TrendDomaining.com Is 6 Months Old Today, Answers: What Is Trend Domaining?

November 17, 2008 · by Scott

TrendDomaining.com 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.

Obama vs Mccain 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“

Wind Turbines 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. Zeppelin

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