In my opinion, I’d say 6 is the number that best describes our economy at this point. Now I know that lots of people like to jump on the “end of the world” bandwagon but tell a person who is currently 85 – 90 years old that we’re in the worst possible shape and that person will laugh in your face.

Why? Because that person survived two World Wars and witnessed things like Germany’s hyperinflation, for example.

Yes, the economy is not doing all that great at this point but we’re all fortunate to be alive in 2012 as opposed to any other historic period. Let’s assume you were given the option of choosing when to live?

Would you choose the 19th century? I wouldn’t.

Middle ages? Nope, don’t think so.

I don’t know about you guys but I’d choose 2012

Now as far as the future is concerned, it’s hard to tell what will happen.

You have a Nobel Prize winner who makes one prediction, then another one who says something completely different and so on. Nobody knows.

Maybe some unbelievable technological advancements will give birth to industries which will support economic growth or maybe natural disasters will cripple our economy even further.

We can make more or less educated guesses but in my opinion, nobody knows because the outcome will depend on many factors which are beyond our control.

Where do you guys stand, are you bullish or bearish?

If possible, please also explain why, should be interesting.

1) the domaining industry
2) the worldwide economy

I’ll start:

1) When it comes to the domaining industry, one word describes my prediction for next year assuming that no jaw-dropping alternatives to Google as a monetization solution will emerge: stagnation.

2) Now as far as the worldwide economy is concerned, I’m not exactly optimistic. In my opinion, 2012 will be even worse than 2011 because the world’s governments are making waaaaaaay to many unreasonable decisions. Will the proverbial s*it hit the fan in 2012? I doubt it but nonetheless, I’m pretty sure it will be a worse year for the worldwide economy than 2011. I’d love to be proven wrong though.

What do you guys think?

1) How do you think things will stand 5 years from now?

2) What about 25 years from now?

Three follow up questions to keep things organized:

3) Will there be another 2007/2008-ish boom 5 years from now?

4) How will new gTLDs affect domainers 5 and respectively 25 years from now?

5) How will domainers monetize their portfolios 2 and/or 25 years from now?

My answers:

1) If PPC (… or an alternative) will help domainers generate more revenue than in 2011, we might see the start of a 2007/2008-ish boom 5 years from now. If PPC earnings will continue to decrease, I still think we’ll see a decent overall domain price increase but I doubt prices would reach 2007/2008 levels.

2) In my opinion, the landscape will change quite a bit in 25 years. Everyone will understand that domains are here to stay and bigger players will start investing in portfolios for diversification purposes. It will be a LOT harder for beginners to make money.

3) Please re-read answer #1.

4) Some niche gTLDs will do ok, most of them will not be profitable for domain investors.

5) Parking (… in one form or another) will still be around 5 years from now. On the other hand, I think it will finally be possible to make money by leasing domains or through lucrative partnerships in 2036. Right now, making money through these let’s call them “monetization methods” is pretty complicated.

First of all, here’s a link to the test:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

I’ll go ahead and share my score: ENTF

Extraverted - 78
Intuitive – 88
Feeling – 12
Judging – 44

Oh and here’s an article which covers my personality type (ENTF):

http://typelogic.com/enfj.html

What about you?

1) What will the effects of GoDaddy’s partnership with Silver Lake, KKR, and TCV be in your opinion? Feel free to mention positive as well as negative effects.

2) What would you like the effects of GoDaddy’s partnership with Silver Lake, KKR, and TCV to be? In other words, what changes would make you happy (or happier) as a GoDaddy customer or as a potential GoDaddy customer?

1) The new buyers usually cut costs and this can have obvious consequences when it comes to let’s say support, for example.

2) What if the new buyer decides to focus on “retail” domain services and drop “domainer prices” (coupons, special deals and so on) altogether?

3) In most cases. the company that gets sold stops running like a well-oiled machine. The examples in the hosting industry speak for themselves, from small company sales to “blockbuster deals” such as Softlayer getting bought by ThePlanet. When it comes to registrars, the situation would be similar IMO.

As a customer, I honestly hope Bob Parsons decides to keep GoDaddy but if he doesn’t, then we’ll just have to accept that and hope for the best.

What about you guys?

Would you consider the sale of GoDaddy good or bad news?

I can confirm that turning lowball offers into sales is possible, I did it myself on more than one occasion but want to also make it clear that the domains in questions only sold for up to mid 4 figures.

In other words, I seriously doubt that turning a $50 lowball offer into a $100k+ sale is possible (I’d love to be proven wrong though, that’d be an interesting story for sure) and as a conclusion: if you’d be willing to let go of the domain in question for let’s say 4 figs, replying to lowball offers can be worth it IMO.

Do you reply to lowball offers?