One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. So the saying goes.
Seriously though, I am mystified that names of this caliber are being dropped. We are happy to catch them but it seems symptomatic of what must be a significant shift in domaining. Domains that were economically useful during the parking era are no longer cashflowing. A lot of development-worthy names are getting dropped.
You can follow our daily drop catch on Twitter or Facebook. Today’s drop-catch is summarized here. Since we are catching these for reg-fee, we are happy to share them with anyone interested in developing on Epik. Contact me for details.
And make sure to check out tomorrow’s drop here.
Seems a lot of domain parkers are just not motivated to develop. The collapse in parking revenue is a boon to domain buyers. The fact that everybody is so scared these days means less competition for these domains as well. We may look back on this as the good old days. (Or else we’ll be wishing we had bought more .in domains!)
@Bill – Indeed. However, the reality is that most domains also don’t even make sense to develop at all. And then there is the issue of funding the development cost, particularly for a large portfolio. I believe in the next year we’ll see a new generation of domainer — one that acquires the domains that are managed by others. If you look at the history of commercial real estate, this is exactly what has happened — the domain owner is usually not operating the assets. Some will do both, but in this most uneven of economic “recoveries”, the likely scenario is that a few major players will come into the market and ride the next wave.
Rob, its extraordinary some of the names which are dropping. There are some phenomenal long tail niche domains with strong fundamentals going everyday.
But, as you said in the comment below, unless you are Epik (not just a client), the cost to develop these in scale is daunting.
@Andrew – Agreed. This is why we have been giving the domains away for free — instead of buying a domain for $249, the developer is buying a turnkey developed website capable of generating incoming and becoming more valuable over time as a function of ongoing care and feeding by Epik on behalf of the owner. Most domainers are merchants — they are good at the buy and sell. Development is just an entirely different skill set. Domainers can choose to learn to developer, or stick to the buy/sell, and partner with a development specialist and cap their at-risk capital employed to the setup fee while leveraging a fast-improving set of platforms that combine Content, Community and Commerce. I could go on, but I think you get the point. We can afford to give these domains away for free, and often do, because are committed to building a network of partners and stakeholders who want to help build the next web.
Everyone (almost) is chasing after short .COM domains and consequently some unique opportunities have been available for developable domains in other extensions. Actually if you look at SEDO’s market studies .Net sales are on the rise…
2008 9% of GTLD
Q309 10% of GTLD
Q1 ’10 11% of GTLD
Q2 ’10 12% of GTLD
Yes, .COM sales far outpace all other TLDs but there is a steady rise in .Net sales and we have experienced a number of .Net sales in the $250-$299 price range.
@Leonard – Yes, we are picking up a lot of .net but also a lot of .com. Drop quality lately is as high as I can remember.
Rob, one key issue which needs to be emphasized is the following:
The Epik influence, power only grows as the quality & number of sites are established. The synergies of backlinks, SEO, streamlining operations, establishing best business practices will only increase over time.
The synergies are difficult to comprehend unless you look at the business model and the lack of competition. It’s tough for someone like me to put to words – but the opportunities are enormous.
TJ — Good stuff. The web is a powerful thing when there is an organizing schema. Wikipedia is just one of many examples. Domainers can now take the whole web to the next level by mapping domains to the logical nodes on the connected network. We are just getting started.
We are also humans, things happen.. people die and can’t renew? or maybe it’s the recession effect on domaining!
I see that Yahoo & Bing search results have now merged (similar search results) which now means that exact match domains don’t rank as easily at Yahoo as they used to – just curious how EPIK is responding.