Morning Folks!!
If you don't always want to be complaining that you missed this and you missed that, maybe it is time to be EARLY this time around. Your choice. You can be late again if you CHOOSE!
A brief and incomplete history of a few big ideas in the last few thousand years that WON over other ideas in the evolution of our species and how we think as human beings...
Gold
Land Ownership
Monotheism
Rome
Latin
Rationalism
Agriculture
British Empire
Pound
English
Coal
Industrialization
America
Representative Democracy
Automobile
Oil
Radio
Telephone
Stock Market
Dollar
Airplane
Television
McDonald's
Coke
Nike
Capitalism
Computer
Internet
Information economy
Dot com
To be the BIG IDEA you must BEST the big idea. Not simply alter it. Not simply copy it and call it better or the same. Not simply compete with it, though you can surely compete and make money or gain users/adopters...you cannot play small and WIN when you are up against the BIG IDEA.
A cellphone is still a telephone. Internet radio is still a radio. Communism though it still exists FAILED. So did Reebok if its desire was to become THE athletic shoes.
Google.com is built on dot com. Domain.net and all the others are imitations until and unless any one of them can be a BETTER idea in the mind of the masses than dot com, they are all playing for first loser.
English became a better alternative than Latin, why? America became more influential than the British Empire, why? Capitalism was a more perfect IDEA in the timing of history than the Soviet Communism...why?
Not to get all geopolitical on everyone and reveal my ignorance of current events that may stem from not owning a televisions...but let me flex my brain of what I DO see in the news and from my background with a degree in Political Science: China's growth is a threat to America the nation but not America the IDEA which is made up of other ideas on that list...why will China never rule the world even if and when they try?
And even if and when another English speaking representative government that's capitalist were to take the place of America in the role of world peacekeeper, why am I supremely unconcerned that one Sunday in the future my children's children's children will wake up dressing in Chinese-style clothing, driving a Chinese government-created car to a Chinese temple, praying to some non Christian, non-Jewish, non-Muslim god in one of the hundreds Chinese dialects as a first language, before returning home to their Commune apartment?
Because 97% of the IDEAS that would have to become real for that reality to happen have yet to happen...and most never will because they've already been proven less desirable to the common man on the street in ANY country.
Which is why no matter where you go they strive to speak English as a second language, wear Nike, drink Coca-Cola, and enjoy McDonald's (even if the menu is different than what we in America would recognize).
Why does 'China' never scare me? It's an IDEA made up of some good ideas (gold) mixed with some bad ideas (shit) that together persuades many its own people that they'd prefer to just live the American Dream.
Or did I give you the answer already why China will look more and more like an ally and not an enemy as time goes on and their very people bend to superior ideas their government simply can't keep them for learning forever? Think hard now...I promise you'll get it how this all applies to domain names if you don't look to your television for answers.
The answers to the future aren't in today at all (and never have been).
They're in the past and in human nature, and predicting how things SHOULD unfold is half art and half science and even though I have that BA in government I won't BS you and say 'this must happen'.
But from where I'm sitting if you want to become richer, any bet on China/India or Chinese/Indian or Domain/IDN in a business MAY earn more speculative growth in the next few years than English, America, dot com...
But hey, they have a lot of catching up to do. Have they even fully realized completion of the INDUSTRIALIZATION 'big idea' yet!? Stop...go back to my brief and not perfectly in order list of what I cheekily called 'A history of ideas that WON' and YOU TELL ME why I should be afraid of the Chinese people taking their place at the rightful table to discuss capitalism and representative government? Lol I'm getting too deep for a domainer blog, aren't I?
If you can't ask the tough questions, you deserve what lazy thinking gets you. A great idea is never one man's!
It may have a spokesperson or an inventor or a revolutionary or a champion but the power of great ideas come from a movement, a market, pressure and time and circulation.
Look at dot com thru the lens of history and human nature and you'll realize today what most of 'the 500' realized 20 years ago.
There is 'dot com' and then there is everything else.
Sorry folks, Godaddy running that YourBigIdea.co commercial is not being completely truthful with you and spending millions to do it on that idiot box you plop down in front of just trying to relax at the end of a long day...never realizing that if you take their .co 'Your Big Idea' commercial at face value and buy a .co lottery ticket, trusting their very convincing commercial as you believe somehow you won't have to wait 20 years to have a chance to be in that jet as discussed here: [LINK]
Buy Domain.co and the registrar Wins, You on the other hand will have TWO possible paths:
1. Succeed in your online business, feel like you win as your business takes off built on a foundation of sand, until You lose when finally one day in the future you realize you needed Domain.com when it was available that one day back then for lease/JV and now you have to pay even more for it.
2. Fail in your business
What about a Chinese .cn domain?
Buy Domain.cn and the registrar Wins, You on the other hand will have THREE possible paths:
1. Succeed in your online business selling only within China, feel like you win as your business takes off built on a good but not great foundation of bamboo, be happy with that medium-level success as your local country-area customers are quite satisfied to do business with the Domain.CN they alone in the world recognize and trust. Maybe one day your children will want Domain.com so they can expand the business you built to become GLOBAL.
2. Succeed in your online business selling at first only within China, feel like you win as your business takes off built on a good but not great foundation of bamboo, are UNhappy with that medium-level success as your local country-area customers are the ONLY customers in the world satisfied to do business with the Domain.CN they alone in the world recognize and trust. Maybe one day you wake up wishing you had secured Domain.COM as your global brand so you can expand... You lose when on that day in the future you realize you needed what you could have gotten fairly in a lease/JV and now you have to pay even more for it.
3. Fail in your business
Buy .co and you take business advice on the most important decision for selling products online from a television commercial.
Buy .cn and you can be quite successful selling products online in China where their ideas are mostky still 100 years behind what their own people know are superior ideas...and despite your regional success, you'll almost certainly never have a global IDEA or business in THIS LIFETIME.
Trust a Commercial? Trust Communism?
Shoulda read a book instead!
Here's one for you:
'Influence: Science and Practice'
Dr. Cialdini's book doesn't mention domain names that I recall and the book may have even been written before such existed. But the book explains human nature in ways that is scary.
Eyeball sees or ear hears '.com'
Eyeball sees or ear hears '.com'
Click....whirr
Brain immediately processes and trusts.
Eyeball sees or ear hears '.crap'
Click....whirr
Brain tries to process, can't help comparing to '.com', suspects something is maybe not right (with the possible exception of a few exceptions that have been covered in other posts right here on this blog)
Just two men's opinion, folks.
Sometimes Rick's right.
Sometimes Danny's wrong.
But even when the one is wrong...the other could have been right.
And right now WE are telling you...history has proven, is proving, and increasingly will prove most (but not all) of Rick Schwartz's predictions correct as it pertains to the decline of Domaining and the rise of eRealEstate spearheaded by Danny Welsh with his mentor and partner's advice and help.
So if you loved Domaining, its time to leave all the hopes for a second coming behind, cash out of all the pipe dreams (take a loss if you have to like Rick did with flowers.mobi) and invest MOST of your dollars in dot com before dollars alone are simply no longer enough to buy ANY eRealEstate that doesn't include equity from the END USER company burning with desire to buy it.
If you're reading this blog in 2013, you still have a chance to squirrel away a few choice dot com nuts that one day someone will come along and offer you more DOLLARS than most people would consider a lifetime's pay for ONE dea in THIS LIFETIME.
Or you can chase all the other non-English, non-dot com www.Domain.Yen or www.Domain.Indian or whatever.
Your call, I think it'll 67% pay off big for your kids as a speculative investment today in 2013. (Hint)
But it's 'small ball' folks, when the game everyone whines is 'over' is simply at the 7th inning stretch.
.com is about to hit a grand slam AND pitch an almost no-hitter in the next 3 years.
You think you've seen a secondary market for dot com now? Ha! Wait til the $25,000,000 cash deals and for others besides Rick Schwartz to lease a domain for more than $1,000,000 per year.
Those kinds of deals are coming.
And it will open the floodgates of the possible, and send a message loud and clear 'they' won't be able to ignore.
The question is..knowing that future predicted right here by these two men, will you ignore what you can do TODAY to prepare your business to profit and your family to prosper?
Again?
Rick Schwartz &
Danny Welsh
Krishna
Exceptional article.
I am still struggling to understand the thought process of several business owners and MBAs from so called great universities.
Online business has been gaining marketshare from brick & Mortar businesses for last few years. You need a good domain to do online business. It is as simple as that.
Why entrepreneurs are starting their ventures on those crappy .co, .me and other silly domain extensions?
When they are putting so much money and effort in their ventures, why don’t they spend some more money in acquiring good .com?
Why don’t Fortune 500 companies shut out competitors by acquiring all important keyword .coms related to their businesses (they have money)?
Dr Domainer
Life is about predicting the future and studying
every angle to stay ahead. Knowledge is power and
domaining is the perfect industry to mix with creative
minds. The worlds going to be changing rapidly very soon.
These emerging technologies below will change the world
in the future.
Quantum Computing
http://www.howstuffworks.com/quantum-computer.htm
Claytronics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ6ZW8DqgRI
Contactless Payments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyD7VUT0_8Q
Holographic Technology
http://voices.yahoo.com/forget-3dtv-japanese-already-investing-four-6126316.html?cat=15
Steve
“There is”dot com” and then there is everything else.”
.com is KING, no question. Always will be.
The only bright light in the new .whatevers is now you can surf in your native language in .com
More than 50% of the people on the internet don’t speak English and that percentage is only going to get bigger. So the introduction of idn.com into pure idn.idn for .com’s this year offers a nice opportunity in many people’s opinion. How much is Bank.com worth in Chinese? Or Property.com in Russian? While many people missed the boat for generic .com there are many many genericidn.com’s available for a pittance. jmho
Cheers.
Rick Schwartz
Steve, Not sure.
But Beer and Wine only $99
http://www.idnforums.com/forums/33314-beer-com-and-wine-com-bengali.html :-)
BullS
Please someone reg bullshitwebsites dot whatever and I will send you a box of chocolate and a big juicy wet kiss.
Rick Schwartz
Warning! ADULT CONTENT!!
Take a look at sedo.me
Has Sedo made any comments about this?
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick,
India already has adopted the english .COM as a prize that all their different language dialects recognize. Chinas government sresses English adoption in their schools as a #1 proirity.
A few people know about my experiences in International Marketing. I can tell you right now the clever Chinese Multi-nationals prefer .COM as the prize example of free capitalism, unbridled by their current regime. They view .COM as the prime Trophy platforms of choice for Internet commerce. These Smart Money Chinese entreprenuers make money both ways.They are agressively adopting the English American ways of Capitalism.
Just ask Andrew Rosener one of Broker super stars, about his (Chinese Connection),there are lots of Chinese multinationals entering our turf through the .COM pipeline.See recent Article in WSJ on Sanfrancisco Chinese Banking Giant.Many many more to follow,trust me on this, but verify first and you will find Rick is Dead Balls On.
Not Now Honey I'm Busy
I only consider and buy .COM, either as a domainer or as a businessman who wants his site to do well. Any other extension will leak to the benefit of the .COM owner.
Seems clear to me that Rick is correct, as usual, and that only .com actually counts. All others are not to be taken seriously and exist for amusement purposes only.
Steve
:)
Down to $69 now. While Bengali isn’t one of the most popular idn areas there is a 250 million population base and I would guess some of them may have a beer or wine occasionally. If you wanted to break into the market the price of entry is basically nothing and you get the .com. Cheap experiment.
Here’s another one. Moscow.com in Russian = $216k
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2012/dailyposts/20120410.htm
not too many hit the news but they’re out there.
Cheers!!
Jeff Schneider
In Summarization :
” The Universal .COM Brand or Symbol Transcends language dialect Barriers to Reach the MASSES !”
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
BillW
@ J Schneider- you are very correct about Chinese .com. Every smart Chinese domainer goes for .com over .cn. It has been seen time and time again where the Chinese government”took” the .cn domains with no proper justification or reason. IDN.cn sale have virtually stopped, hardly anyone interested in the bad risk.
@ Rick- nice to see a mention of IDNs. They are seeing some decent traffic especially Russian and some Japanese. From my perspective, the IDN market is”parallel” to being back in 1994-1995 with ASCII domains (in latin/english).
But here we are…. 18 year later, but armed with all of the knowledge of what happened with ASCII/English .com domain names from 1995- the present. Many are betting that history will repeat itself over the next 5-10 years like it did with ascii.com, only this time with native language .com domains. Yes, .com in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Hebrew, Thai and more. ICANN, Verisign, and a few dozen international registries are investing $100,000,000 plus on it.
On beer/wine Bengali, not a good example. There is just not much demand for Bengali, if it was Hindi may have been snapped up. If it was Chinese, Japanese or Russian they would be selling for x,xxx.
Not many quality names going up for sale on the various IDN forums, most are holding out for IDN.IDN (IDN.COM) in a dozen major international languages to roll out in the next 6 months as part of the gTLD program.
For those parking IDNs I would like to suggest you take a try with ParkingCrew.com (note: I have no personal affiliation) but they have really shown some good success in particular with Japanese .coms.
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick & Danny
Of interest in todays WSJ article on Chinas foreign exchange regulator has been actively but quietly investing in UK property infrastructure.
On the QT , infrastructure can mean anything including Digital Assets?
Remember Japan years ago in Physical Real estate ?
Guess what? NEXT BIG THING = Virtual real Estate !
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)