The Hell You Say

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/25/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

What's in a name? A helluva lot of money. Take, for instance, Hell.com. The Internet domain name is up for sale at auction and carrying a hefty price tag: $8 million. And that's only the starting bid. Eric Harrington, CEO of HitDomains.com, told Reuters that he expects the price of Hell to (ahem) rise. "You can build a whole business around this name," he said. Having the right domain name is already a proven success. Witness the recent sales of Business.com for $7.5 million, Loans.com for $3 million and Autos.com for $2.2 million. (To register a Web name costs as little as $35.) Harrington thinks he really has something with his netherwordly name. In fact, he can already imagine the marketing slogan to go with it: Go to Hell.com.