Interview with the Greatest Domain Investor of All Time, Frank Schilling

“People often can’t see the market before it happens”

At NamesCon the other week, Marcus Glaad got to talk to the legendary domainer Frank Schilling, an Internet-based Investor and the founder and CEO of Uniregistry Corporation. Frank has been voted the “Greatest Domain Investor of All Time” (TheDomains 2014) and has also been featured as “the Most Influential Person in the Domain Name Industry” (Domain Name Wire 2015).

Looking in to 2016, any predictions for the year to come?

-It’s gonna be a good year! I think it’s going to be more Chinese uptake. Even though they are – maybe – pulling back in prices right now, there is like a floor level of speculators that are in the space from China, and they are going to keep the floor of names higher than they were before they showed up. So we will see more participation – and we may see the market come back. It could stroll out a little bit for a while because of the economy over there, with the stock market crashing as badly as it has, but I think there is a whole new class of investors over there – and this whole new class of speculators isn’t going away. So we will see more activity there!

I also think that we will see a good year in North America. We see a lot more people coming in to the business and buying names for investment reasons. I think that, Uniregistry created a market by facilitating sales, and as companies like Uni does that, and as other registrars copy what we’ve tried to do and do the same thing, this brings infrastructure. That creates more people coming in, more trading and more velocity.

We are going to see a bigger space within 12 months!

When it comes to the choice of picking domain namne, should I go with .com – but adding a word before or after my actual name (like the, go e.g.) – or should I go with a new top level domain?

-I think that new TLDs offer great opportunities to get shorter names, so if you can get something meaningful under the new top level domains, take it.

We are going to see more examples of expanding the dot name, whereas the name crosses the dot, for example global.services if you name is Global Services. Expanding dot names are going to be more popular!

I also think that, what we will see in the future in general, is more people having more domain names. And, the best time to get names is always now, because now you can get them at registration price, opposed to buying them on the secondary market for a premium price later. If you find a domain name that is short, generic, meaningful and resonating, it is better to buy it now to a smaller amount. Otherwise, in a year, when the domain is registered by someone else, they are going to ask larger amounts for them.

People often can’t see the market before it happens!

For more updates from Frank, follow him on Twitter: @Frank_Schilling.

Thank you Frank!