Quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of arguments such as “yeah, but there are gazillions of huge unreported sales” whenever someone points out that sales of a certain asset class have been weak.
We’ve seen it with dot mobi (although I’ve never dabbled in dot mobis), we’ve seen it with dot TV (I’ve invested in .tv here and there), we’ve seen it with certain types of dot coms as well (future trend domains or other “flavor of the month” investments, not my cup of tea) and of course, we’re seeing it with new gTLDs as well (I’ve invested here and there at the very beginning, zero interest at this point).
The modus operandi is always pretty much identical.
1) People are talking about a certain type of domains in a forum thread or when commenting on a blog post
2) Someone points out that the sales volume has been week or that the amounts those domains fetch are low
3) Another person comes along with an “I’m an insider” aura and tongue-in-cheekishly talks about how there are lots of top dollar unreported sales; hint-hint, wink-wink
The main problem is that beginners very frequently fall for it. They end up assuming that there are gazillions of huge unreported sales out there and that if they invest in that domain category as well, their domains will surely follow a similar path 🙂
Seriously guys, let’s stop this.
Yes, there are unreported sales everywhere. Dot com sales, new gTLD sales, whatever.
But precisely because they exist in I would say every domain category, talking about them is pointless.
Referring to unreported sales is a non-argument at best or in a lot of cases, even a manipulation attempt.
If you want to become a better domainer, stop living in fantasy land. Analyze verifiable data and draw conclusions based on that data. Not based on what some guy says through a blog comment, forum post or whatever. One of the saddest things I’ve noticed over the years (sad because it would have been preventable!) is that “dreamers” don’t make good investors. Sorry, they don’t. Be a dreamer in real life. Be an optimist and what not.
But when investing, be a realist or you’ll fail.
February 6th, 2017 at 11:20 am
I agree, the argument is used to bolster the new gTLD market mostly.
I have a lot of unreported sales but they are not anything people are going to be amazed by. All under $1,000, mostly for a few hundred dollars. They are all in .COM and common ccTLDs, not garbage new domain extensions. 🙂
February 6th, 2017 at 4:26 pm
I sold a .horse domain for a 1.2 billion dollars.
I wish I could talk about it but it’s an NDA.
I hope you understand.
🙂 j/k
February 6th, 2017 at 5:23 pm
Interesting you mention .tv, because I was just thinking .tv speculators often come up with this argument. The reality is .tv is a terrible .tv for reselling domains but people are often desperate to make out the market to be stronger than it is because of the significant sums spent on names with high renewals ($30-$5000 renewals).
Rarely do people bother running this argument for .com for example. If a tld has a lot of sales there will also be a lot of reported sales, the two are directly correlated.