Morning Folks!!
My job was the same as the gold miner EXACTLY 100 years before. Mine as much gold as fast as possible and don't worry about anything until you lay your stake and get back to town. Their premise with a different booty. Their trail with a different prize.
Coincidentally I was in Alaska in 1998 on a cruise. The centennial of the gold rush. I did not know that before I went and when I found out, my body shuttered. We were walking an historical parallel. I already knew that and with oil wells I based my everything on that viewpoint. But what I had were gold mines that were also spewing oil. And they were not in Alaska, they were in Times Square and by the Ocean and other places people pass and are interested in going to.
But the moment I learned of the EXACT time and there was a second parallel, it did something to me that I will never forget. I never looked back after that moment. The moment that destiny proves you are on some exact path and your job is to stay on course no matter what the naysayers say. No matter the snickers. No matter the laughs. No matter what. I became an Evangelist. Not for religion, but for domains. For increasing business. For beating your competition. For being the best in your category. For reaching the next level no matter what that level is. I preached since 1996, but now it was a different level. Now I had confirmed what it was that I saw and could go out with a bolder more confident message.
The Internet was still the enemy. Most companies were yet to have an online presence let alone doing any ecommerce. Media wanted to put a dagger thru the heart of this beast and kill it. Today you can see why they were so scared. But then, who knew?
And then there was that one other magical moment on that trip. We were one day behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett and an all celebrity cruise. It was just then that Gates had been crowned the richest man in the world for the first time. I was on some sort of a magic carpet and whatever doubts I may have had before that trip, never surfaced again.
But I bought a miners hat on that trip and started to wear it. See I was thankful that while many thousands died searching for gold, I had the luxury of sitting in my bathrobe in a warm safe home and do the same thing they did. It was my tribute and my guilt.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
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WebDomainsBuy
I was always looking for gold as a kid. I lived up in the Sonoma Mountains but I never found gold only snakes and scorpions. :) I even bought my first metal detector at age 8. I still didn’t find the GOLD! I went to Alaska too in 1984 I was 5..
steve
People have missed the biggest gold mine ever, we know that.
They have families, they have no time, bla blah blah.
I get calls from all these people now with ‘great’ ideas which is them basically taking my money.
Amazing how they don’t want to do anything until it is provent out. Then they want to go back in time somehow and become partners of you.
I see exactly what you are talking about. People try a few things and fail and then never take a risk again. I don’t blame them because I see all the scams out there and 95% are scams.
But the Internet doesn’t care about you and is not a live person. People really missed the boat on this one. They are still missing it.
Drewbert
>People really missed the boat on this one. They are still missing it.
The weird thing is, most of the people that complained about missing the original domain cruise ship ignored the huge opportunity for a do-over and missed the IDN domain cruise ship when that left the port too.
Uzoma
Rick,
I suppose since we are speaking about a Gold mine, there’s no need to identify the Canneries, like would be necessary in a coal mine?
LS Morgan (not Morgan Linton)
Lets say we take a .com domain from 1995- when the speculation balloon went up- and assign it a pv of $10 (obviously, they cost more during some periods, less now, had no associated costs very early on but for the sake of round, easy numbers, lets start off with a $10 domain name in 1995…)
Lets give that same domain a fv of 1mm, 15 years later; you’re looking at a cagr of about 115%.
This isn’t a nuanced conclusion since the growth in domain values was more exponential than linear, but for the macro discussion, the figures line up well enough.
If we expect premium .com domains to continue on a similar pricing trajectory, that would mean that todays 1mm domain would be worth approximately 2 billion dollars in 2020. Relatively speaking, Burger King has a present market cap of 3.2 billion.
Still think this is sustainable?
Consider, for a minute, that maybe, premium .com domains and the cost basis’ they offered investors *were* one of the better investment vehicles for one period of time- and mucho congrats to guys like Rick who took advantage of that- but today, that might not be the case. The in-and-out action of the market meltdowns from 08-09 was juicier, big time, and that’s just one available opportunity in the last couple years.