Over the years there have been many discussions on the demise of domaining. The latest debate started last month on Namepros “Domain industry is dying slowly?”
. The discussion started out with a lot of focus on new gtlds and the confusion and choice they have brought to the domain market.
Longtime domain investor Brad Mugford posted,
Adding a bunch of new “land” in a bad area does not really effect the value of prime real estate (quality .COM).
Also, the whole premise of top tier combos like solar.energy being affordable is not realistic. 99% of those are registry reserved and come with massive premium prices and/or premium yearly renewals.
So people can decide if they want to pay a premium for .COM, or a new extension. In most cases the choice is pretty easy.
Brad
While others jumped on the new gtlds are going down the tubes bandwagon, Hawkeye posted,
A common theme among domainers, but 99% going bankrupt and disappearing…nope, that won’t happen. The majority will survive either on their own, or under the wings of another gtld operator. As for being ‘popular’ or ‘investment’ worthy, probably not on a bigger scale like .com domains are now. Though despised and hated by domainers, there are end-users that ‘use’ them now and will continue to do so in the future. And they care more about a domain name that is relevant/describes their business (that they can afford) today, not about it’s resale value down the line. Just a reality that isn’t going to disappear just because of domainer despisement.
That is a valid point that many who just love the noise and seek confirmation bias like to espouse. The new gtlds may never be successful investments for domainers, (not their stated purpose), they will be around, and they might best impinge on the other extensions like .me and .tv.
Arca posted that they might also affect the kind of .coms we see sell for $2,500 and below.
“Ultrapremium” .com domains won’t be affected by the new Gs, because there just isn’t any equivalent for that quality level in the ngtlds.
The only kinds of names that can be affected by the ngtlds are average quality .com domains (the kind of names that sell for sub $5000, more often sub $2500 range). Some end-users opt to buy a name in one of the new extensions instead of paying up a grand or two for an okay .com name.
After running a site on a new g for a while, they come to realize that they are guinea pigs in an unwise experiment, and gradually start learning of the massive drawbacks of running a business on a new g (NOBODY recognizes that your keyword.keyword is a domain, marketing a .unknown is highly ineffective, a .whatever at the end of a domain generates distrust, sending and receiving emails is a huge challenge, new g registrars may jack up your renewal costs etc.).
New gtlds are only part of the story for the path of domaining. It was back in May that Rick Schwartz recommended 90% of domain investors start over again.
For many years the domain industry has been a low barrier to entry market with minimal start-up costs. You could register a few domains, park them, maybe make a few quick flips turning $7 into $100 or more. Parking may have provided you with a few dollars a month. Domain forums were buzzing with posts and threads and appraisals. The domainer to domainer market was vibrant.
The domain business was seen by some naive newcomers as easy money, it’s that easy money that attracted them to domaining and they were looking for their pot of gold. All one had to do was read the DN Journal weekly sales charts and go, “That sold for what ? I have better names than that, I am going to be rich.” Many did not get rich, they just were collecting names like baseball cards, only difference is you pay for a baseball card once, you don’t have to renew each year.
Today there are still domain forums and domain flipping in the domainer to domainer market, but the activity on domain forums is down and the domainer to domainer market is not quite as vibrant.
The game is changing with some of the most attractive qualities that brought in new domainers changing.
1) Its not a minimal start up game anymore
Many have complained that the price of average .coms are going too high in auctions at NameJet, DropCatch and GoDaddy.
2) Parking money down
Parking revenue, once a primary driver of business in the domainer to domainer market has dried up. This has greatly affected domaining to a point where the market is unrecognizable to those doing business in the 2004 – 2007 era.
3) UDRP
Its becoming more and more of a risky industry for domainers. Domains one would never think were at risk have seen some odd decisions in a UDRP. Companies are looking to take a chance at a UDRP if they don’t like the price the rightful owner is asking. Of course if someone is squatting a trademark the owner should have the right to get that domain, but there are cases everyday where decisions are being made on domains that don’t fit that category. The small to mid-sized domainer does not have the resources to deal with this like a big domainer does.
Domaining is still an interesting business with opportunity that can be enjoyable and profitable. The domainer of the future must realize the game has changed, it never was the easy money newcomers thought it was and now that notion should be completely put to bed. It is going to require more capital, more research and being active in selling your domains and standing out in a crowd of 400 million domains.
domaining is definitely on the decline. a lot of people have moved on to cryptocurrency including the domain king himself.
it’s gotten too expensive, it’s now just a fun hobby. made plenty so no complaints.
A lot of domainers jumped onto the crypto bandwagon. One day they like Ethereum, then Litecoin, then they like Bitcoin and so on.
But at the end of the day, they do not control crypto pricing. They are just along for the ride up and down like the stock market.
i’m buying more domains every single day. .com of course.
Smart
so we’ve lost some of the gamblers.. probably better for me.
my retail sales are up over 2016, and wholesale sales have had better pricing.
the LLL/LLLL illusion of liquidity masked big drops in 2014-2016, its funny because if the current market is to buy a reg fee, or drop at $69 and having a:
10% chance of selling in 5 years for $2500
30% chance of selling in 3 years at 500
and a 50% chance of selling in one year at $49
im not sue thats enough for most people
Page Howe
ps and im buying parking names for the first time since 2003
Glad to see that you did not leave the domain Industry, Page.
Domaining not on the decline at all! for quality real word and exact match domains. Getting offers daily and selling weekly, including five figure sales. Ocean front property remains in demand.
@XYNames Yes correct! I now only stick with quality real word and exact match .COM domains so forget the rest including all new gtlds though perhaps except just few .IO’s & one word brandables. I just visited your site which I think is good, so I will be contacting you shortly.
Real quality domains will always be in demand (and that’s a perfect match for rqd.com) Thanks for the idea.
You can judge the state of the industry by the lack of comments on this excellent post. I think that sadly says it all. 🙁
Domaining is changing, not declining. Out with the old and in with the new. Domaining 3.0, global!
Wording and domain meaning have changed as well.
One or two-words minimum and LLL/LLLL.
Also, keyword to the front of a domain longer than 1 word when possible.
Expired and dropped .Com domain prices are also still rising. What you could of bought for $50 five years ago is now starting around $200. So there is domain activity happening, it’s just not happening between domainers that much. The end-user is now the domain engine.
Some old school domainers have also moved onto crypto-currency.
Unfortunately, some of those people were leaders in the domain Industry, leaving the Industry pretty much leaderless.
If GoDaddy marketed GoDaddy Auctions platform more, it would help create a more liquid domain name marketplace that is needed in the domain Industry.
Godaddy already has the brand name, they just need to advertise their GoDaddy Auctions service like they do for all their other products. But, that will probably never happen, but it should.
GoDaddy auctions is a good domain aftermarket marketplace, but GoDaddy will not promote it that much, because other domainers listings on there is competition, as Godaddy is selling their own domains from their portfolio through Name Find and Afternic.
GoDaddy’s portfolio (Name Find) of domain names are listed for sale on Afternic, which automatically show up in GoDaddy Auctions for sale and in GoDaddy domain name search.
this is spot on
no ONE marketplace can serve all masters, screw economies of scale..
godaddy auctions presents retial inventory and drops together. So how does a buyer figure out why there are 50,000 names at $12 and 1,000,000 at crazy prices lie $50,000, and another 2,000,000 at make offers.
you dont see Nordstrom with a factory outlet distressed seconds in their main store,
but there may be a new game in town soon…..
page
Page… looks like you know a lot about domaining. We got into the field in about 2000 mainly because we had some online publication we wanted to protect from competition… well that developed into us acquiring many domain names … all .com …. that we thought would be good for end users. We are just retiring and want to get rid of our domain names… we have tried Sedo and a few other options but given the type of domain names we have, our best results have come from direct inquiries through Bodis … but we would like to ramp up our efforts and just get rid of these domains .. have about 550. Any suggestions ? Thanks.. Mary Ann Lawford
I sold $25k worth of names on afternic/GD this month with godaddys help. They want their customers to buy your names too believe it or not. One thing I think has never been covered on any blogs is that they sent emails to their customers promoting MY names. I’m no GD fan boy but I like them more with 25k in my pocket.
They don’t help everyone.
Without consulting you they promote you because the quality of names or you its an opt-in thing?
The long term answer is the TLD .top because no other TLD can top it, no other TLD will ever be able to top it.
No matter how high the reg. numbers are.
Simply untoppable by it’s meaning – that’s why the future of domaining will be .top domaining.
.Com is the TOP domain extension.
.Web will be a close second.
No, even .com / .web can’t top .top because .com / .web means just ‘com…’ / ‘web’ but not ‘top’, only .top means top.
.COM
community
company
commerce
commercial
communicate
proven extension every large company uses
any decent keyword that could be a brand should fetch 6 – 8 figures from an end-user at the right time
.TOP
one chirping cricket in a empty room
Sorry baby but don’t you feel it’s time to let it go? You know how the song goes; “know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em”.
”Sweet” to see that you are happy with the ”multiple meanings” of .com (which is in fact only the abbrevation for ”commercial”).
But don’t forget, .top has only one meaning, the top – meaning:
”top”
.com it’s simply the ”standard extension”, nothing special, just a boring way to stay.
Sorry ”baby” – but don’t you feel it’s time to start realizing that?
You know how it goes:
”.top is top.”
.COM originally stands for commerce, not commercial.
According to WIKIPEDIA (en), ‘.com’ is derived from the word ‘commercial’:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com
It’s wrong and so are you about .top
No.
Where are the popular new tld sites? Almost no usage. Where are the .brands?
In my view the word is spreading and it is becoming a known fact that those tlds have flopped. Ntlds had their peak about 2 years ago. Both aftermarket values and registration numbers are now declining. Who would have predicted it would only take 3 years from launch to get to that point?
Mostly new gTLD domainers were the buyers and sellers of new gTLD’s and they just parked them.
As a low risk domainer who has spent $15-20k in the last five years and turned over around $80k, I have definitely see a decline in offers and sales over the last 12 months. It’s noticeable enough for me to be reducing my portfolio by about half (500 down to 250-200), as I’m not convinced this is just a blip.
It’s a speed bump, just keep driving.
Offers and sales have been increasing for me.
In other news…
Dynadot is now offering free privacy protection on domain registrations…impressive.
Yeah, I noticed that. ?
The domain market overall is almost schizophrenic at this point. Wholesale prices up, retail sales prices and volume are down.
That is a good sign an industry is in decline and that it may be time to look elsewhere for sustainable investment profits.
Strange time to be involved for sure.
Interesting perspectives. It seems to me, the industry is as big as ever, and growing. It’s not the cottage industry it was. Many of the figures of the early world of domains have very different status in this maturing niche of tech and investment, and it may feel, when reflecting on the early days of the industry, as though there has been a contraction. That is an illusion, however, because thrre is a vast amount of corporate money at play in this field, once considered merely the realm of squatters. Many of the best-known and most influential names of the industry remain very active, though not nearly as visible. Remember what Steve Forbes said in ‘07 at TRAFFIC, that there will always be shakeouts and disruptions, some players will get washed out, and othrrs will achieve great heights; but, as he said, the trend line is ‘profoundly positive’. I still see it that way, ten years on.
The domain market is not in decline, HOWEVER, it is slowwing. The way domain names are being brokered and sold is changing, the way the world communicated 5 -10 years ago was primarily email and phone. Now, it’s phone, text, Whatsapp, QQ, iMessange, Twitter, Facebook / Messenger, Snapchat, Skype, Linkedin Telegram, Zoom and strangely face to face communications. I recently closed a domain deal for $60,000 USD payment plan via only Facebook Messenger for a New York start up. I also have closed a $20,000 USD deal for an accounting related domain name on a single text. (The David Yurman bracelet I wear, was bought with the commission of the sale – it’s a reminder to me everyday to give myself permission to try something new and stick with what works). I have also closed one $10,000 USD 4 letter .com sale via LinkedIn as the buyer was unresponsive and I found them via LinkedIn and sent them a LinkedIn InMail when I had the Premium. I also have a six figure 3 letter .com deal in a long term reminder as buyer needs time and that came from Twitter and a direct message. I found $90,000 USD by beating the bushing and shaking trees. This past month was average for me personally but if you zoom out and look at the year as a whole its been one of the best I have seen. The last quarter (October – December) is when I stay in the office during the holiday season and make the most sales, close deals and get my clients domains they want so they can dominate the market and industries they are in. Get yours!
October, November and December are important months.
Fiscal year end and end of year taxes.
Chinese people spend more money in this quarter as well.
Darryl Lopes and Mark Thorpe:
That’s interesting about people (especially the Chinese) spending more money in Oct/Nov/Dec. I never knew that.
Why is this the case?
He does not know what he is talking about. Most probably he has pigeon shit domains and that discourages him.
I bought a sports and legal gtld in. Legal for reg fee had it for a year let it expire because the person I thought it was ideal for i heard nothing back from me so let the legal gtld expire – it was bought by a big cheese in the legal world
I also have bought a media gtld in the careers sector for reg fee I’ve had it for a year I’ve let it expire I have about 1 or 2 days to renew it but i will let it go but it will go to a big cheese in in the media only a matter of time before it’s whois changes to a large wealthy media recruitment firm that realises its potential
The future is only a good domain name away
Domain investors are great at finding good domains but usually devoid of the vision behind the domain and why few can take the domain and make it a unicorn
I believe the biggest problem is the “Stagnation” in the way domains are marketed, offered and sold to End Users. For years and years, it’s been the same old thing. The passive approach: Marketplaces offer landing pages. That means it’s up to the end users to find those pages themselves. Only certain types of domains will be found this way.
Eventually, marketplaces that use a much more Active approach to end users are going to have to evolve. These active marketplaces will have to find end users and startups, rather that wait for the buyers to find the domains. They will have to educate them on domains an their value. They will have to present them with domain options that would be great for their businesses. They will have to make them understand that obtaining a good domain is not like making a small purchase using petty cash …but that it is a major investment in their company.
Will anyone ever be able to develop a marketplace like that? It may be a pie-in-the-sky concept, but I certainly hope so. One thing is for sure. The days of relying on passive landing pages to sell domains has seen it’s day and things need to evolve beyond that.
Yes, it is indeed hard to sell domains through passive landing pages that’s why I only use SEDO Direct Offer pages instead with my own site.
The Domain Market is NOT declining at all, just a few desperate domainers that haven’t had sales over the last months! All the years, almost everybody is complaining about no domain sales, that’s Normal!! get used to that…
In fact, this year there has been more Buying Opportunities because when the market is “down” everybody lower their sale prices and its good time for buying for cheap lol. Crisis for some ones and Opportunities for others!! It all depends on your budget, your search skills, and your Patience!! 😀
Changing has been coming for years people we all know, see and feel it.. If you think the URL has more potential as a technology and utility then it will go up, way up once it finds its real marriage. Contrib and vnoc are doing some good things that if it works will add value across the board.. Crypto has liquidity now, but its not like virtual land and anytime you play a new market or a game or anything, play the land, you never go wrong if you play our risk/reward and acquisitions correctly….c
What does “Crypto” have to do with the state of the “domaining industry”?
Some domainers took their money off of the domain table and invested in Crypto instead.
crypto in terms of digital currency and trust less systems have more liquidity then domains so the money is following where the liquidity is and that has a small effect on where the money sources are spending the money. The state of the domain industry is down or not in the spot light (crypto/blockchain) because few have done anything with them in 6 years but want to the same results.. Go to a party, the talk is not about URL’s anymore but digital currency, smart contracts, blockchain that has an affect on the “out of site out of mind mentality which effects the movement and purchase of value”…
in domain world, the .sky is always falling
doom and gloom, being predicted, year after year
and yet …. i’m still here
🙂
Yes, Domaining as a reseller is DEF. on the decline!
For those that are convinced that the show is over, I’ll do you a favor and help you transition out of the market by paying you for your names that you feel are just going to keep going down the tubes. My offers will be low but at least you are getting something for them before they reduce to nothing.
How much will you pay versus estibot values? Or are you just sputtering out your arse?
As I said, my offers would be low if I am interested in what you have. As far as a percentage of what I would pay against an Estibot value, I can’t put an exact figure on it but NO, I am not talking out my arse. Please feel free to contact me with your domains at toddcardglobal@yahoo.com.
Todd,
Actually, this is what you said:
“For those that are convinced that the show is over, I’ll do you a favor and help you transition out of the market by paying you for your names that you feel are just going to keep going down the tubes. My offers will be low but at least you are getting something for them before they reduce to nothing.”
Backtracking already I see — disappointing.
Backtracking???????
How so???
I said I would buy and then I again said i’d buy. Both times I used, “low offer” I am pretty sure you were looking to make a better sale than I would give you and you tried to make a negative remark about me. You trolls are a dime a dozen. Be gone now won’t you?
Please place your top 10 names in a comment here and I’ll consider purchasing them too.
I love this article. Thanks
Reading these Posts reminds me about the motor industry that i have been involved in over the past 50 years, yer im an old codger, the point im coming to is that for the most part the dealers have always said “the games F….. ” the games no good, its harder than ever,but ive only ever seen the dealers get bigger, Super stores, have you been to your local merc dealer latley. There will always be winners and losers,but there will always be opportunity for those that follow a system thats tried and proven. I may be an old codger but there is many, many things that only time can teach you in life. I am about to embark on a new learning curve, Domain buying selling. I am seventy and a half years of age and live in perth Western Australia. Where should i start? Whom can i learn from ? Appreciate any help from experienced players.
Buy low, sell high, and dodge the turds
You speak so much truth and I honor your willingness and desire to learn something new at an age that most would not consider doing. I am relatively new to the domain industry myself but I have had a few small victories and I am on a full speed ahead course to , hopefully, the top. I would suggest that you go to http://www.namepros.com and become a member there as soon as possible! I myself am a member of the community and I would love to help you along your journey via that membership. I am keukatodd on namepros.com.
Respectfully,
Todd Orr
There are gamblers and real estate investors in the domain market.
Gamblers are generally flippers. Not much to say there.
Real estate investors are buying and holding. As stated above, beach front property is selling. Also property on Interstate on-off ramps, downtowns and similar clusters. And the backroads are still backroads. Nobody travels them.
Parking revenue is way down but still works to keep expenses paid on the name and more. Only for good keyword dot com’s.
The new tld’s? Give me a break. Most of them are dot trash. Then the good ones have all the premium names jacked up way too high for real estate investors (me) to try them. It is getting time for the bubble to pop on new tld’s.
But the deals are still out there. My 2 cents worth.
This is very interesting to me. We have been acquiring domain names since 2000 … starting mainly to keep competitors in our online publishing business from getting domain names that could compete with us. We ended up realizing that end user domain names could some day be valuable so we just bought and held. Now we have retired from our publishing business and have about 550 domain names …all dot coms … that we want to sell but these are end user types of domains and just don’t see any broker / online seller who seems to cater to this group. Any ideas from the experts ? Would appreciate your input. Thanks, Mary Ann
Approximately 85% of your inventory is worthless and never should have been registered in the first place.
Approximately 10% of your inventory is worth $200-$500 to an end-user, and nothing to a domainer.
The remaining 5% is worth between $2,000-$5,000 to an end-user.
Go to http://www.namepros.com and i am quite certain you will find some buyers or at least a direction in which to go.
I took at a look at your names, after following your name link. Please don’t take this as criticism, because i’ve had names of this quality in the past also, before I realized what sells, but you should just let the vast majority of those names expire. I doubt you could get anyone to take 90% of them even for free. You should save yourself all the hassle of trying to sell them and the cost of renewing them. It’s just not worth the time. Retire and forget about domain names.
Perhaps the best way to ascertain some value of some would be to place the entire list on Namepros and see which ones get a bite. Don’t put a price on them-just say make offer. Then let go all the ones without an offer, and price the ones with offers and try to sell those on Sedo, Afternic, etc.
Very simple issue. You have abusers of trust, faith, security, and promises like GoDaddy, gaining their size from billions in loss and subsidized domains, promising the world to government entities for single access control with no ethics, integrity, care, or love for the domaining industry. They get their money, they can’t even update Afternic’s home page in three years, let alone show any care or support for premiums. Right now they are DESTROYING the very domaining industry and domainers that gave them their strength and size, by counter selling junk, freebies, and the worst of new TLD entries across every search ever made across every part of their platform. If you list with GoDaddy, all you are doing is harming the industry point blank, as every new premium listing comes with the offset of cross marketing opportunities for $3 domains. This company needs to be exposed for the broken systems, failing service, external security compromises, and an unending track record of harming others, sharking patents, and refusing to fix the most basic of issues. Their commitment to advancement and positive evolution is the worst I’ve ever seen, and their motives are not clean. They absolutely do not have the premium domain owner’s interest in heart. The same bulk owners that GAVE THEM their market opportunity in the first place. Get rid of the rot at GoDaddy’s senior management team, and much will change very quickly. Otherwise, this is part of “shareholders get paid” movement with Google and others to effectively derive power from domains. With 60% fraud rate at Google alone, they are sucking hundreds of billions of dollars out of our economy intentionally EVERY YEAR from the core of small US business owners, so they can pay employees millions of dollars each to fund their private activism and political agendas. Needs to stop, and GoDaddy needs to be put on notice for mass boycotting.
BRAVO!!!!
I’m a 22 year veteran of this industry and I think GoDaddy is the best thing that ever happened for us besides Rick Schwartz.
Overall, GoDaddy is a great company.
I think the biggest decline is in the 99% of domainers who own trashy dot coms. When I look at the domains that are expiring each day, and even the ones of those that are getting picked up at auction, I always ask myself, “what are these people thinking!” Names like RealityVirtual4U.com . HaHa. Just made that up, but the thinking behind someone justifying that type of name is rampant.
All the crap, and all the crappier domainers, has to be shaken out.
Chad Folk is the only one that really touched on the real issue. Until the public gets back control of the URL (address bar), the industry will shrink in its relevance. The most powerful tech companies, in my opinion, have purposely reduced the value of domain names and internet ownership and used it to subjugate us.
It will take a great leader, responsible government or Supreme Court case to balance the economic disaster that is currently unfolding. They will soon be trillion-dollar companies. That money must come from somewhere and that is not good for us nor capitalism.
Domain names ARE the future and what will ultimately allow us true independence in the technological revolution. Where our industry is now, is like parking a 59-convertible corvette in the garage; Google has sucked all the gas from the engine and Amazon has a toll booth on every corner. Who wants to push that car down the road?
To be a successful industry, we should be living totally domain names-buying homes, cars and traveling because of them. Very few in this industry are achieving this.
Crypto, while worthy, are dissimilar to domain names unless you make domain names inert. The big tech companies are trying hard to do just that. It is in their DNA to dominate. They must be stopped for the overall health of our economy and our country to fully rebound.
We will wait.
Well said, as usual.
The industry ate some wicked-bad food that made it temporarily sick (gtlds). Don’t worry, it will be out of its system in a few weeks, either through vomiting or by way of toilet.
With all respect, that Namepros thread was a BS thread and had no credibility. Most of the people commenting in that thread had no knowedge of domain names. The bottom line is the domain name is not dying, but it is going through a state of change, and that change means that the majority of Gtld domains will disappear from the face of the Internet. The value in meaningful .COM domain names will always be there, and don’t ever forget that 99.9 per cent of the world’s companies and businesses have a Dot Com shingle on the web. All the world’s biggest brands have their own Dot Com domains reflecting the names of the brands. Nothing is going to change that. Apple will always be apple.com and Microsoft will always be microsoft.com, just as Ford will always be ford.com and Walmart walmart.com. Dot Com will simply continue to dominate the Internet by virtue of the simple fact that there is incredible amounts of money tied up in the extension. If you are a startup or an established business, and you want to develop a serious web presence, you would be a brave man (or woman) to create a website based on a domain extension other than .COM, no matter how clever it may be.
Once the Gtlds disappear, the gold rush will be back on with Dot Com domains. Everyone got skittish in 2000 when the Internet bubble collapsed and many, many people cashed in blue-chip domains. The smart people who picked those up at drop prices have made a fortune, and a similar fortune will be made by people picking up Dot Com domains now at what i consider bargain-basement prices. Generic names are being snapped up by astute domain investors, who know the long-term value of these names.