Frank Schilling: “There is just a momentary illusion of oversupply right now […]. It will pass.”

newgtldFrank Schilling has some advice for us all: “Buy the good ones you can afford, now.”. It is your choice if you want to follow that advice or not.

Last week I wrote about selling Create.Media for 5,000 Euro and the post got several comments. One comment was from Frank Schilling:

You’re doing it the right way.. I did the same thing in the .com era. You bought a good name. Somebody inquired – or you called someone explaining the value proposition of owning an obviously good name to them. The person you spoke to believed what you were selling. So did you, because you’re telling the truth. Boom you sold a name. Rinse and repeat my friend. That’s the domain name business.

 

Across all extensions (old and new) there are fewer good names that there is demand for them. There is just a momentary illusion of oversupply right now because of all the launches. It will pass. When a fireworks show goes off it looks like the world will never run out of sparkling light, then it passes. Buy the good ones you can afford, now.

I want to thank Frank for his kind comment. I just want to add at the end that you should buy the domains you can afford but are also sold cheap and not with high premium renewal prices. Otherwise there is no money to be made reselling them.

I too believe that there are fewer good names that there is demand for them. Otherwise I wouldn’t be buying them. I wouldn’t have spent $50,000+ buying New gTLD domains in the past 15 months.

And people wouldn’t be buying New gTLDs in the aftermarket. There wouldn’t have been almost 500 New gTLD public sales in these past 15 months. And I am not even counting the premium registration fees and EAP fees paid by many end users.

Please check my latest project, still in the works, presenting all New gTLD domain name sales at Sold.Domains.

Frank was even kind enough to make a comment on his twitter account @Frank_Schilling about Sold.Domains: “Really impressed with the feel of @onlinedomaincom, http://Sold.Domains . Great looking site has potential to be something special”. Thanks, Frank.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

31 comments

  1. when will the launches ever end though? if icann does a around every few years or so, there will always be launches. its hard to say what the future holds but while i was a bit interested in the beginning i was quickly exhausted by the weekly launches and premium priced/reserved domains and stopped bothering with the new gtlds at all. if others want to invest in them, i say good luck i hope it works out but its too much time spent with too little return for me at this point.

  2. Nice site sold.domains, i like it.

  3. Ask Frank now much he’s spending on .coms vs. new gtlds. Then you’ll get a better picture.

  4. Love the sold.domains site! Any reason the entire database isn’t browse-able?

  5. There is only (1) .COM. There will ever only be (1) .COM.

    There is a virtual endless supply of new gTLD between this round and potential future rounds.

    Brad

  6. When a fireworks show goes off it looks like the world will never run out of sparkling light, then it passes .. true true

  7. How long do you think it will take to absorb (i.e. put in the hands of end users) 6 million and growing (with new launches in 2015 and beyond plus reserved domains which eventually will be released) new TLD domains?

    Any guess as to what percentage of .COM domains are held for resale vs. new TLDs?

    Any guess as to how many aftermarket domain sales occur yearly?

    So if we have more than 200 million domain registrations and x% are actually used by an end user and only xx thousand domains are acquired annually in the aftermarket, it would seem there is an oversupply issue.

    • Well the number of good domains is not even close to this crazy number.
      Take out .xyz and you are down to 5. Take out all the other free, crazy, stupid domains and you are down to less than a million.
      I could go on…

      I would bet that the percentage of .com that are held for resale is higher than that of new gtlds.

      Aftermarket sales in general or just for New gTLDs?

      For example 5% of 200 million is 10 million. These are a lot of domain names. This “only” number could seem high to some and low to others. 50,000 domains would be a good number in my eyes.

      I am not selling more than 0.5% of my portfolio every year and I think that number is ok. It depends on the price you put on your domains.

      • Breakeven is a function of average sales price (typically higher with .COM), domain renewals (typically lower with .COM) and percentage of domains sold (typically higher with .COM). However, since my portfolio is Spanish heavy, I have always found it difficult to sell domains for more than high $XXX (occasional $XXXX sales do occur but there are far more low $XXX sales than $XXXX sales. Regardless, from experience with .Net and .TV, I see little evidence that new TLDs are going to be worthwhile from a portfolio perspective. There are lottery winners every week but most will agree “investing” in lottery tickets is not going to work out too well.

      • I agree on what you say on .com. But I also believe that you can make money selling New gTLDs.
        I just had a 4000 Euro offer I refused.

        Some people will tell you that .com sales are lottery tickets as well. In some way they are but the more and better you have the less of a lottery ticket it is.

        I have faith in my choice of domain names. 🙂

      • Take out the Stupid gtlds? But then what will remain? They are all so painfully dumb!

      • lol

        Seriously though… Not all are created equal. .Club or .Video are much better .Horse.

  8. Hello Konstantino,

    Hit me With Your Best Shot ! This whole Floral bouquet of Smorgasbord of Extensions borders on intoxication. What is a Poh Boy to Do? For once we agree with frank Schilling buy the .COM Platform Assets you can afford ! The next 24mos. will be Transcendental. JAS 6/8/15

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Hedges Strategist)

  9. Hey Konstantino, i was looking at 4.cn today and on godaddy.
    The numeric domains are still holding strong, do you see them still being a strong force in the years to come.

    • Numerics were always strong and liquid.
      This latest trend doesn’t change a lot in how I view them.
      Now it is China spending a lot of its new money… 🙂

    • Chinese want .TOP ..the only gtld allowed on Chinese servers.
      I wish somebody would do an article about the .TOP extension ,there are so many things domainers don’t yet know about ..

  10. Any comment by Schilling is simply an advertisement so dont fool yourself.

  11. Kevin Murphy, May 27, 2015, 13:06:19 (UTC), Domain Policy

    The vast majority of top-level domain registries could soon be banned from selling domains into China due to a reported crackdown under a decade-old law.
    That’s according to Allegravita, a company that helps registries with their go-to-market strategies in the country.
    Allegravita released a report last week claiming that Chinese registrars will be forbidden to sell domains in TLDs that are not on a government-approved list.
    The crackdown could come as early as July, the report says:
    Foreign registries which have not applied for Chinese market approval are advised to do so in the near term, as unapproved Top-Level Domains are likely to be taken off the market from July this year.
    As of April 30, there were only only 14 TLDs on the approved list. All of them are run by Chinese registries and only five do not use Chinese script.
    Not on the list: every legacy gTLD, including .com, as well as every ccTLD apart from .cn.
    The Draconian move is actually the implementation of regulations introduced by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over a decade ago but not really enforced since.
    As I reported in December, Donuts was facing problems launching its Chinese-script gTLDs due to this red tape.
    MIIT announced in 2012 that new gTLD applicants would need licenses to sell into China.
    According to Allegrevita, which until recently was working heavily with TLD Registry (“.chinesewebsite”) on its entry into the country, it’s “no longer ambiguous” that MIIT has asserted full oversight of the domain industry in China.

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