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National A-1 has unveiled the BETA version of Antiques.com – the premier resource to find, buy, sell, and collect antiques of all kinds. 

While the site launch was originally planned for November 2009, it’s now online and to an Antiques enthusiast, the new site looks amazing and has a number of great features such as free listings for businesses, articles, online services, and much more. 

We wrote about the pre-launch and countdown back in November and have been tracking the progress of the web site. 

You can take a look at the “before” pictures of the web site in our previous stories.  Antiques.com reached a 2009 high of over 7000 unique visitors in November 2009, but traffic slightly dipped as the launch date came and went.  Now the web site is online and it’s on Page 2 of Google search results for the term: antiques.

What do you think of Antiques.com new look? 

Let us know your thoughts in the Comments.

About Antiques.com

Antiques.com is the premier resource to find, buy, sell, and collect antiques of all kinds. Our store locator will locate shops in your local area, plus thousands of flea markets, events, and auctions across the country. Vendors can create custom pages and list items for sale and our Articles section has dozens of videos and is open to all authors. Happy hunting!

Golf-related domain names are Hot Tickets, especially on Sedo.  GolfZone.com recently sold for $50,000 – a name that was orginally registered in 1996 and sat parked on GoDaddy for the last 5 years before selling through Sedo’s Marketplace.

The new owner looks to be based in South Korea.  The registrant information was last updated on January 29, 2010, and the new registrant is Gabia, Inc – a South Korea domain registration and services company.

Just How Popular are Golf Domains and Web sites?

The category-killer domain name Golf.com – a web site that has golf news, videos and more – gets well over 1 million unique visitors per month.  PGAtour.com gets over 2 million visitors per month. 

The Exact Global Monthly Search volume for the term “Golf” was over 2.7 million searches last month alone.  “Golf Clubs” topped over 500,000, and some of the top searches involved golf accessories such as “golf balls”, “golf shoes”, and “golf bags”.

Some of the well-known Domainers like Mike Berkens of MostWantedDomains.com owns 100+ golf domains ranging from Golfclubbags.com to GolfingTrip.com.  Kevin Ham owns golf domains like GolfShirt.com.

One of the most popular Golf names owned by Domainers is GolfClub.com, owned and operated by the Castello Brothers.  The site is developed and according to an interview by DNJournal, GolfClub.com booked over $1 million in Sales in its first year as a brick and mortar business.

Golf domains are HOT.  Developed golf domains are even HOTTER.  Golflink.com, a site run by Demand Media, hit nearly 1 million unique visitors last July.  They also own GolfSpan.com, a site they purchased in 2007 that provided instructional golf videos.  GolfSpan.com is now a GolfLink landing page, that takes visitors to the Golf Link web site.

Notable Golf Domain Sales over $5,000

Sedo has had a lot of success brokering the sales of golf-related domain names and even have Golf.org listed for sale.  And there are plenty of golf domains expiring each and every day.  Over at NameJet, over 200 names containing “golf” appear to drop on average per day – with today’s list including WinterGolfResorts.com and DiscGolfBaskets.net.  At the time of this posting, both of those names, and literally hundreds more have 0 bidders.

Golf.tv sold for $600,000 in February 2003 in a Private Sale
GolfClubreview.com sold for $55,350 in May 2006 on SnapNames
Golfplatz.de sold for $31,460 in August 2009 on Sedo
GolfClubs.net sold for $30,000 in November 2007 on Moniker
OnlineGolf.de sold for $23,970 in June 2009 on Sedo
CanadianGolfer.com sold for $15,000 in December 2009 on Pro Forma
Golfonline.de sold for $14,200 in August 2009 on Sedo
Golfbag.com sold for $13,000 in March 2009 at Moniker/DOMAINfest Global
TexasGolf.com sold for $11,500 in July 2008 on Sedo
Golfers.org sold for $5,500 in April 2007 on Moniker

Russia.com.  Ticket.com.  Server.com.  Luck.com.  All of these names were purchased months and months ago for a lot of money.  Russia.com sold for $1.5 million near the top end while luck.com sold for $675,000.  Server.com sold for $770,000 back in Aug. 2009.  We are talking about a lot of money  and in some cases these names still show a GoDaddy Parked page.

If you search NameBio, you’ll find other top dollar names that were purchased for well over $500,000 still sitting parked – months and even years later.  

We understand there is probably big plans or a long term strategy for many of these names, but to simply keep the domain name parked, particularly on a GoDaddy page, doesn’t seem like the best marketing strategy. 

Investors versus End Users
 
Now, for domains that are purchased by companies that buy high and sell higher and higher as Investors, or monetize the names for their long term strategy with third party ads, it’s one plan. 

But for organizations who invested a large part of their capital into acquiring the domain name as part of their business and marketing strategy, only to have the name sit parked because there was no vision on what to do next, doesn’t seem like money well spent.