their own name. Given this, it's hard to imagine Josh - or anyone else - paying $200 for joshcollmenter.com, but the auction still has a few days to go, so who knows? But if anyone is interested, there are a few players whose domain names are still open for purchase. If you want SamDemel.com, CodyRansom.com or even ZachDuke.com, those are available...