Number of people part-timing with domain names seems to have fallen.
Many sectors of the domainer industry have experienced a steep fall since about 2007. Has the number of people dabbling in domain names also dropped?
I suspect so. Over the past year or two I’ve noticed a drop in the number of hangers on. I think we’ve seen this at domain industry shows, on domain forums, and perhaps even on blogs. People that used to comment all the time have simply disappeared. (Admittedly, I don’t really have any data for you.)
It’s also possible people just aren’t spending as much time on it if they aren’t “all in”.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just an observation I’ve made. What do you think?
Kevin Murphy says
I think if that’s true, then we should see a commensurate drop in cybersquatting.
Quite often the n00bs who “accidentally” register a bunch of typos or trademarks without thinking, right?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Kevin – I agree that it’s often newbies that do that. Although I don’t think the cybersquatting rate has been increasing by any means.
Larry says
Purely from memory I think the focus of this blog shifted at a point to legal type issues with domain names and I also notice a shift in stories when you started working for Directi.
For me that’s great as I happen to like those stories. The only negative is sometimes it’s a little depressing in that it’s a negative story. Even though I need the information. It’s info that’s upsetting to hear many times. (Like a mother hearing about child abductions.)
I like the recap stories where you share what names have sold to end users.
Lastly, while this isn’t specific to your blog and actually doesn’t happen that often (compared to others) I am really turned off by the troll type comments, unprofessionalism and attacks that sometimes appear and definitely appear on other domain blogs.
I seem to vaguely remember you doing a post about people in this business some time back that might have addressed that.
Mike Law says
Agree that many ‘hangers on’ have left the scene. Maybe they still have a portfolio, just are not actively buying selling, reading/commenting on blogs and forums, etc.
Lots of newbs coming to replace them though. I don’t see any of this as a bad or good thing, just part of the cycle.
Dean says
There is always that initial excitement and delirium with discovering Domaining. But I think if you are an intelligent person you reach a saturation point very quickly.
After you see the same topics dissected ten different ways over and over again, the same news constantly regurgitated on every blog, the same bloggers with the same agendas surreptitiously trying to push some hidden agenda, product or extension, it get’s old very quickly. 70% of the time I can glance at a headline on the Domainer feed and know what the content of the article is without actually reading the article.
Everything I ever learned about Domaining or it’s current state of affairs since then, was summed up in the first blog post I ever read..
Clobert Rine says
The small guys and part-timers got snuffed by the parking companies, not Google.
What I mean is I think that the parking companies have intentionally and systematically clobbered all domainers since 2008, big and small. I believe the poor payouts to be mostly a case of collusion among the parking companies.
They took advantage of the recession and blamed the lower parking earnings on the recession. Truth is, the Internet advertising industry has been growing like crazy. Google has not been holding it back to the levels being reported from all parking companies, the way I see it.
Why do I say this? Just look at what InternetTraffic.com is paying out. 2X to 3X or higher earnings than all the other parking companies. Nobody in the parking industry wants to share the gold besides Frank. Frank is just plain honest about what we are making. The other parking companies are protecting their golden gooses by hosing down domainers to the point of driving some out of the industry.
If I am wrong about this, I have not heard or come to any other possible explanation as to why the other Google feed parking companies can’t even come close to paying out Frank’s level of payments.
I would not be surprised to see a class action case arise some day from this, due to some parking employee insider spilling the beans about the collusion going on.
No wonder the small guys are gone. They are too small to get into InternetTraffic.com and yet easy enough to take advantage of because they can’t go anywhere else easily. The big boys were stuck with this too until Frank opened the doors at InternetTraffic.com .
Thank you Frank.
Larry says
Adding to what I said above posting legal stories probably isn’t what you want to do to attract and retain new readers.
If I decided to take up flying I wouldn’t want to read a blog that detailed air crashes. As a matter of fact one of the reasons I haven’t taken up flying (even though I always wanted to do that as a kid really bad) is because of the stories that you hear regularly about small plane crashes.
I know the business and have successfully protected all of my domains over the course of many years with various techniques. But I can easily see a newcomer who doesn’t know what I know getting easily scared off thinking there are way more risks than there are. (And as I mentioned it even has an effect on me..)
Andrew Allemann says
To be clear, it’s some of the former frequent commentors who have gone…not the traffic. But I get the point.
Rob Sequin says
1. Speculation is out of the industry save for new extensions that flare up and fade away.
2. I get emails every day from people asking me to sell their crappy domains. This obviously means that they want to try to sell before they let them drop.
3. Nearly impossible to make any substantial recurring revenue from ANY domain business model without building a real business.
4. Quantity of domains strategy will eat you alive in renewal fees.
Harder to make easy money = less speculators and less newbies.
Shakeouts can be good because of the flight to quality (category defining domains, .com geo domains, gold etc)… assuming you have the quality of course 🙂
Nick says
@ Kevin and Andrew
Most of the big domainers also cybersquatted and still do ….. why blame the noobs.
jp says
@Andrew
I wouldn’t go by missing commenters necessarily. I’ve pretty much stopped commenting for the most part because IMHO all the blogs comment sections are broken. I no longer find a business value to the comment sections, usually. I still read all the articles but I definitely spend less time because I try to not even read the comments as that is time I’ll never get back. Even worse than reading the comments now is subscribing to the threads for email updates. Then my inbox is flooded with these comments thus costing me more time. Am I crazy here or are the comments not what they used to be 2 years ago? And hey I’m not calling out names here and IMHO it’s not just one or two commenters but quite a many. Just my thoughts on the matter, certainly not trying to be rude to anyone or single anyone out. Like I said it’s more than a handful in my opinion.
M. Menius says
The better quality domains are in the hands of fewer people who don’t have to sell. And the domain market has slowed with the general economy for the most part. If, and when, the economy starts to gyrate again, companies & investors will reignite the domain market. And interest will surge.
Bryan says
With parking firing on all cylinders and low hanging fruit there were entry level positions for newbies. Today they do not exist.
Michael Ford says
Thats the best news I’ve heard about the domain market in a long time. Fewer people speculating/investing in domains means more opportunities for us still actively involved in domaining. Domains are valuable assets and will continue to appreciate over time. The current state of the world economy is probably a big reason for the drop in the domain market. But domains will be a major solution to the current state of the world economy. Time to start building our domain holdings while the markets down.
john says
Has certainly changed over the years and as Larry pointed out, one negative story after another these days, but we do need to know about it. Forums aren’t what they were either – not even close. Maybe everyone has gone into development since that’s where the revenue is and we all know how time consuming that is.
Meyer says
5-9 yrs ago, the only sources for domain operation/knowledge and daily domain news were the few forums we all know. (DNF, NP, Rick’s, Domainstate, etc.) And, some are gone and the rest have lost their importance.
Today, there are 1,000’s more sources than in the past. And, instead of visiting the former popular sites and just hanging around, breaking news can and will arrive in your email instantly.
Like everything else in our life, the domain category is continuously evolving.
Are there less domainers? NO.
More and more are entering the domain category everyday.
A Mitchell says
Market data on sales appears to be too incomplete to provide trend data. What percentage of sales goes unreported? 50-75% unreported would be my guess, with most unreported sales probably for less than $500, but with a significant portion going for >$10,000.
If registration numbers keep rising (GD at more than 50 million), are we seeing a reduction in registrants listing their domains for sale? Most likely.
Most registration activity I see now for people with more than 10 domains is with an end use in mind, albeit with a low implementation rate. They aren’t listing their domains for sale.
Inefficiencies in the secondary markets are depressing liquidity. Collapsing the primary and secondary markets together by some registrars is not boosting sales as expected. One market player appears to be engaged in bait-and-switch tactics to move their own portfolio of uneven quality through registrars’ sites.