Domagon said:
Good article overall, but I take issue with the following statement...
Not exactly. In a Depression there is LESS money in circulation; low monetary velocity.
To be clear, there may be more money in the economy, but much of it is being hoarded / doesn't exist except as offsetting ledger entries; that's where much of the bailout money is - it's not entering the general economy, but rather exists only on paper.
At least for now - if and when the bulk of the "bailout money" enters the general economy, there could be high inflation, but that's likely a few years away at the earliest.
Anyways, as of now, low monetary velocity (less money in general circulation) is why economic activity is spiraling down - people don't have money to spend, and thus cutback leading to a downward spiral in demand, leading to even more cutbacks, etc - hence a "Depression".
High quality domains will continue to fetch top-dollar.
Marginal to good domains will still have a market, but somewhat smaller one; more reliant on end-users.
Even in a very bad economy, many new businesses are starting / expanding on the internet - most all of them will need a domain(s) for their website with many turning to the resale market.
IMHO, the only way the domain market could implode is if something else came along that makes domains obsolete. I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.
Heck, even though the internet and cheap long distance (via cell phones) is widespread, vanity toll free numbers are still in demand more than 40 years after they were introduced. Domains have only existed for about half that time. Still relatively new, though maturing, compared to other addressing / navigation technologies. Domaining is here to stay for the longhaul.
Ron
Well......that's a good point. Maybe the extra money pumped into the economy won't have an affect as fast as I had thought.
I think the real collapse though is still coming.....it will catch most domainers off guard b/c they are under the impression that this is the collapse, or it already happened and it won't get too much worse.
Not to be crude.....but the whole market needs to sh*t itself to get rid of all the overspecualtion. Where we are at right now is not anywhere near the end.....or even the next six months as Snoop states.
Lower payouts, higher reg fees, ICANN talk of lifting price caps and redoing registry and registrar agreements, WIPO whisperiing (I've seen nobody else mention this!) about allowing for electronic filings of UDRPs (imagine if a group of lawyers were to prepare 5,000 cases against Frank Schilling or you or I in advance and then file all of them electronically in one day. And Imagine how much easier it would be to file......UDRP growth would explode. My point is there are other hidden dangers coming that take too long to spell out in an blog article). Now imagine, all this happens while the economy gets worse. Now imagine, if some domainer dude has 20,000 domains like BabyGirl.biz......he's going to dump them all.
LOL.....BabyGirl.biz is taken....I just checked.....he has some 5,600 domains. I bet all are similar. Do you think he will be here in the fall of 2010? I should revisit this post in the fall of 2010 to see if I was right. Or, will the market depth and weight for "baby girl" pull him though the darkest days?
To right this market, millions and millions of domains need to drop.....b/c they are worthless. Who knows the number? Maybe 40 million domains in the .me, .info, .biz etc.......and along with the purge will be a purging of many of those domainers if they can't offset the loss with earnings from income producers. I say this all the time: It's freakin' hard enough to get folks to use a .com, so how in the world will the other extensions, except ccTLD's, ever make it. They won't on a whole....they will drop b/c each is a "virtual ghost town". No traffic = no money .
My rep at Godaddy told me that many big domainers are totally losing everything. This is part of the reason why the amount of pages in the drop lists at TDNAM has increased 33% alone in the last month. I pay attention to that b/c GD is the largest registrar and I believe the size of the drop lists tell a story about where we are and where we are going. I personally believe you can expect the overall lists to go up over 20, 30, or 40 fold in the coming year....or more....I'm not even sure how to calculate that. For example, if you search TDNAM for domains in the 100 -999 range for uniques the page has gone from a standard 1.5 pages to almost three just recently. This happened in the course of one week only. It's just a sliver of what is to come. Once the major flood comes those that make their bread and butter selling won't be able to sell squat (unless they hold "primos") b/c of the law of supply and demand. Granted .......most dropping will be trash but they will still bring down the market.
I'm not saying domaining or domains are dying......I'm just saying I believe many domainers and domains won't exist or matter here some time not so far into the furture. When domainers start to flood the market with domains then other domainers who need cash will have to flood the market also to stay alive. It will be a domino effect. All the domainers without a solid PPC earnings or earnings from elsewhere will have to sell at rock bottom or fold up shop.
@Snoop.......I don't consider the predictions as stating things that are already happeing b/c we have not seen the bad stuff yet. The domain market did take a dip/hit but what I speak of is not relating at all to this. We've hit a plateau after the drop , so to speak, and the real whammy is coming.
Regarding, the evidence regarding doubling of UDRP's....I came accross that when I was defending my domain in a UDRP here recently. I'll have to dig that up and come back here with that info. On a side note......did you know that some panelists have done over 900 UDRPs. 900 x $600 a pop = 540K. You can see where their loyalty lies. That is something else that had astonished me.
I'll say this......I've been a stock investor since I was 20 years old. I have never been a bear until Jan. 2007....always a bull. I was telling my friends to get their money out of the stock market. They did not listen. I'm not saying I'm a guru.....nor do I want to be but I did see it coming. I've always had an uncanny ability to see things into the future....that's not bragging that is just one of my strengths I finally gave recognition to myself for when I was about 25 yrs old since I kept calling things right. That is when I finally decided to stop second-guessing myself.
Have I been wrong? Yes....even though I'm good at predictiing I have made some bad errors, such as when I bought $10,000 of Bingo.com stock in 1998, since it is the most popular game in the world, and I lost it all. They did a reverse split and it fizzled down to virtually nothing. Those mishaps aside.....I've done well looking to the future. So....yes I could be wrong.....but I put my thoughts out there and they are "just predictions" ......so take them for what they are worth, if anything.
Anyhow, I sure hope I'm wrong and full of hot air and everyone can laugh at me later as well as now.
.
