DNJournal has an interesting article by Dan Warner (COO Fabulous.com). He points out the motivating factors for domain buyers looking to purchase in the secondary market.

Consumers purchase domains for a variety of reasons. These unique motivating factors shape the value which is attributed to domains by individual buyers. It logically follows that a domain’s true value can only be attributed to a specific buyer at a particular moment in time. Following is a framework of primary factors that buyers commonly attach to each domain purchase.

Dan also points out that speed of delivery is an important factor. I’ve long thought this with our own domain auction service, where you have to wait 60 days from the end of the auction to start using your new purchase.

While this period does give the original registrant an important safety net in reclaiming their domain, it could be too long to wait for users planning a web site. It’s a difficult balance between the needs of the aftermarket buyer and protecting the rights of the original registrant and their business.

Verisign, the Registry in charge of .com/.net gTLD’s will be raising the prices of these domains on October 15 2007. There will be a 7% increase on .com and a 10% increase on .net domains. We are still waiting for news on how our suppliers will act on the news from Verisign but I would expect prices to change slightly.

We would recommend everyone to renew their domains now to avoid the price increases. Both .com/.net domains can be registered for periods up to 10 years. If you have more than 5 domains in your portfolio with us then contact us and we will arrange a discount for you.

It’s worth noting that registering your domain names for longer periods may improve your websites rankings in Google. As spammers tend to buy and throw away domains, a long registration period is a good indication that your site is trustworthy. In their last patent (August 22, 2006) Google indicated that domain registration age could be a factor contributing to their ‘trustrank’ score for a website.