The headline here is the title of a thread on Namepros getting a lot of attention. There seems to be a bunch of these posts in 2018.
A lot of them seem to center around the frustrations of those who have invested in new gtlds. Another thread asks why it’s so hard to sell new gtlds?
When one looks at the industry, they might see themselves on the wrong side of the industry. I think the industry is the network of registrars, registries and aftermarket sites like Sedo, NameJet, Afternic, etc…
As a domain investor you are actually a customer, not the industry. The business is very competitive and you really have to be a self – starter today. Gone are the days of finding low hanging fruit. There are still deals out there but very rarely are they on the cheap that many new to the industry would like to invest at.
For example when I started the Dot Tv subforum on Namepros back in 2005, there were names you could get fairly cheap, along with that you could get lucky. Verisign had plenty of glitches, one such glitch was that some premium names dropped without a premium fee.
If someone had a deal with Verisign, meaning they could get a LL or LLL .tv without a premium renewal, when it expired someone could jump on it and get the name. It’s how I first came to communicate with John Berryhill, back in 2004 LCD.tv a monster name that truly fit the extension dropped. Now at this time Verisign had some names with outrageous registration fees and renewals. WOW.tv was $50,000 a year at one time.
I always checked www.tv to see what were the best names with the lowest premium, I put in LCD.tv and it’s not a premium, $35. I was like no way, so I go to GoDaddy and I check and it’s available at $29.99. I register the name and I knew at the time that a registrar or registry could take back a name. So I email John Berryhill as he didn’t live far from me and explained the situation. He said don’t mention anything for 30 days and then you will have the name with no problem. So that was me getting lucky, I don’t know that a new domainer today can get that kind of lucky.
There is so much choice, that even if you get a prospective buyer you have to really price your name right. It’s not like in .com where you have all the other things that surround .com. If someone is making an offer on a .photography name, how high can you go? There is .photo, .pics, .media, .video etc…
So I think people need to really assess why they are dabbling in domain investing? If you don’t understand branding, linguistics, have a great sales pitch? Owning stock in Verisign or GoDaddy might be a better way to participate in the upside of domain names.
