Inevitable shift?

[PapaStiz]

As I am sitting here this evening I tend to notice a big difference going on in the domain market that seems to be getting more and more pronounced.

The shift from regular domains without traffic to those with traffic.

I remember when I could pick up a name, hold it for a little while and then be able to sell it for 10 x the amount. The name itself did not have traffic but none-the-less, was a good name.

Now, it seems that most sales are coming from traffic/rev producers.

This is not to say you still cannot pick up a name and then do a quick flip on it, however, those opportunities seem to be getting harder and harder to find.

As well, those names with traffic tend to be gobbled up almost immediately. Here on DNF, when I see a traffic name for sale from a member who you know is legit, the BIN is usually reached very quickly. As long as the members standing is not in question then the name for sale tends to go almost immediately.

2 and 3 letter/number .com's/nets/orgs/us/biz/info etc will always have some sort of demand but that is because they in themselves are rare, not because they have traffic. Yet, more often then not, those 3 LLL/NNN names will still have some sort of traffic even if marginal. Generic names are like this as well and would fall into this catagory. 1 word .com's are hard to come by now and demand a very nice price tag.

Is this an inevitable shift? For a while now I have been buying all names with traffic and have not bought any that lack it. I cannot recall the last time I bought a name just becaues it was "brandable".

What is your stratagy in this market? And what was it before if it has changed?

And if you care to share, what market trends are contributing to it?

I think it would be interesting to hear from different POV's on this. Hopefully we can all take away something from it.

 

[GoPC]

Interesting take considering the odds of reg'ing a domain that GETS traffic is slim to none.

I think you must first consider the perspective and then consider the domain. Parking Pages are becomming a public irritation. The general puiblic, those that used to simply blindly blunder on to a Parked Page and then search it for relevant contect are today quickly recognizing them and hitting the BACK button faster than the page can even LOAD.

That, and the fact that PPC companies are paying LESS per click, and therefore people buying domains BASED on the traffic revenue are paying LESS should actually say that the sale of traffic domains should be getting SMALLER.

But here's the skinny in my humble opinion...

Like any other commodity (yeah, commodity, not real estate) as the trend goes towards leaner earnings, the bigger players are dealing in VOLUME. That's why you see these new formations and mass portfolio buys. The buyers that HAVE are buying more, those that don't have don't stand a chance.

To clarify, if it were real estate, development would naturally ensue. But instead, parking is dominant and "investors" wait for supply to become extinct and demand to soar.

Traffic Domains are already GONE. So are LLL and soon to be LLLL. .com is RARE, Generics are NON-EXISTANT. One Worders of any kind... forget it.

The guys that are REALLY winning are the "domain brokers" that sell you on the idea of parking a domain with them for 3 - 6 months "so we can get a feel for your traffic" thereby raking in mass volumes of traffic from domains they don't even own. Where's the motivation to sell these domains in this case? Hmmm.... anyway, if you can't afford or choose not to BUY these domains for God knows how much, why not split the parking revenues and make your cash on volume?

Is it really an increase in the business or a mad dash for the crumbs? I don't thinks it's about traffic... I think its about supply and demand and the fight for the crumbs.

GoPC

 

[BidNo]

My thinking is the preference for domains with traffic is driven by big money players in the PPC market needing to reduce risk.

 

[hugegrowth]

traffic names are always safe names to have because they are like continually earning dividends or interest on an investment. great if all the traffic names and good names are being hoarded up, many businesses and people are still coming online that need domains. they don't care if the name gets traffic because they expect to start marketing it for THEIR business and create traffic to their website. from a domainers point of view, traffic domains are great, but businesses looking for a good domain for their website don't necessarily think the same way. many people would still be surprised to learn that domains get 'type in' traffic, without any promotion.

domains with high overture without extension tend to be grabbed just because they are searched for keywords, but they don't necessarily get traffic, especially if they are not .com. But good keywords are usually gone in many extensions. if they are good words or brandable they will probably be valued at some point. remember we are still at the beginning of the internet age and what will people looking for domains in 5 or 10 years be able to find?