2016 Domain Predictions and Trends?

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

As we all saw, profited and went crazy over registrations towards the end of 2015. Experts said "We are not experts at the moment ". All because of the frenzy of NNNN, NNLLN, NNLNLNLNLNLNLNNLNLNNLNNLN.

What do you guys think will happen in 2016? Is the market going to slow down? Or remain like this crazy and letters & numbers in almost all popular TLDs disappear.

What should be the strategy going in towards 2016?

 

[Kate]

I'm not an expert
But I would predict:

• Chinese bubble burst
• New gTLD fatigue

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

But I would predict:

• Chinese bubble burst
• New gTLD fatigue

hahaha good one. So in the end .com is the king right!

Well I hope our investments give us good returns though

 

[doubleU]

Markets get saturate and supply vastly outweighs enduser demand, take advantage and grab gems dropping from overstocked domainers.

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

take advantage and grab gems

Trying my best to do that atm.

 

[McDuke]

I'm not an expert
But I would predict:

• Chinese bubble burst
• New gTLD fatigue

The question we must ask is, what happens after China buys up many of the top .com's?

Will the shorter, more pratical gtlds jump in value?

Interesting times!

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

Interesting times!

Sure. But rather confusing for new comers into the domain name industry.

 

[Mahogany]

Anybody who keeps mentioning a potential bubble doesn't understand what's going on in China. They haven't got a clue.

Anything 5L or lower in King and 4L in the next four top extensions will only go up over time. Same for 6n in King and 5n and lower in the other top 4.

There will be exceptions. I'm speaking generally. But there is no bubble. Com will always be top dog and eventually brandables will be the talk of the town again.

2016 will be very interesting. I'm looking forward to more people panicking because they purchased during a trend they don't understand and I can buy cheap and hold it longer then them and make some easy bucks.

 

[CJ6]

At some point, there will be a major news coverage on this. Then we will see tons of purchases and prices go through the roof. Then, the bubble will burst and prices will settle.

 

[tomcarl]

- gTLDs remain lukewarm but steady, except an announcement of 1 or 2 major rebrands which heats things up big time, then gradually returns to the normal.
- Alphabet drops (redirects) abc.xyz to the.alphabet
- Google begins displaying full domain on mobile again.
- DomainNameSales introduces a domain auction marketplace, becomes very hot. Flippa introduces discounted listing fees due to drop in traffic/listings.
- The 2 or 3 people who are pumping money into the chip buyouts are revealed, people slowly begin losing confidence in market, 4L .COM prices remain steady. Massive price drops/deletes on 3L/4L non-Com extensions, as well as long numerics on .com
- Chinese government gets even more involved with overseeing and regulating digital assets including domains.
- DomainSherpa hosts a show about how the Bubble bursted, all the sherpas talk about how they made decent money and how you have to get in and out on these type of things.
- Prices of pronounceable 5L .COMs go up significantly, even mediocre ones.
- BBucket begins regulating/rolls back the option to transfer domains between accounts.
- Chinese begin taking interest to LLLN .COMs
- Dozens of gTLD applicants abandon applications, current owners of mediocre extensions sell at a loss.
- Rick Schwartz sells 2 or 3 more .COMs in the 7 figures.
- Daniel Negari hits The Mega Millions Lotto for one of the largest jackpots in history, wears .XYZ shirt during interview.
- .APP becomes one of the most successful/most used new gTLDs

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

Anything 5L or lower in King and 4L in the next four top extensions will only go up over time. Same for 6n in King and 5n and lower in the other top 4.

true that!

 

[brandnow]

ngtlds, ngtlds, ngtlds

 

[GoWeb]

Many top COMs are available cheaply right now in middle of chinese craziness on the numerics.

Using commonsense, the very best of nGTLDs would appreciate over the few coming years.
dot COM / dot NET would perhaps dominate for a few more years (5-10 years) before people start discarding ".com" as useless extra letters, except for the SINGLE WORD dot com domains.

Remember the principle of INERTIA? Moving objects tend to stay moving, stationary objects tend to stay put. So the momentum on nGTLD is lacking right now but once the premium nGTLDs catch momentum, their general value would skyrocket. Many corporates are already moving their COMs to meaningful nGTLDs. Many nGTLDs sales are already crossing $100k.

I would like to think of nGTLDs not just as "EXTENSIONS" like .mobi /.biz but as more proper URLs.
Like why would a business want to register "BayWatch.com" instead of "Bay.Watch", if available. After all, a URL is just an address and adding ".com" is just a mental habit formed by about 20 years of marketing. By itself, "dot COM" is no different than "dot XYZ".

The newer generation would get used to these nGTLDs more than the old hat one.

 

[Constantin S]

VR and AR boom...enough for me

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

adding ".com" is just a mental habit formed by about 20 years of marketing.

second that. but costs are high to hold some of the valuable new gTLDs

 

[GoWeb]

second that. but costs are high to hold some of the valuable new gTLDs

That's a thing to be worried about only in the short term.
Free market dynamics and increasing userbase would force the nGTLDs to reduce renewals to competitive levels.

I have heard dot COM renewal to be $100/year in 1995/1997 after it was initially offered even FREE for the first year !! Now, you can get a new dot com for $5.

 

[Muhammad Atif Qazi]

That's a thing to be worried about only in the short term.

I hope so, I have around 10 ngTLDs which cumulatively have considerable holding cost. But I am in it for the long haul so I'll stick to them. Frank Schilling is also a big advocate for new gTLDs plus he has his own list of new gTLDs which he's in charge of. At uniregistry I have found price of ngTLDs to be atleast $150 lower compared to other platforms like GoDaddy etc etc.

 

[brandnow]

second that. but costs are high to hold some of the valuable new gTLDs

only those with money will be able to buy and hold.

 

[Asfas1000]

Registries will become domainers.
Registrars will become domainers.
Dropcatchers will become domainers.
End users will become domainers.

 

[webm]

Registries will become domainers.
Registrars will become domainers.
Dropcatchers will become domainers.
End users will become domainers.

Haven't they already...