Back in 1996/7 when I started building websites and buying domain names, the Internet was only just starting to take off. Then, you had loads of high quality domain name available and.com was the only sensible ending to a domain name.
At that time, I admit, I did not realize the opportunity in owning and reselling domains. I bought some good domains and played around with them for my own web designs but never had any real intentions on monetizing those sites or reselling the domains. When it came to renewing those domains I had lost interest in them and did not renew them. All of those domains are today used by big corporations for their websites. The following years saw the rise if the domain trading industry and domains selling for as much as several million dollars in some cases.
The current state of domain trading
Today, the domain trading industry has changed and slowed down. The reasons are many:
• Lack of good.com domains.
• More variety in domain name endings, for example.biz,.co,.me,.info & more.
• The arrival (and dominance) of Google search and social media.
In my opinion the main factor above is the arrival of Google that has revolutionized how people use search engines and find the content they are looking for. In the past users used to simply type in the name of the brand or the product they were looking for and add.com to the ending. That would give them the main site related to that product, brand or topic.
Today we barely look at web addresses. We simply ask Google and check out some of the page 1 results that Google provides us with. If we like it we either memorize the address or bookmark it in our browsers or via social bookmarking services such as Delicious. Because of this the domain name or the domain name ending does not play as much role as it used to for online marketers and thus lowering the importance of having that perfect domain name for your business.
What will the future bring for domain traders?
Things are not looking very good for domain traders these days. Increased role of social media is bringing in even more ways for people to discover things online and the major search engines are always working on ways to improve their algorithms to serve up just the right results for each search query.
If you are thinking about a career change then you might want to put the professional domain trader idea on ice for a while (at least). Sure, every now and then we will hear about domains (new and old) being sold for ridiculous amounts of money but those will be few and far between. This evolution is a good thing for sure as it puts the focus on quality content rather than just a domain name with the right words. This just underlines the fact that online - content is king.
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