As I am one of those who has 'some' domains specifically priced for the high spending end user (although others are not) I feel I can at least contribute a little here to this discussion.
The internet is a world wide phenomenon that is still relatively in its infancy, as such we have not yet reached a position where we have reached a 'ceiling' on prices of domain names. As companies switch more and more to advertising on the internet rather then conventional advertising (newspapers, radio, tv, etc.) they will simply calculate that owning the best 'advertising websites' (domain names) is cheaper than paying for click throughs. Also by owning and managing such names they will take a controlling interest in the advertising for their sphere of operations, and whilst their competitors spend huge amounts in advertising the owners of the best advertising domains will spend constantly proportionally less (they own the best advertising medium).
At the moment 'most' domainers are actually acting like the small local radio station and accepting adverts to put on their sites at relatively cheap prices (remember it how much the parking site makes out of each advert). All the reports that are coming out say that the advertising money is heading towards the internet and away from conventional advertising outlets, surely this rings bells that internet advertising must be a cheap and effective way for advertisers to advertise! Then consider that as more advertising comes to the internet the prices paid by the advertisers will rise, Google I think it was who first started off in a big way where advertisers had to bid for their position in the advert hierarchy. This will of course lead to a disproportionate rise in the value of 'good' advertising websites and good advertising domain names. On the back of this lesser valued websites and domain names will also increase in value by riding on the back of the good ones.
The real bonus is though that many companies will prefer to 'own the website (domain name) because this will in the medium term turn out cheaper for them than paying constantly for advertising on the website. As stated above this will also diminish the advertising effectiveness of their competitors as they will not have the opportunity to advertise on the website 'owned' by by the buyer.
For advertising purposes a good domain name (website address) is one that the public recognise and associate with. Therefore tyres.com (I have no connection whatsoever with this domain) would be a superb website for Michelin or Dunlop, it is easily recognisable, relevent, and should one of these companies own the website they have an immediate advantage as described above over there competitor. This site, in the 'real world' (not in domainer sales) would easily be worth in the millions of dollars, but at present to a domainer looking to put adverts on the site it is worth considerably less simply because all he/she calculates the value at is a multiple of the annual advertising revenue.
Now I have over 30 domains that are priced at $1 million or over, all of these in advertising terms are easily worth conciderably more than I have them priced at, one is now priced at $25 million, but this has been priced solely for the high spending end user market, a market that is specifically targeted with these domains. On the other hand I have most of my domains priced from $xxx's through to $xx,xxx, these are the ones that are comfortably priced for domainers (we do need bread on the table until a big one goes). I even yesterday went into the chat room to ask opinions on an offer of a $1,000 I had received (presumably from another domainer) and was actually told not to take it as it was way far too low an offer (the domain like most of mine is a ccTLD - and a ccTLD that in the past few months I had been ridiculed for buying!). This shows that the attitude to the value of domain name values is changing constantly, and mainly in a steep upward direction. If this were not so then iREIT and others would not be buying up by the portfolio all the domains they can.
Now a word of caution. Yes there will be dips in domain name value, sometimes perhaps by as much as 30-40% which happen very quickly, but a good business plan will allow you to take this into account for within 2-3 years the domains will be recovering their value if not recovered their value (I base this on various historic economic swings in both the share markets -London and Wall Street, and also the real estate market). In such times the domainer will rely on the advertising revenue from the sites. If you have mortgaged yourself to the hilt to buy domains then you will be in trouble, as with any other investment where you have borrowed too heavily to finance it.
Finally. Dotcom will generally for the foreseeable future be the leader in the domain name world, however, it is my opinion that as advertising on the net takes off (our rocket is still on the launch pad as far as advertising goes) more and more ccTLD's will be seen throughout the world due to their specific suitability for advertising a particular product, an example would be the domain 'So.ap' (I have chosen this as there is not a dot AP suffix available).
Well that is my DNF$4 worth. Now you can shoot my arguements down, but things are happening this way.
