Domain Names: What’s Hot, What’s Not Now
Friday, May 30th, 2008
What’s hot in the domain industry, and what’s not?
It’s been a few months since I wrote the What’s hot, What’s not article for domain names. A lot has changed since then, so I’ve updated the list.
What’s Hot
Geo Domains - geo domains have been a cash cow for a long time, but everyone and their mom is talking about them now. The attention will increase before July’s GeoDomain Expo.
Conference Fatigue - with so many conferences on the schedule, a number of regulars are reporting conference fatigue. I suspect the schedule will be a bit lighter next year. TRAFFIC plans to do just two shows in Silicon Valley and New York.
Cost Per Action - Good domains with high converting traffic are starting to see the benefit of CPA over CPC. Major parking companies, including TrafficZ, are adding CPA to the mix rather than relying solely on Yahoo and Google ad feeds.
Domain Sales for Cash Flow - With parking revenue down, a number of domainers are turning to another source of cash flow by selling domains. One prominent domainer told me last week that he plans to sell a couple domains a month to keep his monthly cash flow in tune with last year’s.
Hypocrites - namely Verizon.
Click Fraud Detection on Parked Domains - with ad providers and advertisers complaining of poor conversion from parked domain names, click fraud detection companies such as Click Forensics are helping to separate the good traffic from the bad.
What’s Not
eBay for Domains - eBay now requires all domain sellers to accept PayPal. Anyone who’s ever been burned on a domain sale with PayPal knows this is a raw deal.
Domain Parking - as many people pointed out at last week’s TRAFFIC show, it’s not that domain parking revenue is worse than a couple years ago. But it’s below where it was at the start of the year. Domainers tend to have a short term memory.
.Mobi - If you were in it for the short run, look to liquidate at a fraction of what you paid. If you’re in it for the long run, best of luck.
Typos, Trademarks - Need I say more?
.Asia - But wait! Isn’t Asia the fastest growing internet user base? Won’t they all starting typing .asia at the end of keywords in their browsers? Um, no.
Tags: .asia, click forensics, click fraud, cpa, eBay, geo domains, mobi, verizon
Interesting lists, Andrew…
Maybe by the time your next “What’s Hot, What’s Not” article (or two) is written, there will be a lot more interest, opportunities, and activity in Fractional Domaining. We’ll see!
All good points. Not a believer in .asia.
What’s hot? Calls about brokering domains. Sorry if this seems self serving but since the very early part of the year I have been doing regular buyer broker deals and the requests for seller brokering have been coming in.
If this is self serving, feel free to remove.
Any other brokers out there noticing an increase in activity?
Yes, Geodomains are hot and will only get hotter.
.asia is like America.com - too broad. It’s too big an area.
More folks will type in AtlantaLawyer.com than they would GeorgiaLawyer.com. “Georgia is not where they are from really, it’s Atlanta”.
Johnny,
I agree. Applies to local businesses and real estate too. I would rather have AtlantaRealEstate.com than GeorgiaRealEstate.com
I agree with .asia and .mobi but .TV has the most potential of all the other extensions.
One of the big line items and agenda items for ICANN 2009 budget is $14,000,000 for International Domain Names is full unicode (idn.idn) as well as the related costs for the new .idn gTLD and ccTLD rollouts.
@ Jim - but .tv is nothing new. It’s been around for what, a decade?
That is true regarding .tv but in the last 6 months I have had 4 of my .tv names get offers over $15,000 each; Religion.tv, Actor.tv, Espanol.tv, Track.tv. I have owned many .tv since 2000 and I personally seen things pick up a lot lately.
Thanks, Jim
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