Sheffield

City of Hills and Rivers at work and leisure

Why do domain names like this attract such high prices? The ideal Domain name has five primary features:

1. It is short
2. It is a single word
3. It is a dictionary word or a proper noun
4. It is memorable
5. It has positive connotations
6. It is relevant to the content of the associated web site

All names matching criteria 1-5 (6 is a subjective judgement) were sold many years ago. When any do come back on the market prices are high. The ongoing cost of holding a name is trivial so there is little disincentive to continuing to hold unused names.

1. What I mean by positive connotations is that there are dictionary words you'd not want associated with your business, curse words for example
2. Similarly there are proper nouns you'd not want associated with your business, the names of disreputable characters like Crippen, Goebbels, Adolf
3. Sheffield has plenty of globally acknowledged postive connnotations and associations:
4. A global reputation for high quality products including Steel, Cutlery, Tools, Sheffield Plate
5. The name is globally recognised for its association with the World Snooker Chamionship
6. The names of Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday football teams are recognised around the world
7. Sheffield University has a strong reputation for excellence in many spheres of research and attracts thousands of international students
8. The people of Sheffield are recognised as hard-workers, innovative and resourceful

The Sheffield.co.uk domain name is for sale. Offers are invited but I should draw your attention to the above. It is clearly a premium name and commands a valuation which recognises that.
By way of comparison take a look at the prices of comparable names. The highest published price paid for a .co.uk domain name stands at £600,000 for gold.co.uk
Liverpool.co.uk was (at time of writing) being advertised for sale at £225,000. Bear in mind too the price of another category of unique item to denote personal status: premium UK vehicle number plates, the highest price paid to date was £500,480.

How can you use the domain name? It's more than just a place for your web site and email addresses, you can also operate subdomains. A subdomain is something like shop.sheffield.co.uk, news.sheffield.co.uk or visit.sheffield.co.uk under which completely separate web sites can be operated.

There are alternative to outright purchase

• Lease the name for a limited period at a rate of £1000 per calendar month. Should you subsequently purchase the name the price will be reduced by a proportion of the total leasing payments
• Lease a subdomain (see above) for £100 pcm