Jump on the Bandwagon!!

Subscribe to Elliot's BlogI’ve been criticized a few times about my coverage of various cctld – and/or lack of coverage. Simply put, I don’t think most are good long term investments when they are released. There are too many people trying to grab these new domain names at the bottom to sell them to the next round of fools who want to sell them to the next round of fools who want to… well, you get the picture.
Sure, quite a bit of money can be made on quickly reselling newly released domain names, but how will you know ahead of time if you get stuck “holding the bag?” I really can’t think of one cctld introduced in the last 5 years where a majority of the domains purchased in the aftermarket have held their value.
I am not averse to risk taking at all. In fact, I’ve been day trading GS ($86.60), LVS ($8.25) and MNTG ($2.69) for the last three days – sold the first two for a nice profit. At least with stock investments, there is a priced market where I can sell these stocks for a set price if the value goes down. I can generally put a stop loss and limit my losses in most cases. If you buy a domain name only because you think the price will increase due to the newest domain “trend,” you are really gambling.
Like I’ve said before, if an extension is accepted and widely used by the public five years after its release, and the values are increasing due to that, then I may buy to develop and hold as an investment. If you are buying just to get on the next bandwagon before it leaves the station, chances are good that you’ve already missed the boat and will get wet.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

7 COMMENTS

  1. Very well said. Anyone interested in domain names as a pure investment should wait for new extensions to prove their worth before making a substantial investment otherwise its pure gambling. And as you hinted – many have been burned before.

  2. I invested in .Asia.
    And yes is is a gamble. But for that particular name space the early adoption rate and future value indicators are good.
    As for telling people to wait….well im afraid that thats not sound advice.
    As every new name space launch has indicated, its no longer a matter of casual registrations as needed.
    Its a land rush. And when the rush is over, there is nothing left.
    If you see value for the future of your business in investing in a particular space, take the gamble. Early šŸ™‚

  3. It’s a game of “tag you’re it.” And in this domain economy, you don’t want to be “it”. But you can send me Elliot’s hate mail for killing your extension dreams. I’m used to it.

  4. Unlike .com and the other gTLDs, ccTLDs tend to be more focused on their local markets. Thus applying .com speculation rules, (as was done in the case of .eu ccTLD) can backfire badly. Some ccTLDs like .me are really repurposed ccTLDs but the land rush phase in these ccTLDs do work on the greater fool principle. These ccTLDs then collide with reality on the anniversary of the landrush when many of these highly speculative domains are dumped. The mistake a lot of domainers tend to make with ccTLDs is that they expect .com level sales. The value of most ccTLDs is inextricably linked to the size of the market that the ccTLD serves and the dominant languages in that market. And unlike the gTLDs, the registration policies are decided by the country’s government and or registry. As for ICANN’s deluge of extensions, all but a few will succeed and .com will still be the dominant global extension for a while yet. However cumulatively, the ccTLDs are growing in volume.

  5. I’m learning to like dot info, but not because it’s important the values increase.
    Since buying domains is fun, easy & potentially profitable, the ratio of registered to developed must be thousands to one. I agree development is work, but I think you are missing the middle ground between none and lots. How much development do you have to do to beat parked pages and get to the top of the rankings for long tail terms?
    Right now I can pick up as many exact match keyword domains for long tail phrases as I want for $2.25 in dot info. I think it will be years before any of the other extensions will be developed. Hosting is almost free these days, so I can put up a “fire and forget” mini site for a total direct cost of $3 or less. Then I have a year to see if I can get my out of pocket cost back and earn enough to justify a full price renewal.
    I can understand how you and your readers who play with high dollar domains require a different business model. However, for someone with little capital, an aversion to risk, no desire for employees, and who also likes to write, it’s a viable alternate approach.

  6. I agree with everyone! But seriously, I think that ccTLD’s can have real value if they are targeted and make proper use of their extension. For instance, I think many of the .me’s are genius. I bought a few which I really believe have great value IF used properly and developed. That is what people don’t understand. Undeveloped, most ccTLD’s are useless as they will never get any traffic except for maybe other low level domain investors searching the seas for abandoned ships.
    But, a domain like Easy.info, sure, that is a great domain. As is, Assisting.me (which I own). In the hands of an elderly assistance firm, that is a highly brandable domain and marketing tool.
    Ultimately, any domain name is what you make of it. If you put in nothing (meaning two things: $$$ for a good name, or $$$ for developing a mediocre name), then you will get nothing. But if you put in one or both of those ingredients, then you will have a viable website and business.

  7. NOTE: I’ve seen a few of John McCormac’s comments around the blogs, this guy seems to have a good amount of gray matter in his skull. I like what he says and agree with most of it. Wish he’d hunt me down for a little headbumping.
    Regarding cctlds, any domainer in the game for over two years understands that a cctld can be “valuable’ if they meet certain factors, and that the value is always going to be considerably less than a .com. For instance, one word popular trend domains. Any “top 1000” single word trending domain names in any extension is going to be worth minimum $5k. Note that I say “minimum”.
    So if you have a b@ner for new cctlds, don’t bother buying anything beyond a dictionary word and make sure it isn’t full of suffixes and prefixes, past tense adjectives, more than one word (phrases) blah blah.
    For example, I own Prize.ws and Cloning.ws. Great one word domains with that lame “ws” extension domainers were promoting as meaning “Web Site” back before Elliot was born (j/k bro). I bought the domains for cheap and have held on to them. Several auction houses have accepted them, but with no reserves. I’m thinking from experience that these domains are worth at least $3k – $5k. Since I paid way way less than that for them, I’ll take offers in that price range, but I’m wary of placing domains in auctions with no reserve. You should be too.
    Another point is that search engines don’t rate extensions, but they do include domain relevance. This is an SEO issue, and I’m sure lots of people will argue one way or another. However, if you are lucky enough to grab a top-trending single word domain in any cctld, I recommend you putting content on it ASAP. Get the domain indexed and go the full DMOZ route. There are several domain companies now that offer building content on your domains to do this. I work for Whypark, and there’s a reason I chose to join their team. Just so this comment isn’t a blatant ad, I enthusiastically recommend anyone wanting to enhance their revenue chances on their domains, ESPECIALLY ccTLD’s which don’t get typeins and don’t work with traditional parking, to contact all of the content-building services and decide what’s best for their portfolio.
    So Elliot, good buddy, the trick for cctlds isn’t in the fact they don’t resell for big bucks, but whether they resell for a profit, or that they position themselves with proper content building and SEO placement so that revenue can be achieved from SE traffic and thereby increasing their value in the long run.
    My recommendations for TLD picks on domains are as follows, with longtails losing value exponentially as you go down the list:
    .COM
    .ORG (surprising, huh!)
    .INFO
    .DE
    .NET
    .US
    .MOBI
    .TV
    .ME
    and the rest is a toss-up.
    By the way, Burbank.com is a REQUIRED VISIT by anyone who is looking to buy into the most promising sector of domaining, geodomains. Elliot is incorporating the best features and revenue strategies available building out a geodomain. We all can learn a lesson by checking out the evolution of his multi-million dollar domain. I am.

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