Admittedly I’m not a forum kind of guy.
Except for Ricks old Board, I don’t go into forums nor do I participate in them.
The only time I notice them is if someone links to a post to the forum on my blog, or if some Tweets something that catches my eye, which is in fact what happened last night when I read a Tweet saying Domaining is Going to End.
The Tweet linked to a post in DNForum.com of which I’m bought a lifetime membership to a lifetime ago.
So here is how the post appeared on Dnforum.com and my comments follow:
“”Domaining is going to it’s end”
“We all can agree that it’s most profitable time is definitely gone.”
“No we are playing with leftovers…
Sedo (we all know it’s largest marketplace) is parked more than 13.000.000 (year ago it was more than 17.000.000) domain names and they sell per month less than 3500 domain names.
So who is earning money in domaining today ??
Registrars, registrars, registrars, Schilling, registrars. Now only the strongest will survive. Only the top of the food chain.
The biggest players are starting offline businesses because they had realized that domaining is going to fall.
But Rome didn’t fall in just a day, it took years and that’s same with domaining.
Just open your eyes, I feel like I’m the only one writing to General Domain Name Discussion in the last 3 months.
It’s like nobody else is alive after zombie apocalypse. Domaining had turned from earning big money to people trying to flip their sh#tty domain name for $20, Flippa is earning a lot of money and it’s all fueled by dumb people trying to find some easy way to make money but they will loose it in 99.99999999% cases.
GoDaddy’s Superbowl spots were just brainwashing for poor desperate people whose biggest dream is to have a Ferrari and Godaddy had created illusion that they can achieve it if they will register their “BigIdea” and with .co ending……dotCO (!!!!!) , everybody in the domain industry knows that it’s just big marketing bubble. .Co is priceless….
Look at selling threads here on the forum ! It’s like people selling everything for $20 or $50…and they can be lucky to get that $50…time of flipping domain names fast is now resting in peace in 2008…now it’s 2013, everything is different.
We can survive only by getting to the top of food chain as fast as possible. Parking company, site flipping auction website, registrar, appraisal or anything else where we could make money on dumb people because Godaddy is taking them into this industry. Everybody with brain is not making investments anymore, everybody is just selling what they have and living of their parking revenue which is lowering every month”””
Actually I see it just the opposite.
I see domaining as a growth industry.
First of all you can take the sentiment found in the post and interchange it into almost every other business or industry.
Take music or sports
There are boards of struggling musicians where people are giving excuses to get out, to give up.
I’m sure there are people on the board saying the same type of thing, “only Justin Jay-z and Beyonce make money they rest of us to fight for a small market share”.
Does that mean the music business is going to end?
Sure guys like Derek Jeter make tens of millions a year and the guys in the minor leagues struggle to get by, does that mean baseball is going to end?
Same could be said for stock investors, doctors, lawyers almost every profession or industry on earth those who have the most success, continue or at least have the best chance opportunity for future success.
Such is life.
But not everyone who is successful continues to be successful and smaller investors who work hard, make some good decisions and get a little bit of luck along the way are always coming up.
Always such is life.
But lets look at domaining and I’ll tell you why not only isn’t it ending, but its about to boom.
1. Locked in Cost.
If you ever watched the TV show Shark Tank, one of the first questions that the Sharks (investors) ask the person(s) trying to raise money for their invention product or business, is what is the cost?
This doesn’t happen just in every show but in every segment.
So if you were bringing a domain investment business to the Sharks not only could you tell them the wholesale cost of a .com registration is $7.85, but that price is locked in for the next 6 years.
How many businesses have a fixed, lock in cost guaranteed for 6 years other than .com holders
None.
You basically have the next 6 years to make as much money as you can on your .com domain knowing that the wholesale price will not increase.
Its a unique moment in time and a huge swing of just a few months ago when we knew our costs where going to increase 7% a year, in every 4 out of the next 6 years.
The Verisign contract to operate the .com registry at with a price freeze was the biggest story in the domain space in 2012.
It also give you the rare chance to be in a business with a guaranteed lock in cost.
Don’t waste it
2. The new gTLD’s
Yes love them or hate them there is one indisputable thing.
The new gTLD program will push more money into the domain space in the next few years than the domain space ever generated before.
No I don’t want to argue about whether new gTLD’s will be successful, whether they will be a good business or a good investment.
I just want to acknowledge that an unprecedented amount of money is going to flow into the domain space from the new gTLD program.
With that much money pouring in a industry, its not time to jump out.
Now if you think that all the money is going to be made by registries and registrars, then buy stock in some.
You can buy 4 shares of Tucows for the cost of a .com domain registration or 1 share of Demand Media, which both are positioned to be a registry and a registrar.
There are public companies out there both on the registry and registrar side you can buy stock in and most have actually done very well in the last couple of years as this gTLD thing started to gear up including Tucows, Web.com, Verisign and Neustar just to name a few.
No domaining is not going to end.
Its going to change but every industry changes.
Change brings opportunity, now go out and take advantage of it.
Like I tweeted you, this may be the best post you have written Mike.
The one point I will say is that there probably is some need for debating if the new tlds will be successful or it just becomes, I don’t care who gets stuck holding the bag. New guys who are young will have to deal with that fallout longer than someone 40,50 or 60. The thing that small domainers have to figure out, Money is coming in GREAT, will it be coming anywhere near my direction or will it just pass me by, because the small domainer cannot play every new tld landrush.
Investing in the public companies is not a bad hedge, and if they really take off that TLDH is like an option that does not expire, its the riskiest of the group but could go up the biggest % wise.
Thanks for the post.
Mike, you’re giving too much air time to an obvious troll post by a nobody. The guy claims and complains that his daily revenue from PPC is ‘only’ $350. There is a lot of BS in that post and I wonder if they were also under the influence.
Well said, thanks for that encouraging reply as most them are a buy 😀
Acro
I wrote about this because people were tweeting it so it was spreading out beyond the forum, and when I looked at the post on the forum there were responses to it and felt it was an issue that need to be addressed on a broad scale
“it’s all fueled by dumb people trying to find some easy way to make money but they will loose it in 99.99999999% cases.” – I agree – and that is what makes free market capitalism great
“GoDaddy’s Superbowl spots were just brainwashing for poor desperate people whose biggest dream is to have a Ferrari and Godaddy had created illusion that they can achieve it” – I agree again – and that is what makes free market capitalism great
“The biggest players are starting offline businesses because they had realized that domaining is going to fall.” – no it is because domain investing is just one of their businesses
And finally:
“Registrars, registrars, registrars, Schilling, registrars. Now only the strongest will survive. Only the top of the food chain.”- and once again I again – and that is what makes free market capitalism great
Hello MHB
I could not agree with your Marketing Analysis above more. Furthermore the cash infusion to the domaining Industries Capital Structure system will stengthen our Industry.
We all know that the Battle for Eyeballs on the internet is the marketing qwest of all major corporations. All these old and new .Whatevers are going to be used to attract more traffic. Google and other eyeball hoggers are hoping to divert traffic away from other .COM corporations through all the white noise and confusion these other extensions will cause. This Marketing Strategy will ultimately fail!
As we are all are experiencing the White noise of all the new .Whatever commentors and supporters and their cadre of Cubicle Drones efforts to sell their stategy, this is being noticed by major corporations and they are feeling very threatened by all of this.Their reaction is going to protect their own traffic interests. How will they do this?
The .COM corporations are going to double down on the .COM Brand as being a Web destination of CREDIBILITY CONSUMERS can TRUST. They will stress the CREDIBILITY and STABILITY of the .COM Brand. I assure you its all coming, you can Bank on it.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Some people profit from prosperity and enthusiasm, others profit from chaos and fear. There are bulls, there are bears, they both make money while the pigs (the greedy) get slaughtered, as the old saying goes. I, for one, welcome change in domain name investing. I like fear.
The fact is, as we sit here today, the commercial internet revolves around .com. That’s the mountain, whether you like it or not. As long as that’s the case, as long as new product lines are being developed, new marketing campaigns are being launched and as long as the nexus between internet presence and credible identity lies in those three little letters, there will always be profit to be had via transacting in them. Until that changes, that’s where I’m at. I have no motivation to gamble on a paradigm shift. Even if it comes, being a little late to the party is always better than being the first one off the cliff.
As long as there’s profit to be had in domains, the more intelligent will prosper while the less intelligent spin their wheels and write it all off to bad luck. This universal truism is a bit off-kilter in domaining since the way this game evolved let some otherwise unintelligent people into the profitable ecosystem. In the end, as far as people coming to the game now, there’s still opportunity out there. You just can’t be a complete fucking moron, as was the case years ago.
You won’t find the opportunity on the well-worn path, that’s for sure. The people who are entering this game late and making it aren’t talking. Those who entered early and made it, their formula is worthless as today as investing in yesterdays news. You have to be someone capable of developing insight via looking at others mistakes, without being influenced by their decisions and narratives.
Here’s a hint: Some of the greatest real estate fortunes the world will ever see will come from people and institutions who were BUYING 2007-2010, when everyone else was hysterically selling, lamenting the end of the game. Same goes for domain names.
Spot on Mike,
I personally am ramping up to take advantage of the opportunity (notice I did not say domains) I said the opportunity. If properly orchestrated marketing wise the GTLD program no matter its duration or number of successes holds uncounted opportunities for entrepreneurs from creating startups to providing products services and knowledge aka consulting.
Walk away from the domain name industry now and you are throwing all your knowledge and experience out the window at soon to be peak harvest time IMO.
What I am seeing and what this person apparently is espousing is frustration and effects of the hangover due to the fall of what was once a thriving basically hands off automated slot machine dropping coins called parking.
They will get over it or they won’t but either way you can’t deny 360 million in application fees, Deep pocketed players some of which whose will be speaking at a GTLD marketing summit next month and talk of a GTLD trade organization.
Even if this person was right (and we both know they are way off) Then the big registries, registrars will be so big that they will need to hire as in jobs. Last I checked jobs and income was a good thing 🙂
Some will Make it happen… Some will Watch it happen… the rest will Wonder What the Hell happened! Alwys has and will be the case. My advice to this person
The GTLD Internet era has the potential to be huge in so many ways and thus well worth the effort to at least wade if not jump fully into the pool IMO
Then again as Zig Ziglar quoted his moms advice
“Son if your in something get in it! If you ain’t in it get out!”
Lets start (more like the people who use and still peoples identify) stop,,for what??1 there untrustworthy you never know what your really getting in to glass breaks,,so 2 act are make a big stink (Thank goodness) Start yes this is my Xcheating travel snooping Hides the truth lie still boyfriend,,)) So to a,all,, you poor innocent people loosing your Domains START By blaming the one with cheating, wives husband’s, If only water could wash it away, but sadly This is the internet,, everything leaves a print,,Dirty sad excuse for innocent to lose Years:)))
Just when you thought it was impossible for someone to beat out Schneider for worst commenter…
Domaing started our as an “Investment” and gthere was no aftermarket.
It is like buying stocks. You take excess dollars and invest in things that will give you a return.
Guys ike this are akin to day traders. Some day traders do very well. Others not so much and they write about how day trading is dead.
Tell that to the guy that made $250k yesterday day trding.
This is the start of an industry not the end.
But there will be so many with AGENDAS…..that the cubicle whores will take over the conversation.
Jeff
Your agreeing with me for the third or 4th in a row, I’m getting nervous
@ Michael H. Berkens
Yes Michael I make comments on Market Dynamics Only and try to be objective.
You are obviously reading the Market Correctly lately. That’s it in a nut shell.
P.S. Some of the Blow Back I spoke of from Corporate .COM holders is already showing
up in your next post on Forbes Article !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Jeff
Actually have never read or even heard of Market Dynamics Only but I have friends…
So Rick –
“cubicle whores” – well, that is right up there with “you can’t piss off the right buyer” 🙂
And for some of the comments here and the last several others from “cubicle whores” – I will rely the “anon” quote froma while back:
“I cannot think of a single place where the mentally ill roamed any more freely, howling and barking at the moon as a standard part of the industry discourse, than “domaining’.””
@ BrianWick
I am sure if Rick thought about it a little more he would have said Cubicle Drones.
You know what we are talking about those green eyed little monsters flying around every Domainer Blog, Bristling with jealous venom to strike any domainer in sight. You know the kind of guys that live in quiet desperation working for someone other than themselves or just not successful being in business for themselves. A VICIOUS LOT
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Good story. One thing that stuck out like an elephant in the living room was the comment that domains aren’t selling at any price. Well Holy Crap! Don’t you see the giant green flag waving in front of you. IT’S TIME TO BUY !!! When gold drops 200 dollars an ounce many people panic and sell while they should be buying … or at least holding. I hand reg 99% of what I own so I don’t check the forums very often but you can be sure that the sharks are circling at the top of the thread waiting for the panicked domainer to give away the ranch.
Now is the time to Buy or Hold. I’m sure we all have a thousand Domain chores that we’ve been putting off. Now’s the time to take a breath and relax … maybe do some domain chores.
Please excuse the late post. I’m wayyy behind on my reading.