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.
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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.
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Jamie Parks Donates Contest Winnings To ICA
Jamie Parks has generously asked to donate his $50 prize to the Internet Commerce Association. Done.
For those that are unfamiliar with the ICA, it’s a non-profit group that represents domain investors and developers. They’re fighting for us and what we do.
They accept donations. But you can also join as an Associate Member for $295 annually, with additional more expensive, and involved, memberships available. I know this fee is not feasible for most people. And I won’t say that you need to join it without having done so myself. I will say that I will be joining them when I can and perhaps you should consider it as well, when you can.
In fact, if any of you are in a generous enough mood to speed up the process for me and purchase the domain I have listed for sale in the right column, I’ll sign up as an Associate Member immediately and donate an additional $700 to the ICA. Just saying 
Again, thanks Jamie for participating and generously offering your prize to the ICA.
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Proof That The Good Domains Aren’t All Gone
There were many submissions for the motto contest and I want to thank everyone for their comment and email entries. I narrowed the field down to 13 mottos. I would have been completely satisfied with any of these, but there was one that I thought did a little more to describe this blog than the others.
Proof That The Good Domains Aren’t All Gone
I liked this one because it offered a point of view of what this blog is about that the name TrendDomaining.com didn’t already imply.
It was submitted by Jamie Parks of Domainer Developer. And I’ll likely take his advice, too, in rotating my motto somewhere down the line (because this motto suggests only hand registers). But for now this one will be excellent.
Jamie, please send me your paypal address and I’ll be speedy on the prize.
I was a little disappointed in the DigitalPoint forums. A few days after posting the contest there, my $50 motto contest had 2 replies and about 40 views. A $5 logo contest had 15 replies and over 100 views. Go figure.
Here is a list of my other 12 favorites:
- Setting the trend for the domains to come
- The Next Generation of Generic Domains
- Predicting The Domains of Tomorrow
- Researching The Domains of Tomorrow
- Pioneering Domain Name Research
- Helping Make Trends Pay For Domainers
- Ultimate domain consultancy
- Discovering Tommorrow’s Top Domains, Today
- F.orgreat domaining .info .come and visit .us on the .net <– nifty!
- In search of the next big domains
- Pulse Of Domains
- Earn more money off domain flipping by following the trends
Again, many thanks to everyone that took the time to enter into this contest. It is much appreciated.
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Baby Boomers Will Trigger Many Trends
Boomer companions/caregivers where chosen as one of the top jobs of the near future, as chosen by MSNBC. They’re absolutely right. In fact, the Boomers will trigger several huge trends that have already begun to reveal themselves and will be in full swing just 2 years from now.
There are 78 million Boomers, and in the next couple years many of them will be turning 65, making them eligible for Medicare. 78 million! To give you an idea of how many people that is, it is the same amount that live in our three most populated states:
The Baby Boomers are going to begin retiring and hitting up that Medicare. Expect a surge in age-related illness/treatments such as Alzheimer’s and Diabetes in the next couple years. But is that really all that 78 million people can give us?
Hell no. You see, these people will be retiring and that will set in motion oodles of trends.
To start, someone must fill their positions at the workplace as Baby Boomers are one third of America’s workforce. This is something I pointed out in a post about Generation X. Gen X is set to take over. Know their tendencies, likes, dislikes, whatever.
Second, these people may be retiring from their careers, but some (actually, I think most… and so does CNN) will move on to an every-day job… either by necessity to pay the bills, by choice to fill the time, or to fulfill their lifelong dream of starting a business. You should see a boom in the following industries due to retired Boomers:
- Senior job placement and training services. To help them find a job they’ll be happy with.
- Volunteer and non-profit (especially the Peace Corps). Now that they have the time, many will volunteer it.
- Consultants. Many of these seniors will become consultants for the very field they retired from.
- Temp Agencies. Many people turn to them, and Boomers like them because it’s most likely how they started.
- Houseboats. Both sales and rentals. Boomers love them and can now actually spend time in them.
- RV’s. Oh this will be big. You heard it here first: I don’t care about the gas crisis, Boomers LOVE their RV’s. Boomers love to travel, and they’ll do it in an RV.
Third, Boomers are going to want to live in their dream home. The key is WHERE their dream home is located. Like I said: they love to travel, so Boomers have timeshares, second homes and favorite vacation spots all across the U.S. These are the places they will want to move to. So where are these?
In no particular order:
- Flagstaff, AZ
- Tucson, AZ
- Sedona, AZ
- Palm Springs, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Lake Tahoe, CA
- Aspen, CO
- Boulder, CO
- Tampa, FL
- Port St. Lucie, FL
- Sarasota, FL
- Key West, FL
- Orlando, FL
- Boca Raton, FL
- Fort Myers, FL
- Cape Cod, MA
- Santa Fe, NM
- Las Vegas, NV
- Reno, NV
- Myrtle Beach, SC
- Hilton Head Island, SC
- U.S. Virgin Islands
- Anywhere Hawaii
- OK, anywhere Florida
- The Caribbean
Boomers already own timeshares or second homes in these cities. I feel there will be a significant surge in population in most, if not all, of these cities/places over the next couple years as the Boomers move in permanently. They are already familiar with them and will want to spend their remaining days, and money, in the place that most makes them happy. Expect healthy real estate markets in these cities.
I’m sure there are plenty more trends as 78 million people are bound to produce many. Are there any you can see the Boomers setting off?
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