Comments on: Sedo Domain Sales Booming as Parking Flounders

By: sobriquet.eu » Domain Name Wire Â» News Â» Sedo Domain Sales Booming as Parking Flounders

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:40:35 +0000

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By: Tan Tran

Tan Tran — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:24:38 +0000

I read somewhere that Korea has the most domainers per capita in the world.

As well, i’ve been keeping an eye on the Chinese domainer space and they have been growing quite substantially.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:46:37 +0000

@ Adam – by that definition I’d guess 3k-5k.

By: Adam

Adam — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:13:57 +0000

@andrew it would be nice if one of those forums qualified those #s. I think those are quite easy to pad. But even a survey can’t get to the real truth. If anyone knows I think it’s the parking companies since they see the earnings.

To me a domainer is someone who earns a substantial part of their living from domains, full-time or part-time but making a living is key. I’d guess the number to be 1/2 that 10k you and David are throwing out there.

Buying domains here and there on the side makes someone a hobbyist in my eyes not a domainer. Sort of like a person who has a camera and takes a few photos on the weekend, sure they may be considered a photographer but not in any real/”professional” sense.

About a year ago a domainer friend of mine was called by a company doing research in the domain space. The caller was doing a feasibility study to see how big the space was. He asked my friend “do you have any domains that make $100 a month?” My friend said “uh yeah” and the caller said “REALLY!?!” excitedly. He had been calling on tons of supposed domainers and not 1 of them had a domain that made more than a couple bucks a day.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:41:03 +0000

@ Tran – Very difficult to measure…perhaps Sedo’s registered user # is a good proxy at least.

@ Adam – I really just pulled that out. DNForum has 68,000 members. Is that a better number? I don’t know…how many of those people are active domainers vs. just having a few domains? Hard to say.

By: Tan Tran

Tan Tran — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:33:31 +0000

Andrew,

That’s what our assumption is as well… somewhere in the 10k to 100k range… with a definition of a domainer as someone actively looking to acquire, hold, or sell domain names.

Would be great if someone had stats on this… a good way to measure growth in our industry. The more domainers, the more money will flow in.

By: David J Castello

David J Castello — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:31:03 +0000

Andrew:
The core stat of 10,000 domainers has been around for a while now – at least 2-3 years. I think the figure is much higher. I meet many of our small business advertisers and our talk will usually include domains. I would say that more than half of them own domains besides their own business domain and their reason for doing so is because of their perceived present and future value of these names. That makes them domainers. There is much more “domain fever” out there than we know.