Man buys 14,962 domains in 24 hours, makes millions in a month

Cybersquatters are quick to register domains that could fetch thousands of dollars and Mike Mann is one of those individuals. He has been on a domain registering spree for the past few days. CNET reports that he’s registered close to 15,000 domains in the process, in a day, between Tuesday and Wednesday last week. Mann says he wants to own the world and by the looks of things, he plans to do that by registering all the major, popular domains on the net. Mike Mann from Delaware, USA, who is 45 years of age now, used to run an ISP in the 90s but he made his first big fortune when he was offered $25,000 and then $50,000 for the Menus.com domain. Mann had bought the domain for a mere $70. He took the domain sale business seriously and started a business doing that.

No domain is safe

Mann, like some others made a business out of it and even sold it to other companies. NameMedia as it is known today, once belonged to Mike Mann under the name BuyDomains. For a while, Mann was busy with other ventures that he started up - nothing to do with buying and selling domains. Some two years back, he got back to registering domains and he has been registering some 300 domains a day. The sale of the domains gets him some $400,000 a month - that’s close to 20 lac.

Things haven’t always been great for those in the domain buying and selling business. With more top-level domains coming up, companies have more options and there are those who are opting for it. This means, they don’t have to pay the price that some of the domain selling businesses ask for. Companies are even willing to use modified names with a few characters missing as an option. These alternatives cost a fraction of the price of the main domains itself.  While many would claim the actions of Mike Mann to be illegal and against the law, there are those who believe that it’s no different than any other business. Some countries even have laws that requires the individual registering a domain to provide proof that a particular domain is being registered for a genuine purpose.