Morning Folks!!
A fool and his money are soon and easily parted. I should know. I have been broke in my life. Made money and pissed it away. I did not know the difference between an investment and a gamble.
Maybe I can share this lesson with my readers and how you can avoid this pitfall.
The .Kiwi folks are nice. So is the casino pitboss.
So today we all have the golden opportunity to buy hotels.kiwi for $125,000.
Ok, so let's agree that is one of the very best .kiwi domains. For an end user in New Zealand, it might be a good gamble. It may even be a good investment.
Let's say Hotels.com would be their best prospect.
Oh snap! They use the sub-domain to achieve their goal with a cost of? ZERO!
Like I have said, if these companies want to look smart and have a real debate, talk about the FACTS. The facts are that these large companies have decided to build VERTICALLY not HORIZONTALLY! They are not wide, they are tall.
So if you want to see the future, look at dot-coms that can have sub domains. Problem with MANY gTLD's is they are not subdomainable from the get go and these extensions are 100% sub domaining without the .com. But when you can only use a handful of adjectives, nouns and verbs to describe your gTLD, you die on the vine. No question about it. Unless pigeon shit farmers come to your resuce.
Now the point of the post is if you have $125,000 you can buy this domain Hotels.kiwi. Is it a safe bet?
Let's see.....
Hotels.nz goes nowhere.
Hotels.mobi goes nowhere. How much is that bitch worth?
Hotels.biz goes nowhere. How much is that bitch worth?
Hotels.info goes nowhere. How much is that bitch worth?
You see where this is heading.
So will Hotels.com buy hotels.whatever x 1000? Probably not. But even if they did, the chances are they would just redirect to the dot-com. So how commercially meaningful is that??
So as a domain investor......that is an insane risk. For Hotels.com it may be the cost of doing business. Maybe not. Maybe they wait for some schmuck to buy it and WIPO them. A couple of those and this thing would deflate faster than the worst souffle!
It's a GAMBLE!
Now compare that with buying a $125,000 keyword.com. Even if you goof, even if it is not as good as you thought, don't you think the value is still probably 6 figures? So go look at dot-com domains asking about $200k and you will have your choice. Which is a safer investment?
The .Kiwi folks and the .Club folks are very legit. I never heard them say ridiculous things. Their credibility is intact. We can have a debate and a discussion. I don't see everything. I see what I see. They may add something of value.
So while those that don't care about their credibility and really don't give a rat's ass if you succeed or not as long as they succeed, will always run around and say silly things. But silly hurts them all. They come to market as one, times 1000, and they will leave the market one at a time x 990. Really sucky odds even for the biggest gamblers.
If you have millions, you can afford to gamble. If you don't can you afford a total loss? That is the ONLY question you need to ask.
I sold Casinos.mobi, Tickets.mobi, Escort.mobi for chump change. $122,000 loss.
Crusies.kiwi $83,000? I hope they find an end-user to buy it. But a domainer?? Really? I just see it as a gamble. I went to cruises.nz. It goes nowhere.
I own Cruises.mobi, want to buy it?? $83K? Do I hear $10,000? Do I hear $5000? What is the value today? This is real vs the bullshit. And .mobi registrations are rising. well over a million of them. I want $83k because why?? Based on what?
Look as .mobi is growing faster than most others. Explain that?
http://www.zfbot.com/zfbot_stats.png
And I don't mean to pick on .kiwi. But those are the numbers I have so far and when others release theirs, I will comment as well. Plus I happen to have a UNIQUE outlook by already owning my .whatever counterpart so I think I have great evidence that can hardly be just swept away and ignored.
My readers have lost millions. Let's face it. We made some, but when it came to anything other than dot-com, the majority of folks found very limited success.
And I bought into many .whatevers. Only the .me's have more value than what I paid. Every other extension and I have yet to see the dividends I once thought possible.
Who will beat .tel other than the top 5-10?
I always exempt ccTLD's because we know there is a place in the eco-system for them. I have never focused on them because I don't focus on local markets.
So I just can point to REAL examples nobody else really can or have not as yet vs the BS being spewed by the likes of some and reinforced by others with a monetary stake in things. NOISE! So be careful what you read these days. The lure of $$$ will have them sell their souls. Greed is a huge catalyst that was the foundation of all of this as I recall history and unless you are prepared to absorb a 100% loss, these are some of the poorest casinos.mobi I have seen. Most so far are incapable of having more than a few meaningful combinations. How does that translate to success?
At least with .kiwi it is much less restricted than some of the truly worthless extensions you will see. .
Kiwi has many or possibly unlimited left of the dot variables. .xyz does as well but I have yet to see the vision and then it still has to be sold and it still has to be adopted. Many others, MOST others, almost ALL others, have a handful of left of the dot variables and think they can become meaningful. They need to understand what a sub-domain is first and then become a registry. They are about to find out the hard way.
I would think the first rule may be only have 3 to 4 characters right of the dot. I think I would disqualify anything with more right from the get go at this point in time. That may be why .Web, .App, .Blog, .Shop has led the pack in pre-registrations.
Investment or Gamble? You decide. Not me. I can only decide for me and share with you. LIke I said, I have no issue with .Kiwi. They were/are a sponsor of TRAFFIC. I want them all there. All there to make their best case among a tough audience looking for real answers before they invest what could be large money. But that does not mean I can't comment and do it honestly. And I would never say anything I would not say directly to them and I am sure most folks know that by now.
I hope they all hit pay dirt. Their success is our success regardless of the stupid things some are saying and doing. But they need to get a grip and understand the real damage they are doing to themselves. Self inflicted. You can't even begin to wrap your heads around the private conversations. They are beginning to just dismiss one and all when it comes to gTLDS.
Given the choice, I would invest in IDN's first. They have gone through the years of pain that these others are ony just going to start. Most folks I know need to eat today. Pay bills and the mortgage today. They don't have unlimited funds. These extension ARE illiquid as Forbes stated. But not the dot-coms. The.mobi's maybe. The .whatevers almost certainly. Once the dust settles, you will see that weak extensions like .tel will survive and get stronger while all these other guys do their work.
The conversation in the boardroom will likely include all the other non dot-com extensions and of course the dot-com. But the chances of them choosing .whatever over the extensions already available is not a given. So .Net, .Org, .US, .INFO, .Me, .Co, .TV, .Biz will also be on the table and those are MUCH bigger and stronger horses even tho so many are laughing at them. So .whatever guys, don't laugh until you pass the worst dead nag in the race.
I am on record saying I am an opportunist. I make a living searching for opportunity. Many of you do that as well. I am not scared to jump on opportunity and when I see it I will jump.
.Com happened for a reason and this entire charade is to try to copy that. Dot-com and the Internet in general was a once in a hundred year phenomenon that the entire world shared in. And it had NOTHING TO DO WITH .COM. It had to do with who built on .com and what they built. The question is can they attract meaningful businesses to give them legitimacy? Not one or two but hundreds of thousands and millions? Can those companies endure with them? Somebody willing to abandon their dot-com because they truly believe what they say?
Or is it merely another door that may or may be LOCKED as I illustrated above.
The horse shit I have been hearing is alienating the single biggest pool of buyers they have. Insulting knowledgeable and professional domainers is lunacy. And you guys all own it. You rise together, it would not surprise me that you fall together. With the exception of those that could have a fit in the Internet eco-system.
It will be many years before we know. We may be all talking about it now but when was the last time you talked about .mobi? .Tel? .Aero? .Biz? How important are any of them to your daily or investment lives? I have no evidence whatsoever of a success. I will search high and low for that success. I do think that some may be surprised by what breaks out and what does not breakout.
Yes, you can run to the window and buy your Kentucky Derby Tickets right now and figure out which of the 1000 will come in. Or , unlike GAMBLING and more like INVESTING, you can wait until they take the first turn. You can wait until the mid-point. You can wait until the stretch. 990 of them won't make it to the finish line. If you want to gamble, you do it now. If you want to invest, you wait until the race is 3/4 over and make your move. I would rather invest $5000 then gamble $500. I would rather pay more for what is proven than risk what I have no idea about.
Rick Schwartz
Recent Comments