question Domain industry is dying slowly?

In India, domain investors, especially those who are not well connected, face a lot of harassment, defamation, cheating and exploitation by the corrupt indian intelligence and security agencies, so they cannot make much money

Yes its dying. Send me all your domains

karmaco said:

Yes its dying. Send me all your domains

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lol
search google for ''difference between dying & death'' also search for ''definition of slowly''
same for ''?''

Then come here and wait for 10 years
until i give you some of my names

Domain industry is not dying, just transitioning. I think that because it's so easy to establish a presence online for free (everybody has a FB and free @gmail.com email) end users have hard time understanding / recognizing value of domains.

Ultimately domains only hold value as online foundations – you can build something on them. Looking further ahead, I will be curious to see if it becomes more common for businesses to have an online presence without a domain.

UmerK said:

The domain industry as I see it as a newbie is going no where, the reason I say that is because most people don't even have the access to the internet, there will be new and growing markets for domains and most of them would take us by surprise.

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I think this is really insightful. Domainers now may have missed the original goldrush, but still have a considerable head start as the world continues to come online.

Though new ccTLDs compensate for the head start, I suppose

Indeed there was a gold rush - those were mostly generic (+type) domain registrations from the mid/late 1990's to the sellers market of the early 2000's this carried on for a good ten years (for both buyers and sellers) The reality is that todays Market for domains is depressed - Of course there is a couple of dozen worthwhile sales to report every week or two but it's a long-long way from the heydays of 'literally' hundreds everyday. There's a lot of rubbish being offered these days . Companies do not want to enter the general domain market anymore to see what's on offer, but rather come-up with their domain preference and then see what the buying opportunity is, hence the occasional good sales are still out there.
The problem with most commentators on here is they don't have a domain history going back almost 20 years (seems like yesterday) and really can't comment on the reality of the market change. On the plus side Yep I'm still in it. Not a bad, (occasional) sale last week at $1k keeps me happy and covers costs

I reason with that too, domain of such will be less valued. Lawsuit is the best. I got a domain (bitcoinhandler.com) from godaddy, just unfortunate for me godaddy hijacked(repossessed till date) it cos they have coinhandler.com.... What do you think of a person like me will do? That's more to the fact that domainers may lose some of the digits on their domains.

Never seen an active site on a .mobi.

DomainNameBroker.com said:

You need to keep .mobi in mind.

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Adam27 said:

Never seen an active site on a .mobi.

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indeed - I've dropped all my .mobi, even very good applicable keywords. The trouble is for .mobi and for that fact all the old Original alternative extensions, ie dot.biz ,dot.info, dot.me etc- Even dare I say dot .net is they have all become muddied and muddled with the hundreds of new extensions. .dot.Org in its right usage still seems to have it's place. but generally not for domain sale money making but, building relevant content on. I'd say if your entering the Market today, better to spend hundreds of hours finding one good .com than marvelous keywords in second rate extensions.
and yes you will need to spend 'hundreds of hours' finding a decent dotcom. explore emerging markets, new markets, very catchy short domains etc, Some if not most will have been unnoticed drops

Domain name investing for profit is not dead. There is plenty of money to be made with solid domain names. Lately I have even been able to sell hand registered domains only 60 days aged for many times my money and I seem to be getting more offers via landing pages.

We'll see about the future, but right now, I think domain investing is just fine.

I'm not saying the Market is dead. far from it. I'm retired and even today happily spend five hours a day exploring my options and opportunities. Lets Note, the Original Question was Is the domain market depressed. Those of us that have the skills, still seem to do OK. but, that is far from the Glory days of say 5 to 7 years ago

BaileyUK said:

Those of us that have the skills, still seem to do OK

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Are you talking about making money from your 2005-2010 purchases, or being able to buy domains TODAY that you are confident will make you a profit in the next few years ?

souren said:

Most of us as the people who are buying this so called land , imo are unaware of the fact that everyday new lands ,are being generated by the Icann

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There is a little difference;

• promotion-friendly
• service-friendly
• production-friendly
• money-maker-friendly
• opinion-friendly

dot Com is the form of currency, for the rest extensions companies need to follow every step in the marketing cycle.

Asfas1000 said:

Are you talking about making money from your 2005-2010 purchases, or being able to buy domains TODAY that you are confident will make you a profit in the next few years ?

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I don't think I was ever a 100% confident in achieving a domain sale even going back to domains I registered in 1999. (don't forget domains registered by hand back then were always considered inferior to what was available on the resale market even 10 to 15+ years ago) I like to find domains that have some 'wordart' as well as relevance to as wider base as possible. Today it's a lot harder to find anything worth registering but occasionally I do find them, It just takes a lot more work. Anything really/totally generic in dotcom was even taken long before I entered the market in 1999 What I would say, today is the same as back then It isn't enough just to be clever with domain wording, you also need to understand what appeals to end-users. As you can probably guess I don't chase traffic domains (though I'm always happy to see good traffic stats)
I consider a domain sale of less than say US$1,000 as really just maintenance money and I can pretty much achieve one of those at my will, with a bit of outbound work.
For me domaining is about keeping a steady inventory of 'yearly' affordable renewals and appealing domains. The reality is that the market is constantly changing, as any old hand knows.
So in answer to your Question, Yes I sell recent registrations (12 to 24 months old) as much as I do my back catalogue.

BaileyUK said:

I don't think I was ever a 100% confident in achieving a domain sale even going back to domains I registered in 1999. (don't forget domains registered by hand back then were always considered inferior to what was available on the resale market even 10 to 15+ years ago) I like to find domains that have some 'wordart' as well as relevance to as wider base as possible. Today it's a lot harder to find anything worth registering but occasionally I do find them, It just takes a lot more work. Anything really/totally generic in dotcom was even taken long before I entered the market in 1999 What I would say, today is the same as back then It isn't enough just to be clever with domain wording, you also need to understand what appeals to end-users. As you can probably guess I don't chase traffic domains (though I'm always happy to see good traffic stats)
I consider a domain sale of less than say US$1,000 as really just maintenance money and I can pretty much achieve one of those at my will, with a bit of outbound work.
For me domaining is about keeping a steady inventory of 'yearly' affordable renewals and appealing domains. The reality is that the market is constantly changing, as any old hand knows.
So in answer to your Question, Yes I sell recent registrations (12 to 24 months old) as much as I do my back catalogue.

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The biggest misnomer is that many great domains were regularly available back in '99. Thats not the case. So many domains I looked up and expected to be available were registered to Mike Mann a year or two earlier. There were certainly niche exact match product domains available I missed out on. All 3Ls were taken. One word .coms had already been plundered. There were good drops but I wasn't technically oriented and felt I couldn't compete.

The one thing that is apparent is that the Domain Industry isn't just about Domaining. Like any form of speculation, one has to know and understand the market. Unfortunately a lot of people still have a gold rush mentality and think that their latest handreg will be a gold nugget. Not all the new gTLDs are failures and there are some successes but they are related to the markets in which these gTLDs operate rather than a global market. Even the .COM is no longer a global TLD in the sense that many domainers think of such a thing. It is actually a small global market and a large set of country level markets. The US is the biggest country level market in .COM TLD and this is the market in which most of the sales happen.

Regards...jmcc

The problem of NGTLDs is that it will at the end of it all, cause saturation and that will give more power to .com, .net and few old veteran extensions rather than looking for thousands of unknown extensions, the main purppse of internet is to bring information closser to the people, but when you don't have your website on most popular extensions how would people embrace such. Just wait for some time years and see what I am talking about.
Go namebio and find out how many new Gtlds are been sold this year.

souren said:

Since beginning of the internet .com .net .org were always the best option for any business or personal use
names were too limited in a sense that generated a solid valuable market for the domaining business
and domain investors

Most of us as the people who are buying this so called land , imo are unaware of the fact that everyday new lands ,are being generated by the Icann ( Internet's Allah )

every year 10 to 20 new domain extension were being released to the public witch in my opinion wouldn't create a serious problem
until 2014 and beyond where +400 tld has been released to the public witch followed similarly and here were are in 2017 with 882 domain extension
witch in my opinion make owning a premium name easy,cheap, for any potential buyer
witch at the end will affect the tld market valuation
imagine if you own solarenergy.com in 2000 and the value would be a good $$$,$$$
then time passes and here we are in 2017 where you can have names like
solar.energy energy.solar and more.. combinations for
a reg fee or very cheap price
Then it would seriously affect the valuation of solarenergy.com
I see a world (in near future )where anyone can have a short and premium looking domain
that he just registered for 10$
and a market witch looses it's value everyday


That's just my thought about the future of this industry
What you guys think about this?

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There is currently nearly one domain name for every internet user.
Most of which are held by domain investors.
For a name to have value, it must present a advantage other (available) names do not.
Sometimes that is natural traffic or other factors that you should be privy to if you really are a domain investor. Social media has done more to change the landscape for names. But don't expect that ever changing landscape to last forever as it presently works. For everyone looks for advantage and nothing stays the same. Most of the generic TLD's that have sold for value are held by investors, not end users.
So what exactly does that tell you? Nothing you should be passing this kind of judgement on.
Perhaps you have just lost sight of the end game or just how to get there.
One of the things you have lost sight of is the number of sales that occur without a news flash.
In other words, unreported, NDA. So your judgement of the current market is blinded.
In general, I would say you are making judgements on incomplete data.
But as always, a name has to present value to a end user.
Over the last 20 years, you had the need for many to get online, and now most who will ever be there, are there with exception to new biz. In normal markets, we call that the saturation point. And I had thought most were aware of that but perhaps I am wrong. So, yes, you could say demand is down, but not over.
Names are selling. Go back to the fundamentals. Stop letting hype set your expectations.
Cheer-up and get back to work.

VRdommy said:

There is currently nearly one domain name for every internet user.
Most of which are held by domain investors.

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Not quite. There are many more internet users than there are domain names. Investors do not own the majority of domain names.

Regards...jmcc

Great domain names will always have a need even for the cryptocurrency market when they become more established.

I have moved 90% of my investments from domaining into cryptocurrencies as the returns are much better than trying to chase leads for domain sales as domaining is only part time hobby for me.

I've made more in one month in crypto investing than 1 year of selling domains

I still enjoy domaining and im grateful that it has lead me to the crypto market. .IO & .org is the most popular domain extentions in crypto startups at the moment.

Everyone has their own strengths & weakness in investing and I say you can find success in many markets that work well for yourself.

Great times ahead and I wish everyone huge success

All this ngtlds make a premium or good .com more valuable. If you own solar.energy, you will need a lot of advertising to make people get used to that name and bleeding traffic to solar energy.com. that is what some people will keep typing absent minded even though they know you websit name. What this mean is it will take a lot of time to sell your valuable .com because most people will settle for less valuable alternate bcos of tight budget. Valuable .com will always sell and sell high to a customer that knows what he wants but it requires more patience with all these ngtlds flooding the market.

Blowing the dust off of this thread.
I saw this article on CircleID and thought I'd share.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190312_pace_of_domain_growth_has_slowed_considerably_reports_centr/

Looking at projections of the amount of corporate companies that are now having emp

Bernard Wright said:

Blowing the dust off of this thread.
I saw this article on CircleID and thought I'd share.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190312_pace_of_domain_growth_has_slowed_considerably_reports_centr/

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Although ROI% has dropped a good amount from say 2012, I am not experiencing what the article suggests, My sales have been the same for the last three years, 1 sometimes two names a week steadily, I sold 72 in 2018, I am about on the same pace for 2019, the ROI drop was to be expected with the industry saturation so I am not sweating that so much.

I think there is some validity to this comment. All is complacent by the governing authorities regarding the defunct Alpnames.com ,where alpnames first without warning raised prices at the time where most of their domains would be renewed in their system,when that was not enough to keep the weak dying sinister registra going they just cleaned out the the cash register and LEFT. Behind the scenes when customers contacted Verisign ,the owner of .com and .net and about 10-12 other crappy extensions,they passed the buck to icann. Icann pretty much was lax until other registras starting venting concern ,registras such as ''epik'' Epiks ,Rob Monster stepped up to the plate and is working to get to a solution that will allow all domainers keep the domains they would like to keep. With that icann has put out a statement saying they are making sure domains will be frozen at alpnames and will not drop or delete. Most domain owners still have no access to their accounts because the site is still down. Some old passwords just do not work and cant be reset or changed because the passage leads to the error default page. All this being said ,anytime a domain is regged or renewed verisign and icann make a heap of cash that adds up fast, most registras are selling them at cost in hopes of making money from hosting and other confusion that you might not uncheck and pay for but you really did not need. So with ho hum sense of urgency on the part of the companies and regulators ,the confidence in this industry will start to slip,with this when the next best thing that will make the .com look like the 800 number comes along ,all but the best domains will survive. ,probably one word and one word brandables will be of any real value.

if it is dying slowly.. then its dying mega slowly... and we'll all be very dead before it is dead.