Not really sure what's so crazy about that. A brick and mortar shop will spend way more than that on renting a good location for their business when they have no clue whether they'll turn a profit. This is just the digital equivalent of that. People trust authoritative domains like vidaliaonions.com way more than something like vidaliaonions-direct.net and they're given more SEO weight as well. At least I know that used to be true; not sure how true that is today but I'd imagine it still is.