question Domain industry is dying slowly?

[souren]

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?

 

[JB Lions]

Another couple of exceptional people. Very few people have the budgets of Rick, Frank or Mann not to mention their resources and domain portfolio quality.

You don't need those type of budgets. Names start at $69, most of what I get is a few hundred and under. My income has grown each year. You pay attention, make good buys, you can do this for a living. And it is bad advice he gave.

LOOKING GOOD! As I have been saying for months, because of #SocialMedia crisis, #DomainNames are HOT, HOT, HOT!! 2019 & 2020 are going to be MONSTER years for GREAT domains. Perhaps the best years ever for #Domaining yet!
DomainKing‏ @DomainKing Mar 16

 

[Tia Wood]

You don't need those type of budgets. Names start at $69, most of what I get is a few hundred and under. My income has grown each year. You pay attention, make good buys, you can do this for a living.

I have no doubt!

The point is, just because a few people are making it doesn't mean the industry as a whole isn't in a decline.

The foundation to support long term growth is just not there.

 

[Tia Wood]

LOOKING GOOD! As I have been saying for months, because of #SocialMedia crisis, #DomainNames are HOT, HOT, HOT!! 2019 & 2020 are going to be MONSTER years for GREAT domains. Perhaps the best years ever for #Domaining yet!
DomainKing‏ @DomainKing Mar 16

Well I give up then LOL

 

[JB Lions]

I actually have no idea what he means as far as SocialMedia crisis. Is he talking about FB/Instagram going down or all the news coming out about privacy and stuff like that. I know FB is taking a hit. That I would agree with. I think it's good to have a home base, a site. Something you have full control of. Use social media as an addition or driver of traffic to your site. Some people have made Social Media as some sort of foundation and then zap, something can happen. People/pages/accounts get banned or closed, companies can go out of business etc. So that could be what he means. Have a site, whatever happens on social media, you still have a site. So you would need a domain first. I guess he had some issue with Twitter, left and now he's back again.

 

[Tia Wood]

That's a great point. I would love for him to elaborate on that further.

 

[JB Lions]

What about the ICA? I always see some people with those badges, never really checked it out - https://www.internetcommerce.org/

The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) is a non-profit advocating for the rights and interests of domain name owners and related service providers.

If there is something already existing and some people feel not enough is being done, is this an avenue? Is there something people want them to be looking at, doing better, an issue that is not getting addressed etc?

 

[Tia Wood]

(ICA) If there is something already existing and some people feel not enough is being done, is this an avenue?

Great concept but doesn't seem to be much support for it. They've reported around $200k in finances, and not sure of what they are really doing. Also if you look at their financials it seems that most board members work just a couple of hours a week.

All around I am not sure of what they are doing and there seems to be an overall lack of support and education for it among domainers.

There's about 75 members which include individuals and companies. Still a small group.

Then again, I'd like to see much more support from it, the organization needs to be much, much more active in terms of what they are doing, educating domainers about the benefits of joining, perhaps some small business support and mentoring, etc.

It would be the best way to go in my opinion. No need to reinvent the wheel. But every domainer here should know who the ICA is and what they do. If not, there is still more work to be done.

 

[johnnie018]

I have no doubt!

The point is, just because a few people are making it doesn't mean the industry as a whole isn't in a decline.

The foundation to support long term growth is just not there.

Sounds like you’ve given up. Is this now projection?

 

[IMEZI]

total money of the domain industry still increasing but it would be divided to more tld's and more domainer's
in my personal opinion, it's not declining but became more competitive
in this digital era, you cant sit and watch hoping that everything will be done just as same as the past
almost everything will be changed within years, months, days, weeks, hours or even seconds

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Well that gonna make it worse imo , because imagine you hold the solarenergy.com
witch holds a good XXX,XXX Value in it. witch is in the direct result of bidders interest

First off, the word is 'which' not witch. Second, once they get their business started on the ngtlds, they always come back to buy the .com if they halfway succeeded in getting funding for their project.

 

[edword1]

According to me, every small and big enterprise need a professional website for online presence. I think domain investing is just fine and yet it's not dying.

 

[Kingslayer]

Most of those would have sold for more 10 years ago. Only very brandable non plural one word .com have gone up, not chocolate.com or files.com, they are way down.

I wasn't domaining then, but I disagree. Some single word sales I'm seeing i don't think would have sold for 6/7 figures 10 years ago.

I think the pattern we are seeing is monster sales are becoming rarer (8 figure sales), for example i don't think anyone would pay £30 million+ for Vacation Rentals 2019, i think even P*rno would struggle to reach what it as in the past but 6/low 7 figures are becoming the norm, I'm seeing 6 figure sales reported quite often (almost weekly) and quite often my reaction is 'how did that go for that amount?' and i suspect many don't even get reported, so we don't even know about many other sales.

It's quite normal nowadays for investors to pay 6/7 figures for domains as investments, Andrew R said publicly he made a 7 figure offer for a domain a couple weeks ago, i don't think this was the case 10-15 years ago.

What you've got to remember, dictionary domains are becoming rarer and rarer, they are either in use by businesses or major companies like Amazon/Microsoft/Disney own these assets and are just sitting on them or extremely wealthy domain investors own them and for a company to buy a domain from any of those is going to cost a lot of $£$£.

 

[NameLlama]

I wasn't domaining then, but I disagree. Some single word sales I'm seeing i don't think would have sold for 6/7 figures 10 years ago.

I think the pattern we are seeing is monster sales are becoming rarer (8 figure sales), for example i don't think anyone would pay £30 million+ for Vacation Rentals 2019, i think even P*rno would struggle to reach what it as in the past but 6/low 7 figures are becoming the norm, I'm seeing 6 figure sales reported quite often (almost weekly) and quite often my reaction is 'how did that go for that amount?' and i suspect many don't even get reported, so we don't even know about many other sales.

It's quite normal nowadays for investors to pay 6/7 figures for domains as investments, Andrew R said publicly he made a 7 figure offer for a domain a couple weeks ago, i don't think this was the case 10-15 years ago.

What you've got to remember, dictionary domains are becoming rarer and rarer, they are either in use by businesses or major companies like Amazon/Microsoft/Disney own these assets and are just sitting on them or extremely wealthy domain investors own them and for a company to buy a domain from any of those is going to cost a lot of $£$£.

One day they will all be sold, held by the largest corporations. Opportunitied will be much lesser.

 

[JayT]

Domains are probably considered an unorthodox investment by many. The thought of holding large amounts of investment money online, at a registrar as we do is a hard pill to swallow for many. Domains are an excellent investment and will continue to grow throughout all our lives.

 

[HotKey]

he regularly does "hygiene" (his term) to keep what is truly worth keeping. As a result he has a quality portfolio of a modest number. He does what main of us don't (well me ) quality over quantity. He said in one of his presentations at NamesCon that he currently has 37 domain names in his portfolio.

Performing hygiene on a 37 domains portfolio...I'd imagine not much plaque build-up in there, if we're talking dental.

This is a segment of the domain industry that is dying slowly: nTLDs.

Kate can we go with "slowly waking"?
I mean , these guys have barely left the womb..

 

[Mr. Deleted]

Kate can we go with "slowly waking"?
I mean , these guys have barely left the womb..

Ya, and some have even lost their extension after spending God-awful amounts of money for sponsored tlds. I think Der Spiegel was one of them. https://domainnamewire.com/2018/09/25/dot-brand-termination/

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Online ad spending continues to go up, the first 3 quarters of 2018, highest ever. That's even with any problems out there, like ad blockers.

As far as social media, most see that as just another avenue to revenue, not a replacement but an addition. Also, as another source to drive traffic to their sites.

I don't know what they spend...
But parking revenue from Google is trending down from year to year...
The mentioned Ad-budgets are definitely related to Facebook and other SMs.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

Regarding aftermarket...
Competition and supply are trending up... so average prices are trendig down naturally... nothing abnormal here.

 

[alcy]

there are 2 different unrelated concepts here:

the need for domains.. which always existed... is on the rise.. and will exist until end of internet (not any time soon)...

and then there is domainers.. those who sell names.. those making profit and not making profit from doing it.

the two concepts are unrelated.

JB lions said it best imo.. like everything in life, what you will get out of domaining in terms of failure or success.. will be directly proportional to your time and effort put into it.

example.. spend 2 hours a week domaining, and your results will be lesser than if you spend 2 hours per day.. etc.

of course the times of regging pizza.com to sell it for millions few years later are over... so the profit scales have changed. but as long as internet expands, which it does.. new businesses and endusers arrive and need names etc.. the domain industry exists and is up for grabs.. for anyone who decides to learn about it and put the time into it... again, like for any other venture in life. no difference.

 

[JB Lions]

Just saw this pop up, was wondering why is MySpace trending, reminded me of some things mentioned in this thread:

"Report: Myspace has lost all the photos, videos, and music its users uploaded between 2003 and 2015 due to data corruption during a server migration project (@doctorow / Boing Boing)"

"Social networking company Myspace has apologized for apparently losing 12 years' worth of music uploaded to its site, following a server migration error -- a loss potentially amounting to 50 million songs"

So besides "People/pages/accounts get banned or closed, companies can go out of business etc" they can also lose stuff.

Another good reason to get your own site, make backups.