People understand the value of digital real estate

At NamesCon last week, Marcus Glaad interviewed Michael Cyger, from the leading domain name podcast DomainSherpa, about the secondary market for domain names and what to expect in 2017 on this topic.

How do you think NamesCon 2017 has been?

-I think NamesCon has been great! It´s the largest year of attendance at the event so far. I think it is going to continue to grow, because people are understanding the value of digital real estate and the benefits for their company and to them as an investor.

Last year, we talked a lot about the Chinese market and Chinese domain name investors. Can you give us a picture what has happened since then?

-Clearly 2015 was a peak. I like to think of things as a pendulum that swings back and forth, and last year the pendelum swang really hard to China. If you compare 2016 to 2015 it might seem like it came crashing down, but, that is only because 2015 was such a hard swing. I feel like it came back to the middle during 2016. A lot of larger companies that sell domain names, both retail and after market, almost had a flat year because the pendulum swang so hard.

But! If you look at it without this massive growth 2015, 2016 was a growth year with more money coming in from China than it did 2014, so over all there was a steady growth period from what I have heard. And it looks promising going forward! All the metrics for the new tlds are showing growth, as well as the cctlds are continuing to be strong. I think it is going to be steady growth moving forward.

Speaking of which, the new tlds. Looking at the auction the other night, I get the feeling that they are really starting to be accepted and are here to stay

-Yeah. The new tlds are still a bit of an enigma to most people. We don´t have wide spread understanding about the new tlds because there are so many of them. The other day someone told me they sold a .bet for thousands of dollars, and I was like ‘I didn´t even know that there was a .bet’ and I am in the market trying to interview people about trends!

I believe that the new tlds are just like .com, you need to understand an area very well to find out where to invest, “The riches is in the niches”. So I think that the people that are looking into ntlds saying that there is no where to make money are only ignorant. There is still plenty of money to be made in .com and cctlds even though everything is reserved, if you know where to put your money and make a smart investment – and the ntlds aren’t any different.

Looking into the crystal ball for 2017. What can we expect in the aftermarket?

-We have so much supply in the market with all the new tlds and that has really depressed a lot of the two or three word .coms. I think that the single keyword ntld or the two keywords ntld are equivalent to the three words .com.

What I am seeing is that premium domains, like generic single-word dictionary .coms — words that can appeal to many brands and companies and keywords with massive search volume .com in growing industries — are going to continue increase in value.

I am watching the ntlds to see if those single keywords, that match a top level domain are going to increase in value as well. I’m not as sure as many others of that, although I think those can be a good investment. If you look at the live auctions taking place here at NamesCon, people like the ntlds single words to the left (the domain name) and that are matching something to the right (the top level domain). They are speculating that these are going to increase in value faster than all the others ntlds coming out. I think that trend is going to continue to be strong in 2017 and that will be reflected in the cctlds. I think those are a growing opportunity as well, as more people are getting on the web around the world.

More news from NamesCon to follow.