9 Current Trends in Domain Investing I Am Seeing Develop

Like everything I post,  these are all opinion but as a person that reads and watches the industry daily,  there are some things that appear to be evolving in our industry.  Here are 10 “trends” I see at this point in time.

1. Corporate downsizing: It was inevitable.  With parking income decreasing and less influx of cash coming into our industry over the last few years, there had to be a reduction of staff at some point in time. I would imagine that most domain related companies could continue to do business as is with less people.

2. Less conferences, less parties.  Back to Oversee here.  It’s a trend that will continue.  There will still be conferences but it will back to reality with just a few major conferences during the year.  Of course, there will still be parties afterwards but I bet the invite lists get a whole bunch smaller.  I barely got in before so I may be in trouble.

3. Dumping of dot nets by large portfolio holders. I do drop and auction list checks everyday and there is a noticeable increase in solid dot nets up for sale over the last year.  Tens of very good keywords are on the list weekly where in the past there were a few per week.  They’re keeping the dot coms and liquidating the dot nets.

4.  There is a huge opportunity to create and dump sites right now.  The multiple of revenue to sales price on Flippa is pretty strong.  I’m sure there are people doing this already,  but with the skills of many domain investors/designers I would think they could make 6 figures flipping developed domains after each site ages a year or so. There are so many people that just don’t know how to make a site or get it going and are willing to pay top dollar to have someone jump start it for them.

5. Three letter dot co domains are starting to gain a little steam.  I’m not saying I am a buyer or saying they are a good buy, but they are certainly coming up for auction more often in the last few months and seem to be selling.  I have seen 10 or so sell for $200 to $800

6. About to be a huge push to move dot co domains before they expire: They are coming up for renewal next month and there is going to be a HUGE influx of dropped domains into the market.  Dot co themed auctions are going to be the norm before July. I think Godaddy has a woodie just thinking about all the drops.

7. More than ever, domain investors are sitting on dusty domains worthless domains and their bags are getting bigger: Parking is down the drain, minisites don’t work, sites getting deindexed quicker than ever.  It takes time and effort to develop a real site and most domain investors don’t want or have the time to develop hundreds of names.  So there they sit,  collecting dust.  Holding all those names made sense with parking or minisites but when they sit there with absolutely no income isn’t financially viable.

8. Fusible is concentrating on their blog.  It’s been a noticeable change in the last few weeks.  Another great example of someone that realized they were spread too think and decided to concentrate on one thing.  Instead of being OK at 5 things, they are great at one. Although I will say I am so tired of them talking about techcrunch and how many times they and other blogs link to them.  It’s like a seeing a person who’s been on TV for the first time. They are so excited.  After they’ve been on a few times they realize it’s not that big of deal and tons of people are on tv everyday.

9. The big domain auction houses other than Sedo have to decided to take a “whatever you want” attitude towards reserves on names.  I like the name Jacob too but really, a million dollars plus for the name?  I knew social would sell, I even bet someone a beer that it would,  but I could also name 20 more that I absolutely guaranteed would not sell.  Too many names like that on lists lately.