TrendDomaining.com Is 6 Months Old Today, Answers: What Is Trend Domaining?
Today marks six months since my first post. It went by so damn fast! September and October weren’t my best months, but I can attribute most of that to Ike, Dead Space and some writers block. After all, there are only so many trends one can write about, ya know? Eventually you get to things that don’t really warrant a full post; as I’m trying to avoid small 100 word “editorials.” It’s kind of hard writing a full interesting article about the resurgence of sockmonkeys, despite their racist beginnings.
What is Trend Domaining?
Earlier this month, Elliot Silver wrote a post on his blog about trend domaining. There are some excellent comments and I recommend you check them out. I feel Elliot writes some of the best posts in the domain industry. You just don’t get any BS from him, at least that’s how I feel. He stated that though he does some trend domaining himself, it’s a flawed strategy. This sparked more than a dozen comments both agreeing and disagreeing with his opinion.
Now, I feel they were discussing a more extreme way of trend domaining; something that doesn’t fully represent what this strategy is.
So…
What is trend domaining?
In short: it’s the strategy of identifying future or fresh trends and registering the best related domains. But it’s a bit more complex than that. Identifying future trends takes a lot work and time to do the research. Spotting surging trends and registering the best related domains for them also requires a good deal of work and time spent. Both ways require an element of luck, as well as a knack for choosing the right successful trends over simple fads.
Now, I’m not trying to fool anyone. This is not a super secret strategy. And it’s certainly nothing I made up on my own. Domainers have been doing this since the beginning. After all, almost the entire point of purchasing a domain is that, one day, it will be valuable. This holds true whether you intend on flipping it, developing it or whatever. You are banking on the fact that one day someone will either want the domain, or the related content/product that’s attached to it.
You’ve all purchased domain names with the hope that a surging trend will increase it’s value. That’s the whole idea!
Now, like anything else in the world, this is a good strategy in moderation. It is ideal to get the category killer domain name of any given trend. Examples of category killer trend domains that I have registered in the past few months:
MicroTheaters.com
IPatriotAct.com
HyperlocalDating.com
These aren’t premium domains. But they are the absolute best domains you can get for their given subject, which makes them category killers.
For some trends, it is worth acquiring second tier domain names. For example: let’s take the trend of coworking; the idea of independent workers of like-minded values or goals who gather socially at sites like coffee houses or even home offices. I got in late and was unable to register the category killer of Coworking.com. But being that this is a local trend, I was able to pick up a decent second tier domain in LocalCoworking.com.
Will these pan out for me? Who knows. Time will tell. But, I feel they were certainly worth registration fees.
Again, this is a good strategy… in moderation. What Elliot, and some commenters of his post, were concerned about were people who dumped a lot of money into acquiring large quantities of domains related to a single, or even multiple trends in hopes of making a quick buck. The best example I can give of this are domains related to the U.S. Presidential Election where Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin domains were registered by the thousands.
And we’re talking absolutely horrible domains like DougTheBarber.com, JoeThePlumberDotCom.com and McCain–Palin.info (actual names listed on eBay). These terrible domains were listed for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. They were registered in large quantities by domainers hoping to make a quick buck on a trend. Their strategy is that perhaps one or two of them will sell for good money, thus making up for their other crap registrations.
This is an extreme strategy and not representative of everything trend domaining is. It’s akin to acquiring 2000 LLLL.com’s with the hope that some company named Quinn’s Water And Valves will bust down your door and throw money at you for your QWAV.com domain name.
And I will be the first one to tell you that this strategy is not a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, it is the direct opposite. The idea is to acquire domains before a trend or early on in a trends life. You hold it and then sell, or develop it, when the time is right. That will not get you rich quickly. There may be exceptions, but not many.
Using this strategy in moderation also means that your portfolio should not be 90% trend domains. Anyone in any industry will tell you to diversify, and it absolutely applies here as well.
I think there may be a misconception that trend domaining involves hand registering only. Not true; and this is what makes trend domaining a valuable strategy for both novice and veteran domainers alike. Everyone can get in on hand registering domains. It can be fun even: Kevin of BigTicketDomains says that it’s “much like the excitement from the early days of domaining when treasures could still be found each day at reg fee costs“
But veterans, or those who have the funds, can purchase the category killers of future trends that have been registered for years. Examples would be:
WindTurbines.com
ElectricCars.com
NaturalGas.com
CarbonCredits.com
VirtualWorlds.com
These are just a handful of domains that you simply can’t argue against their future value. Novice domainers can’t touch these. But there are plenty of domainers out there that would be able to afford them. And they would be buying them with the expectations that these trends will keep on rising, making these domains more valuable next year, and the year after, and so on.
That is trend domaining.
Review of Trends Reported here on TrendDomaining.com
I’ve written about dozens of trends. I’d like to touch base on some of them now and share with you just where these trends sit today. In no particular order:
Aug 7th - Oil Bubble
The original post stated that the bubble was about to burst, which wasn’t a ground breaking statement by any means. However, in my September 1st Labor Day Recap I stated that the burst would show in October. Though this article is being published in mid-November, this particular section was written October 31st, where I paid $1.98 for a gallon of gas in Houston; less than half of what I paid earlier in the summer (Note: on Nov 5th I paid $1.89 a gallon and Nov 14th I paid $1.67 in Freeport, TX). In the original post, I also stated that everyone will move on to alternative energy. Well, as my bailout post points out, the government cemented my comment and this trend.
June 6th - Untooning
Inspired by the post made here on TrendDomaining.com, The Little Devil Media Team has put together Untoons.com. This site is exactly what I had in mind when I posted about the new art form. “Untooned” is now getting ~880 searches a month, according to Google’s keyword tool. It’s not a show stopper, but a nifty niche nonetheless. And one that, if you follow trends, you could have acquired the category killer.
July 28th - Nichepapers
This article shows the certain death of newspapers, but perhaps the birth of a new genre where magazines and newspapers merge into one: nichepapers. One commenter said “Do you mean magazines?” In a way, yes, but this goes much deeper than people realize. TrendBird threw support in my prediction by posting an article on the rise of nichepapers. This will get bigger, and there are billions of niches out there for you to be the first to offer a printed nichepaper.
July 17th - Virtual Worlds
At the time of the original post, companies had pumped $395m into virtual words. In Q3, they pumped an additional $148m, according to TrendBird. That’s a total of $543m so far this year. To put that into perspective, $543 million is:
- $16m MORE than the domestic gross of The Dark Knight as of October 26th, 2008.
- About equal to the value of a 204 year old Spanish Navy treasure discovered earlier this year.
- Just $57m shy of buying the same data center Google just bought.
- $145m more than a bridge to nowhere.
- The price tag of about 32 hours of warfare in Iraq.
In other words: it’s a hell of a lot of money. You think MMO’s are big now? Just wait… 2009 and 2010 are going to get slammed by them.
On top of that, in a move that didn’t make any big headlines, Google is now doing adsense for INSIDE virtual worlds.
June 7th - Zeppelins
No no, not the led kind; the flying kind! Even though this predicted trend wasn’t panning out for me, I still feel I was on to something. Well, Airship Ventures launched recently in California, as reported by Boing Boing. It’s just the beginning. I think this has great potential for a healthy market.
Sept 3rd - Coworking
The post was actually about Edopter.com, a social trendcasting site. While browsing the site, I discovered new trends such as Coworking. Recently, “coworking business” was listed by Mashable as a business idea that will thrive in a down economy. Fortunately for me, I picked up localcoworking.com just in time for the trend to get big.
Aug 13th - Carbon Trading
I declared that the next big green trend will be carbon trading. On October 9th, the House revealed their plan to implement a carbon cap and trade system. Make sure you check out the best keywords in my original post, they’ll help you pad your portfolio with valuable domains.
Nov 7th - DNA
June 28th - Robotics
These two posts may as well be merged, as many of these trends fall under both. Just days after my post, Time named the Retail DNA Kit the #1 invention of 2008. On the transhuman note, the first commercial bionic hand was 14th on Time’s list. The synthetic organism was 21st. Or should that be under robots? Bionic Contacts were 24th. The mobile, dexterous, social robot was named the 17th best invention of 2008 by Time.
What’s next, artificial hearts? We’re getting closer and closer to being bionic!
Outside of that, there are dozens upon dozens of advances involving DNA that are hitting the news nonstop. One of the more interesting, and important, pieces of news was a glimmer of hope for AIDS patients.
Aug 30th - Body Art
This trend is huge. Every single day I am seeing articles on social sites about piercings, tattoos, paint, mutilation and anything else you can creatively express with your body. I’m also getting loads of organic traffic looking for all kinds of body art.
Aug 11th - Vinyl Wall Art
My 3rd most popular post; all due to organic traffic. This is because there is a huge demand, and not nearly the supply to meet it.
June 10th - Lego
All I really need to say is that this is my second most popular post of all time. It wasn’t popular at the time of posting, but through organic traffic it gets tons of hits; 10-20 a day for lego related terms. And this isn’t even a lego site. I still feel you could make money with a good Lego affiliate site.
June 8th - The ’80s
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/25/cassette_mp3_player/
June 4th - Virtual Fitting Rooms
These have a great future! They’re popping up everywhere.
June 1st - Space
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was named the 3rd best invention of 2008 by Time. The Mars Rover was 18th.
News Aggregation Or Stolen Content?
A couple weeks ago Jamie Zoch of DotWeekly.com posted about aggregation feeds here, and a few months earlier here. I left a brief comment with my opinion on the first one.
A few aggregator sites use my feed; one even asked my permission before doing so. Another one, DNHeadlines, sent me a courteous email informing me of their adding my feed and giving me the opportunity to deny it. Which I didn’t. I believe well designed aggregators like these can provide value to the domaining community.
But there are some sites out there that just plain ole steal content and provide absolutely no value. I started receiving pingbacks from one such site this week. That site is lp6.net. Scroll to the bottom to see who owns it and visit his main site.
This site has “domain name trends” plastered at the top of the page and uses feeds, including mine, to display full articles without any linkbacks or credit.
Other domaining sites lp6.net rips off:
TheDomains.com
DomainNameNews.com
DomainFlipper.com
fka200.com
DMueller.com
RickLatona.com
There may be more, but I stopped looking.
Now, this isn’t something I would normally post about. This is something where I would just send him an email and move on. But what prompted to post is this comment from the about page of his own main website:
- “commerical [sic] use of web site code and content is strictly prohibited unless authorized by me. Non-commerical use and modification is permitted provided that my name and a link to *********.com is displayed with the content. All derivative works must adhere to this license.”
Emphasis by me.
I dunno, it just rubs me the wrong way that he posts this in his about page while actually doing it to others.
i am very curious, how does everyone feel about sites like this? I’d like to know whether you run a blog or not, in fact I’m curious if non-bloggers have a different opinion. Am I overreacting here?
EDIT:
A little over an hour after posting this, the site was taken down and parked.
Of Hurricane Ike And Disaster Domains
Hurricane Ike is headed my way. It’s current target is Freeport, Texas, which is just 70 miles south of Houston. Many of you have not heard of Freeport yet, but you will eventually and not because of the hurricane. Freeport is often thought to be the next big port in the U.S.;It’s a huge energy port that could play a key role in the upcoming years when things like liquefied natural gas (LNG) become bigger household terms.
I live in southwest Houston at just a one hour drive from Freeport; we should see a good portion of Ike this weekend. I spent my day today boarding up the buildings of the company I work for, and will start making preparations to my property. Most of the zip codes east of me are in mandatory evacuation and the highways are already packed. All of this is reminding me of Rita; the skies were a beautiful clear blue most of the day. I’m completely fascinated by hurricanes, tornadoes and other wonders of weather (my first dream job was a tornado chaser). If I can, I’ll take some pictures of the storm and get em up here.
Anyways, this blog is about real world trends and how domainers can take advantage of them. I try not to report actual domaining trends, such as LLLL.com’s or hacked domains, etc. That’s because there are oodles of other blogs and news sites that already report these. I’m going to somewhat break that rule of mine today.
You’ve read in the news this week about domainers needing to take a stand and start policing themselves. This has been mostly focusing on trademarked domains. But disasters are another facet that needs to be addressed. If domainers wish to do some PR, then they need not register these names with intentions of flipping and/or profiting off of them. If you do end up with a hurricaneike.com or a katrinarelief.com, then by all means please donate it to an organization that can make good use of it and actually help people that desperately need it.
Profiting off of these disasters gives us a black eye.
Labor Day Recap: Vinyl Wall Art Is Now My Top Search Term
Nice to have a day off! Good luck to people being affected by Gustav today and the upcoming days. Being in Houston, what has happened to New Orleans could just as easily have happened to us.
Back on June 21st, I revisited trends from previous posts to see how they were doing. Well, I’m doing it again. I won’t bore you with a recap of every post, but there are a few I wanted to go over starting with the most important one:
Aug 11th - Vinyl Wall Art
I never would have expected it, but the vinyl wall art post has become my most popular post of all time in just under 3 weeks. Not because domainers love it or are linking to it, but because of loads of organic traffic. Vinyl wall art is my number one search term now, even higher than domain related keywords (geodomains is second, in case you were curious). I suppose that’s kind of embarrassing for a domaining blog to admit.
But I think this shows how hot this trend really is. And to give you an idea of what people are typing to find vinyl wall art (at least the ones that got to my site):
- vinyl wall art
- vinyl wall designs
- vinyl art
- vinyl wall
- vinyl sticker wall art
- uk vinyl wall art
- big wall art
- vinyl people wall art
- vinyl wall art home
- how to make vinyl wall stickers
- vinyl wall art blog
- vinyl wall looks real
- vinyl for wall art
And these are directly related to my suggesting that ’80s vinyl wall decals were going to be a big subniche:
- nes vinyl wall
- star wars vinyl wall decals
- star wars wall vinyl
- wall decal big nickelodeon commercial
- ghostbuster wall art (yea, for real)
- mario vinyl wall art
- andy warhol wall decal (Hate to say it, but I told ya so!)
Yea, people really typed those in to get to my blog. Perhaps I should change my focus? hehe…
If TrendDomaining.com is ranking real high for these keywords and people are clicking on them, then the supply is not meeting the demand. Hint hint.
Aug 14th - Olympics
I said that Michael Phelps could do for swimming what Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods did for basketball and golf, respectively.
Of course, it’s too early to tell. But this NY Times report proves this trend is on the right track. From the article: “I don’t want this sport to be an every-four-years sport,” said Phelps. “In between the four years, there’s really not as much exposure as I’d like.”
Aug 7th - Oil Bubble
Well, on August 7th crude oil was about $118 a barrel. Yesterday, August 31st, it was at $120. Not a burst. But it’s still almost $30 lower than it’s high in July. The price of gasoline has gone down, but it doesn’t seem to reflect the huge drop in crude these past 2 months. That’s because these crude oil barrels are futures; the current price of crude is for Octobers gasoline. So don’t fret, the bubble is bursting, even if the price of gas doesn’t reflect it completely; it should come October. Yes I said “should.” Hurricane Gustav or many other things may have a say in it.
Either way, speculators are moving on to something different. Soon we should start seeing reports of money being pumped into alternative energy like never before.
July 7th - Home Servers and Movies-on-demand Boxes
Of course, not long after I wrote this post, news of a Netflix box hit Yahoo. Genius. Blockbuster announced their kiosk business model, which is identical to Redbox and too little too late. It’s just not enough. Netflix gets it, Blockbuster doesn’t.
Vudu has a sleak new box, but it’s still not comparable to what Netflix has.
I feel that eventually every (fortunate) home will have either a home server, movie box or both.
June 30th - Bamboo
I still think bamboo will be one of the biggest trends of the upcoming decade. It just has so many answers for the world.
Though not a site of authority, here is a post that claims bamboo clothing is the next big eco-trend. Here is another company putting it all in on bamboo clothing.
Bamboo is helping computers go green with ASUS finally rolling out it’s bamboo notebooks, Dell’s Hybrid and SimpleTech releasing these nifty external drives.
Since the post, I was able to pick up a couple decent bamboo names:
- BambooRoofing,com
- ShopBamboo,com
Grab bamboo domains now while they’re cheap.
Hosting Crash
Hosting went down last night. I’ve been with Lunarpages for about 4 or 5 years now and that’s the first time it’s ever gone down. And strangely enough, now that it’s back up my Twitter widget doesn’t work, which was meant for situations such as this one.
Still no complaints. Lunarpages is easily the best hosting account company I’ve ever worked with. They’ve fixed the 3 or 4 problems I’ve had and even moved me to a PHP5 server the same day I asked for it.
Great company.