It’s been a few weeks since my last update and I must admit, it’s good to be back! So where was I you may ask? It just so happens that I had a long overdue minor operation that I ended up having done and spent some time recuperating. Nothing serious and I’m overjoyed at being back.

This week’s video contains all the invaluable data that I love sharing about….as well as a few surprises. It includes trend analysis from the beginning of the year for Google and Direct advertising networks as well as volatility charts. Yep, all good stuff that has the potential to transform your domain investment portfolio.

As always, feel free to leave comments, questions and likes either on my blog or on my Youtube channel. You can also subscribe to my blog or Youtube channel so you don’t miss out on future updates.

I must admit that I’ve never really understood the business model underpinning domain sales. I know that in this article I may rain on your parade and for that I’m sorry….but please help me out in getting over some of my possibly faulty logic

The state of the market for domain names is that it has fallen from a peak growth of 11.7% in 2015 to 1.2% in 2017. The 2015 peak was spurred on by two factors:
•    The Chinese domain boom
•    Greater release of new gTLDs

When you begin to drill down into the data it becomes even more interesting. For instance, .COM grew by 6.4% in 2015 and is growing by 2.8% in 2017. The legacy TLDs (eg. org, net etc) grew by 1.5% in 2015 and slipped backwards by -1.9%. The surprise was the ccTLDs (country codes). In 2015 they were growing by 14% while in 2017 they are beating .COM out with a growth rate of 3.9%. I must admit that I love ccTLDs and have made a lot of money from them over the years.

The sorry tale is the new TLDs. After exploding out of the blocks in 2015 with a growth of 196% they are now contracting by 14.6%. Many have stated that this is not surprising as speculators leave the market but when you consider that over 50% of the domains are parked then you’ve got to ask what’s actually happening. The simple answer is some of the extensions (eg. XYZ) are experiencing massive drops which is influencing the numbers overall…..so no panic here for the truly good extensions.

Ignoring the decline in the new TLDs the overall growth in the market is around 4.8% or approximately 9 million more domains from 2016 to 2017. This is an important number as it represents the demand side of the market and should dynamically influence the sale price of domains.

The other curve is a little frightening…..the supply curve. Since the new TLDs were released, the market has been swamped with a massive level of supply. This is not the early days of the Internet where there was .COM, the CC’s and a few others. We are now in an environment where the supply is so large that it MUST impact the sales price.

One of the most frustrating things about the domain industry is the complete lack of innovation. This isn’t necessarily because companies don’t want to innovate but more because they are caught in a bind and can’t innovate. What do I mean by this?

Every company should be evolving. Evolution has the sense of slow change over a long period of time where internal processes are streamlined, website made “snappier” and customers are being looked after. These are all important things to do but they stem from the evolutionary basket not the revolutionary.

A revolutionary change is where a company completely transforms an industry, and everyone looks up and says, “Why didn’t we think of that?” It’s looking at domains and saying, “I think there is an aftermarket for them.” In its day, this was a revolutionary concept. It’s looking at domain traffic and matching it up with advertisers…..again, another revolutionary concept.

The problem the domain industry has is it’s been caught in the revenue bind. This is where the bean counters look at resourcing a new idea as a cost rather than as an investment into a competitive advantage. Serious innovation often means cannibalising existing revenue streams and this is regarded as a “no go zone” by managers that are given quarterly targets.

The 2017 Industry Leaders survey responses are continuing to come in and the top three contenders so far are Frank Schilling, Rick Schwartz and Jothan Frakes. If you haven't filled in the survey then make sure you share your opinion.

Click Here to do the Industry Leaders Survey

I've had a number of questions raised since I launched the first industry leaders survey a few days ago and I thought that it would be worthwhile answering the questions.

How long will it take to fill in the survey?
There are only 10 questions with a slider from zero to ten next to each so it should only take a few minutes.

What if I don't know how to answer some questions?
The questions look at how YOU feel about the person that you are nominating. This means there are no wrong answers. Also, if you don't know how to answer some questions then just move the slider to zero.

Since the survey is looking at your experience with the person then this would be a reasonable response if you have not had any personal business experience with the nominee but have viewed there community activity.

Stevan Lieberman is well known to the domain industry in his capacity as an intellectual property lawyer. What not many people know is he is also an investor and entrepreneur.

In this interview Stevan shares about some of his investments and the progress he is making with his latest business - Digital Candy. I hope you enjoy watching the video as much as both Stevan and I did sharing from one side of the world to another.