Over the last few years there has been a rush of capital into the domain industry from two major sources, Chinese investors and speculators. I have written quite a lot on the Chinese investors but have largely ignored the speculators.

Speculators have hoped to win the lottery by having a domain that a cashed up major company wants to desperately buy. They hear about the successes of “old-time” domainers and dream about find the pot-of-gold at the end of one of their domain rainbows. I don’t mean to rain on your parade but this is unlikely to happen and here’s why.