Domainers are doomed
Since NamesCon 2018 the blogs and Namepros have been a washed with negative comments about the state of the industry. China crash, nGTLDs, poor auction results, Crypto coins sucking in dollars. A general malaise of depression.
I am much more optimistic because the underlying values are stronger than ever. Let’s take China
China
The biggest reason they will hold value in China is Baidu. Yep, a search engine is our friend in China. Why because it’s bloody awful, it’s the Lada of the car industry. Remember the Lada the Russian built car that proved without competition you end up producing crap. Well, that’s what happened in China – Google got kicked out in around 2009 on trumped-up charges of espionage, the default charge for all self-respecting communist countries, leaving Baidu with 100% of the search market and their search results are stuffed with Ads and spammers. Hardly anyone uses it, instead they go to a portal website and surf the web from there (very similar to AOL back in 1999).
So how do you get to your market in China – shout it out; radio, TV, social media and word of mouth. The domain name is so important, shorter the better. Forget the nGTLDs but short dot-coms chips are here to stay and will get more valuable, especially short numbers which have been the default type of web address in China since the birth of the internet. 4L chips are holding up, the minimum now $900 and most are making over $1000. 4N.coms just keep rising even over the last 2 years and that includes the death number 4.
Crypto coins
Oh, my what a mess this is – processing charges and length of processing time and volatility, its not going mainstream. There has to be profit taking and domains are a much safer bet and those that swapped from domains to crypto will swap back again leaving the general public holding the bag and having cash to spend. Domainers are often first in and first out. And in the meantime crypto names are hot.
Dot Coms
In the confusion of gTLDs, dot coms cut through the noise. The generics and one or two word brands are only going to get more valuable. The growth of China and India will add pressure on companies who want a global brand, to stick to English and stick to dot com. The available pool is getting less and less and finite, the perfect conditions for growth in value.
nGTLDs
I agree a disaster for domainers, even Frank Shilling didn’t do his perennial talk at NamesCon ‘this year will be the break out year for nGTLDs’. When business.loans goes for 10,000usd it means 99.9999% are worth less and most nothing.
As always do your own research and dont listen to bloggers!
February 1st, 2018 at 12:32 pm
just remember… in the future, anything said her today will be in the past.
February 1st, 2018 at 5:14 pm
Negative perspectives are good for buyers. Horrible for those who try to speculate on domains like securities.
Viewing domains through a lens of scarcity is required. .COMs are scarce. Many increase in value because of it. The nGTLDs will increase in numbers and no one knows IF they will actually be scarce.
I felt a common theme at the conference was the talk about trying to keep things focused on a single TLD in any given industry. .LAW, .LAWYER, .LAWYERS….. ugh. If we don’t know the end then trying to value or predict the future is impossible.
If you are speculating on TLDs then you need to really extend your timeline to “unknown.”
February 2nd, 2018 at 12:52 am
Interesting Drew. I’d say it is more than scarcity, the domain also needs to be desired by many people. So a block of land might be rare but people need to be lining up around the block to buy it as well. Scarcity alone means nothing.
“I felt a common theme at the conference was the talk about trying to keep things focused on a single TLD in any given industry. .LAW, .LAWYER, .LAWYERS”
Hang on, wasn’t this all about choice? Registries want to massively increase supply, now when they realise it is all worthless supply they hope to restrict it. The fact is these guys will just keep sitting at the printing press and if anyone stops to trying to print money others will take their place. Lets forget about these Zimbabwean style tlds with infinite supply combined with little demand (.loan, .club, .xyz) and instead focus on quality (.com).