Morning Folks!!
If you were to study the markets for antiques and collectibles you would certainly see the domain market quite differently. If you understood these industries you might understand how I see things. Something that is rare MAY have value. But something that became rare usually once had tons of that item all over the place and they slowly disappeared until the realization they were virtually gone. They become from everyday to rare and THAT is where value and growth comes from. DEMAND. Demand and limited availability causes prices to rise. This phenomenon is not controllable for the most part unless you are De Beers.
This clusterf*ck that ICANN is in charge of and the delays show how poorly thought out this entire mess is. Delays are very costly to those with new extensions. The meter is ticking and the overhead is accelerating and not a DIME is coming in. But what does ICANN care? They ain't De Beers.
And what happens when for many this is the bridge to nowhere other than collapse? How does one collapse figure into the other extensions? That will be a factor. What happens when an extension collapses? Nobody can say there will be no fallout because we just don't know.
What we do know is there will be consolidation as we already see. Some registries will make a profit. But what EXACTLY does that have to do with DOMAIN INVESTING?? Collecting maybe. But investing?
And for every successful .whatever there will be a .com counterpart swallowing up possibly a MAJORITY of their traffic and business. So I am looking forward to all this cuz I see nothing but great things because of where I am positioned. Where you are positioned. We have nothing to worry about. The poor schmuck that tries to build his empire on sand may have something to worry about.
The world is about sales and if I were to have come 18 years ago with the sole purpose of flipping for a profit, I would have been SOL pretty quickly. Markets and demand have to develop. This is like watching 1900 new hula-hoops coming to market. Instead of round they will try square and triangular. They will copy the greatest success of all time and repeat it 1900 times and everyone will become rich!
Not so fast.
Does not work quite like that.
And of course you will hear some BS releases about manufactured deals less than arm lengths deals and then some will swallow the bait. I have an entire post coming just for that.
Many domainers focus on a smaller and smaller subset of less and less targeted groups of people with lower and lower spending power and wonder why they make no money. I just think that is a poor formula with unneeded and unwanted limits.
I PRAY one of these 1900 will break out and we have the chance for a replay. But to be honest. I think the next big extension is one that has already been around for a very long time. That extension will just get a second look because next to most of the .crap that is coming out, they look pretty damn good.
If we were in Vegas, the odds makers would not give you very encouraging numbers. The odds of success if just ONE net gTLD came to market is watered down 1900 times with 1900 different directions. And 1900 companies with many sets of problems and some will go broke. Eventually you run out of other people's money. Eventually lots of things happen as failure is exposed.
Point is, study what has become valuable in the past and you will find out what a DUD looks like. There are missing elements here. It's almost folly. Now I will exclude .Brands. They can have use but it is just that a USE! Their MAIN ADDRESS will still be Brand.com. The front door. The main Entrance. The door that can still lead to all others. Including .Brand but with few or no roads to .whatever.
Rick Schwartz
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