Many people have come to the conclusion that investing in domains is dead and yet from my perspective the industry appears to be flourishing. The first distinction we need to make is whether you are part of the industry or a customer of the industry.

Over the last few years many new gTLD registries have been stomping the pavement and doing whatever they can to convince investors to buy domains with their extensions. When investors purchase the domains, they are the customers of both their registrar and ultimately the registry.

The registrar and the registry have done their job…..they just convinced you to register a domain name. The ball is now in your court to decide what you’re going to do with it to provide a return on your investment.

It is NOT the registries responsibility to support the reason why you registered the domain. I know this may seem like bad news but the registries do not have a responsibility to ensure you get a return on your investment….that’s your job.

The only time a registry will possibly be concerned is if the net position of new registrations and renewals goes into a negative trend. If this is the case, they will attempt to stimulate demand through advertising efforts, but they are very unlikely to try and rescue your investments.

As many readers already know I’ve been relating my efforts of attracting birds to my yard to starting a new business. In the last article in the series I wrote about trying to develop a new market vertical for my burgeoning bird business. So how’s it going?

Like any good entrepreneur I tried a number of different techniques to attract clients to my offering. Applying the marketing principles of product, price, placement and promotion I began testing the market and then evaluating the results.

My wife had given me some bird seed (ie. the product) for Christmas as a present and I scattered these liberally across the lawn and in the feeder. The result, pigeons. I have nothing against pigeons but they weren’t the market I was trying to reach and to be frank with you….they are complete pigs and ate all of the seeds.

This is similar to a new business taking a scatter gun approach to marketing to see if there are any bites on their product or service. More often than not, you get a lot of tyre kickers that talk a lot, don’t buy and waste your time.

This past week has seen a dramatic turn-around right across the board in the crypto-currency space. Literally billions of dollars have been slashed off the market value of many of the currencies and the once darlings of the media have quickly become pariahs.

I watched a financial commentator on the local news speaking almost with glee on the dramatic fall from grace of Bitcoin and how cryptocurrencies were completely crazy. He then flashed up a few charts that reinforced his point that cryptocurrency investors were obviously bonkers.

I was chatting with my brother the other day and like the news commentator he also missed the single defining point about cryptocurrencies…..and that is, not all of them are created equal. Unlike fiat money which is essentially the same no matter whether its dollars, pounds, euros or whatever, cryptocurrencies can often have a business model that is attempting to solve a real-world problem.

Last year, some of you may remember that I set myself the challenge of launching a new business. Although it was a significant challenge I managed to attract enough customers to make it worthwhile and it’s continued to expand with a whole flock of repeat clients.

For the past week or so I’ve been working diligently on opening a new market vertical. Attracting new clients from a different market vertical is taking a much bigger investment than I thought but I’m determined to reach them.

If you remember from previous blog articles, the first incarnation of the business involved positioning a bird bath in the garden outside my study window. It took quite some doing but after moving it around and laying out some bread crumbs I’ve managed to attract a number of bird families as my first clientele.

The photos below can testify to the success of my existing venture….but I wanted the business of me enjoying watching the birds from my study window to expand.

I would like to start by wishing readers a very prosperous 2018. This sounds really good but what does it mean? Where are the opportunities and how will you take advantage of them?

Whenever I think of investment opportunities I’m forced to reflect upon the underlying business models being adapted. Whether it comes to domains, crypto-currencies or anything else it’s the business models which ultimate will or will not produce the results we all dream of at the beginning of the year.

Let’s tackle the domain investment business models:

Development
For the past year and a bit, I’ve been working on a platform for better monetising domain traffic. The key here was to build a platform that more accurately understood the traffic while at the same time building both immediate and residual revenue. I can only say, watch this space…..as my first evolution of this will be launched shortly.