The thought occurred to me awhile back that I’ve never really heard of a domain share exchange. Granted, there are many exchanges where sales of domains occur every day. Companies likeSedo, Afternic, and Monikerfacilitate the sale of thousands of domains every month.

The type of market or exchange that I’m referring to is really a different sense of the word and is more akin to markets like NASDAQ or the NYSE. On these markets fractional shares of ownership in companies are traded in the form of stock shares. I was thinking of how interesting it would be to have the equivalent of these types of markets but with domains taking the place of companies in traditional exchanges.

How great would it be to have an IPO in PORN.com. The owners would offer thousands of shares in the name and those shares would fluctuate in value based on the revenue of the domain or the speculated value. Naturally, the incentive of the owners would be the promise of a greater return from issuing shares to the investing public as opposed to a straight sale. I’m not exactly sure how it would work but it would be quite an exciting thing to be able to own percentages of names like PHOTO.com or CASINO.com. We could check the ticker tape each day in a publication like DNJOURNAL at the closing bell to see if our shares of TV.com and TABLE.com had changed in value and consequently whether or not we should sell the domain shares in the secondary, or over-the-counter domain share exchange.

There could be several different types of domain securities. We would have domain mutual funds and different asset classes for different types of names. There would be an LLL.com fund, LLLL.com funds, NNN(N).com funds, single word generic funds, NNN.com, two word premium combo funds as well as the various industries. Industries such as tech word domains would need their own funds, as would energy, and, of course, adult domain funds. There would be composite indices composed of many names representing valuation classes (domains over a $1 million), industries, or other categories. Obviously, from there it would be logical to assume that there would be domain name index funds composed of combinations designed to track the various indices mentioned above. There would need to be people studying and designing these funds and that’s where domain fund managers would come in. There could literally be an entire sub-industry built from domains and these types of markets.

Maybe it’s crazy and maybe it would have no chance of success…hell, maybe it actually exists already. I haven’t seen it but I would definitely like to. I would love to open the Wall Street Journal or the DNJOURNAL and check my investments in PHONE.com or SEX.com because god knows it’s as close as most of us are ever going to get to names like this.
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