You Cannot Define The Indefinable

By: RH

There are always those looking for guarantees with domain investments or trying to break domaining down and define it like its a science. People create threads on forums wanting to know if .com will last forever, will .co supplant for the top extension and what % is the .org worth if the .com sold for x ?

I understand these questions, I have tried to define things which are indefinable since I was a young boy, it has provided frustration and sometimes a feeling of anxiety. The more you delve into a topic you realize that certain things cannot be defined the way you would like.

1 + 1 does not always equal 2 in domaining. Domaining is not math and it is not science. It is an art, some look at a piece of art and see brilliance while someone else sees emptiness or vulgarity. Neither person is wrong, trends still develop and certain artists have value even if everyone does not like their work. You are never getting a Picasso for $100. You also cannot say because this work sold for this amount, and this artist is considered on par with that artist, that this work will definitely sell for x.

We see it in domaining where people try to look and say, "Well there are 9000 exact searches and the .com sold for $19,000. The .cc must be worth at least $950 or 5 %"  NO, it does not. There is no magic formula.

Let's look at another misconception, domains are like stocks, invest in them the same as you would buy stock. NO. The biggest problem with this flawed ideology is that everyone who can afford the price of a share in Google can own it, only one registrant can own Webhosting.com.  It does not matter how smart you are, if you own Google and a VC owns Google, you both share in the ups and downs of the price. The market sets the price and you and anyone else have access to the same market to sell for the same price at each second of the trading day.

Domains are different, one gentleman owned CamRoulette.com and sold it for $1400, the buyer who is one of the top domainers in the world, Adam Strong, was able to sell it for $151,000. The first owner did not have the ability to sell it for that much, there was not the same market available to him. Each name is unique and that is what makes domaining much more difficult to define.

When someone uses traditional domainer metrics like, comparable sales,searches per month,price to advertise the keyword, etc… They have to realize that one of the most important data points they don't have is how the sale went down.  Its great to read all the sales data, its actually a must. The thing missing is how did Adam Strong get $151,000 for CamRoulette.com ? How did the owners of DuDu.com get to $1million ? How did Rick Schwartz get $150,000 for FreeSexCams.com ?

When approaching an end user they could care less about the simple logic, "Well this sold for this so you should pay me that for this because I read about a comparable."

Comparable sales data helps to make an educated hypothesis but its not an exact science that every end user is going to even respect. Again you are comparing something that is unique to another unique item. There are made up five letter .com domains that sell for $100 and some selling for $10,000.

Then there are questions being asked by new domainers that simply cannot be answered. I understand why they ask but they need to know, that no one "KNOWS" they are giving an opinion. Will .com stay king forever ? First off, what time frame are you defining as forever ? There are facts on .com, it is the most popular extension on the Internet, it has had the most development and has been advertised the most. What the future will be for .com cannot be defined as many new domainers would like, what they basically want is a guarantee that if they invest in .com domains today, they will be worth more down the road.

There is no guarantee, things move fast on the Internet, a lot of new domainers are 16 to 26 years old and for men and women in their 40's and 50's to tell them exactly what the Internet will look like in 10 to 20 years is impossible. No one knows, focus on making money today. That does not mean don't look to the future, but stay focused on the now with an eye on tomorrow. You don't want to have a portfolio with 0 offers and 0 sales just telling yourself, "I am a long term investor"

I like domaining and I believe there is money to be made, but you cannot look for guarantees or define the indefinable. Technology moves fast, fads come and go, what is cool now maybe old or tired tomorrow.