Short domains have been a blessing for our industry but from certain perspectives, also a curse.

They have helped companies such as Sedo which were on a clear downward slope as reseller market venues come back to life.

They helped lots of people make lots of money directly, by buying and selling short domains.

They have helped lots of people make money indirectly, by selling products/services to those who make money directly. Think about it: those who make a killing via short domains now have considerably more money at their disposal and they spend at least some of that money on domaining-related services, so domaining-related service providers benefit indirectly, even if they never even sold one short domain.

To put it differently: a LOT of boats have been lifted.

On the other hand, short domains also have negative effects on our industry.

The main one, in my opinion, is the fact that the discussion/debate QUALITY went way down.

On forums, in blog comments, you name it.

Whenever there’s lots of money to be made, people lose their minds. They pick a side and blindly defend it. They take different opinions personally and so on. This has a devastating effect on the quality of our debates. Lucidity has without a doubt been lost to a large degree.

Secondly, just look at some forum discussions for example.

Everyone is pumping whatever it is they’re investing in these days.

You see a thread such as “huge interest in NNN.TV domains in China” (example of one I just saw today)… started by someone who… wait for it… just invested in NNN.TV domains.

Then you see a thread about “ten number Dot Horse domains are the next hot trend” or whatever… in other words, everyone’s blindly pushing the stuff they invested in.

Can’t imagine how hard it is for a newbie to make sense of it all.

This entire phenomenon started from something rational/reasonable, which is Chinese interest in domain names.

Make no mistake, this is a huge trend and without a doubt a game-changer.

Yes, the fact that a market consisting of over a billion people opened up is huge news.

Yes, the Chinese culture is different and they like a lot of things we don’t understand, such as numeric domains.

Again, 100% true.

But as of a certain point, people got carried away and you now have beginners blindly investing in low quality domains across various TLDs because hey… there are over a billion Chinese (roughly 1,350,000,000 people, to be more precise), right?

Right, but (and it’s a huge BUT) not all of them will want to invest in short domains 🙂

Therefore, the pool of genuinely meaningful short domains is smaller than most people realize.

Let’s take numerics as an example.

There are 1,000 NNN.coms (3N).

There are 10,000 NNNN.coms (4N).

There are 100,000 NNNNN.coms (5N).

There are 1,000,000 NNNNNN.coms (6N).

Right now, all of the domains above are worth money. Even the lowest quality 6N.com domain is worth 2x-3x more than the registration fee.

How many domains are we talking about?

Well, a grand total of 1,111,000 domains across the 3N-6N space.

While I for one consider 6N dot coms a stretch, a case could be made that we have roughly a million meaningful numerics in the dot com space.

If however we add 7N dot coms to the mix, we’d have roughly 11 million meaningful names and I’m sorry but this is way more than a stretch.

How much is too much?

Well, that’s highly subjective but I for one would have a hard time considering anything lower than let’s say genuinely premium 6N dot coms (no 4 or 0 and preferably good letter combos) meaningful.

The same principle is valid when it comes to letter domains.

But since I mainly invest in LLLL dot coms, I don’t want to refer to letter domains too much because I’d be biased, don’t want this post about others pumping their investments to turn into me pumping mine 🙂

But obviously, the same principle applies and as of a certain point, too much is too much.

Then as also have non-dot-coms.

Are there meaningful short non-dot-com domains?

Definitely.

But the bar is set far lower for those.

Far, far lower.

As a beginner, trying to figure out what to do is ridiculously hard.

The best advice I can give is this: at this point and beyond, think not once but ten times before hand registering a short domain.

If we add up all of the short domains which have been registered up until this point after the short domain craze, we already have a number which is so high that I doubt the ones holding the lowest quality inventory will do well.

Even with all of the Chinese money, too much is too much as of a certain point.

In my opinion, the likelihood of you doing well with short domains that are available for hand registration at this point is low.

Not saying it’s impossible, as nothing surprises me anymore these days but after even some basic number crunching, you can’t help but be left scratching your head when it comes to the potential of hand-reggable domains at this point and beyond.