Another
year
is now history and a new one beckons with great
prospects for people in the domain
business. Like every year that has come
before this new one, 2014 will be one of great
change in our industry. That simply adds
to the excitement and brings new
opportunities to prosper in a business
that never gets old because it is too busy
being constantly reborn. In
2014 hundreds of millions of dollars will
be spent rolling out and marketing a tidal
wave of new gTLDs. The nice thing
is that you don't even have to be a
believer in new gTLDs as an investment
vehicle to find ways to profit from
the new money that will be flowing into
the domain basin and the accompanying attention
that quantity of money will bring to our
industry as a whole. |
2014
image from Bigstock
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If
you are among the many veteran domain investors
who view new gTLDs as fool's gold, and
you prove to be correct in that assumption, you
will almost certainly benefit from a flight
to quality (i.e., .com or popular ccTLDs)
if new gTLDs start stumbling out of the gate.
Even if they enjoy more success than you expect
them to, it will still be a long time (if ever)
before the world's business community (which
drives domain resale value) is going to abandon
the tried and true.
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For
that reason, I think those who have
invested hundreds of millions of dollars
in new gTLDs are in a much riskier
position than those who hold high
quality portfolios in familiar TLDs.
However, big risks sometimes produce big
rewards and the more people in our
industry who succeed, the stronger
our industry becomes, so I'm not rooting
for anyone to fail. With the
meteoric growth of the Internet there is
room for a lot of people to make
money. Yes, there will continue to be
winners and losers as there always are in
any business - but overall I like where
we all are sitting heading into 2014. |
It
is going to be an exciting year filled
with the unexpected. There will be new faces,
vigorous debates and big changes - and
there is nowhere else I would rather be. Happy
New Year to you and yours and may 2014 be the
best year of your life!
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