The Rick Schwartz Domain Name and Traffic Blog: RicksBlog.com – Home of The Domain King®

Afternoon Folks!!

So just for this insane moment, let's believe I am right about domain values of .com going through the roof within 3 years. Let's just say the vision I had is on the time-line I put on it. It's right on schedule AND I have an added bonus that I never even dreamed of that will make my vision small in comparison to what is LIKELY to happen.

See I never envisioned 1900 .whatevers coming to the market that would add fuel to a raging fire. When they crash and burn that will be the moment that .com skyrockets with this completely unexpected booster rocket really takes off. DEMAND is what skyrockets and when demand skyrockets it takes the price along for the ride!

Thank goodness GREED won over the common good! See, the threat I see is not where others see it and so they would be surprised by what I think is going on and what would constitute a GENUINE threat.

A GENUINE threat would look like this. Instead of www, there may be an abc.DOMAIN or a xxx.DOMAIN or MY.DOMAIN. without the .com. THAT my friends could become a game changer. But there might be less money in doing it that way for the architects of this clusterf*ck.

I don't think the public has been served and I think I just showed a way in which it was.

100 registrars signed up for .PW this week. Whoo-hoo!! I think 99 of yet to have their first customer yet. Do you care? Does it mean something? The only thing it means is advertising dollars for 3rd parties until the party is over cuz this baby is DOA in my book. And that makes .com more attractive not less attractive.

I am sure I did not make any friends just now. But what am I supposed to do? Go along with the music and bullshit folks that are coming here to read some reality? I would never insult my readers like that and those that feel insulted can feel that way. I wish everyone good luck and great success.

If I see a winner I will say so. If I see a loser I will do the same thing just more forcefully before folks piss away hard earned money. But it will only take a dozen or more failures to begin with that may doom the others. This is one hell of a slippery slope. The barrage of bullshit to come is going to be deafening to some of us. But there will be one place you can come and hear the unvarnished truth as I see it. Right or wrong, I am certain! :-)

But I base my vision on a whole lot of milestones, mile-markers and years plus the parallels of history and define by numbers. So that is why I would rather lease now and negotiate in 1-3 years after what I see happening, happens. We can all look back in 2016 and see a clear winner and a clear loser. Place your bets by asking the right questions and looking back to where we have already been.

Stats say 2% may survive this. That would make 38 out of 1900. Better odds with Roulette!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

Like other things, I have been waiting a long time for certain milestones to appear. But to me the granddaddy of all of them is the day that mainstream catches up to where the adult industry was online back in 1996-1998. When mainstream would begin to take their businesses as seriously as the adult industry did back then. They did not close shop on weekends. They understood they had a 24/7 business and they provided customer service to match. Most importantly, they understood it was about sales.

Mainstream still goes home at 5PM on Fridays. Their online store is still open, just nobody there to man the business and they are too cheap or too stupid to fix that in too many cases. Not all. It is evolving. But still so many don't get it and so many more, don't want to get it. But those businesses that think like that will be forced to evolve because their competition will eat their lunch if they don't. It's gonna happen more and more and some companies won't even know what hit them because the decline will be too steep and too fast to see or catch. Their demise is already being plotted by aware competitors.

Make no mistake, we are going to see a lot of online companies fold during this period as well. Maybe the most since the bubble burst. Many are just not seeing what they thought and are stuck and that is not good in a growing medium. Stagnation is a problem that is widespread. Most just depends on what level you are stagnating at.

But these things are starting to change. Stupid things like SALES are starting to get their attention. Maybe even conversions? Maybe even TARGETING?? Follow up? Unheard of!

My point is that while we are getting closer to this back to the future event, I can still point to dozens of things that mainstream has yet to even discuss. Many of those adult guys made their millions and rode into the sunset. Many became domainers. And even more built mainstream businesses using adult business principles learned in 1996-1999. True discoveries of things unknown and now being discovered again.

When I compare the headwinds in mainstream and domaining during 2000-2012, they were brutal at times. Matter of FACT, from 1996-1999, it was virtually impossible to even have a conversation about domains or traffic. Remember, there was no aftermarket. There wasn't even Afternic and the birth of the shill bidder days.

I offered 50% of Porno.com to ANYONE that would go partners with me to develop it in 1997. They all laughed in my face. Thankfully they laughed!! Had they said agreed to my proposal I would have had to pay at least $10 Million for their share over the years plus any growth that may have occurred from having it a full fledged business.

But I still believe in that model. Half of a watermelon is better than 100% of a grape.

So I predict that at TRAFFIC in Las Vegas you will see many partnerships emerge. They won't necessarily be with JointVentures.com. They will be made between individuals at the show because the time is right and RESOURCES are available! People with talent are looking for jobs and more importantly, opportunity.

During the past 20 years it has been hard to find qualified talent. Unemployment was at near zero for many years. That is no longer the case. Talent is out there and talent is looking for long term opportunities.

We are at a moment in which those headwinds have shifted. They are in fact becoming tailwinds. And while those tailwinds are not shifted completely, the process of that shift has begun. It is underway. I have been writing about this for several months. How we as an industry will be sheared away in different orbits and missions.

1900 .whatevers insure this will take place sooner rather than later. Like a MONSTER winter weather front coming through, this is highly visible, highly predictable and highly profitable. I may be 100% wrong, but I have never been so certain of anything in my life because I have been studying it a very long time and I have accumulated the facts and examples along the way to prove it. The buys, the sells, the deals, the predictions, the actions and the events. Proof. I spent the last 18 years gathering proof. Most others are on the hope train. Hope and math don't intersect in my book.

Ignorance can be cured with a willing mind. But those that cling to ignorance when the thought cure is there have to be prepared to go down with it as well. Numbers along with other people's mistakes paint a vivid picture for some and are invisible and meaningless to others.

Which picture do you see?

Here is a more recent post about porno and advertising. And this one asks if Porno can save JC Penny's.

Have a GREAT Day!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

Want to make $1000 before noon TODAY? Then do what I do. Each morning I go into my account and shut off auto-renewal on a dozen or more domains. I look at each domain at $100 each over the course of the next 10 years with the increases etc. So each time I take a domain off auto-renewal and prepare for it to drop, I make $100.

We all have pigeon shit. Been talking about it for 3 years. Remember back then that the way folks made up for not having quality was having quantity? So where did all the 6 figure domain holders go? Most are long gone. Swallowed up by their own overhead. They never even wrote a goodbye letter. They just went bye bye.

Pigeon Shit can make you blind!

I have dropped 4000 domains in the past 2 years and I plan at least 1000 more. Each 1000 domains frees up $100,000 to buy ONE REAL DOMAIN.

Look, with time we learn things. Some things don't pan out. Some do. Each day, each year we get new information and the new information is what turns a domain into one worth tossing. Some pigeon shit eating domainer will pick it up and then you will have defined things even more.

I know it is hard to let go. I know as well as anyone. But what works works and what does not work is called a recurring bill. That's not an asset. That is a liability. So if your domains are a liability, wtf are you doing?

Overhead is what makes or breaks anyone or any business. Things change, things evolve, we learn and grow. Phrases used just a few years ago are now obsolete. That's what happens when you are on the cutting edge of things. You get things that get outdated quickly.

So what makes you a domainer? If you can't rattle off a half dozen impressive domains........then what are you doing? I can't tell you how sad it makes me to see portfolios with 1000 domains and not a one worth registration fees. That domainer can right his ship, but he still FIRST has to learn what makes one domain have value and another one have only a bill. Piece of glass vs a diamond. You would think one would take a DAY OR TWO to figure it out.

I am not happy to say that Pigeon Shit Farmers outnumber domainers by some 100-1. That's the number folks. 100-1. Maybe more. There are well over 100,000 that call themselves domainers but less than 1000 that actually qualify.

Have a GREAT PIGEON SHIT FREE Day!

Rick Schwartz