News from China, where several dozen people have died from a previously unknown type of coronavirus, is published daily by leading media outlets around the world. The domain market is sensitive to such events, and there is no doubt that a great number of domains containing the new virus name will be registered soon. Experience shows that some of these domains are registered by competent organizations in order to disseminate information about a new disease, its symptoms, methods of prevention and treatment. But in the vast majority of cases, outbreak domains are registered by domain investors looking to make a profit by reselling them amid public interest.
Famous domain investor and analyst Elliot Silver questions the effectiveness of such a strategy on his blog Domain Investing. Silver analyzed the public sales data for domain names containing the names of diseases and viruses that made world news in past years. Bird flu appears to be the most profitable for investors: the BirdFlu.com domain sold for $19,875. Ebola.org cost $16,000, and H1N1.co.uk (a strain of the influenza virus, also known as swine flu) went for $4,225. However, these transactions are among the few successful sales. In the vast majority of cases, such domain names were sold for about $100-$200. And many outbreak domains have probably remained unsold. That said, investors should not rush to spread the epidemic of the new coronavirus to the domain space.
