During the past 5 years it became clear that "home ownership" might be less of a societal goal and more of an economic and life management burden in an increasingly mobile and job changing culture.
As a result, in a more mobile society you might also find that Realtors or real estate professionals spending more time facilitating rentals and, in due course, to aggregate such business real estate professionals might wish they had the foresight to grab a few rental domains. Also, renting + contracts/job security -> "rent to own" or "rent with option to purchase", i.e., the new path to those nice realtor/broker commissions.
OTOH, who needs rental agents to rent a property these days? So maybe the right domain will give a "work at home" person a bit of an work at home business opportunity . . if only they had the right sign-worthy-and-workable domain. Say, like City+HomeForSale.tld or City+HomeForRent.tld?
I was going to post certain specific domains, to make the discussion a bit more meaningful and insightful, but let's just go with the numbers for now . . .
Below are the earnings, generated in the last 12 months, by individual geo-targeted home/house "rent related" domains most of which were registered in the past 6-24 months.
As you can see some have more than paid for themselves. Others have covered about 1/2 their registration cost, which isn't a bad outcome with any domain being held for development or resale. All have inherent value (as evidenced by the traffic/earnings) and many are likely to be developed at some point, by someone . . because, I predict, in 2009 and beyond there will be an increase in renting homes versus buying homes as people become part of an increasingly mobile and migratory work force.
Parking Revenue on a Per Domain Basis for a 12 month period. (And no, this isn't a get rich quick scheme. It's a make a little here and a little there and watch it all add up.)
36.63
33.07
30.90
25.47
24.90
23.20
21.93
20.79
12.56
11.05
10.82
10.13
9.21
8.42
8.21
7.70
6.98
6.83
6.63
6.36
6.26
6.24
5.75
Note each number is dollars and cents and each domain is a 3, 4 or 5 word domain. All are .Com.
Food for thought.
Anyone else care to share their recent (1-3 years) predictive domaining experience? Did you get it right or are the trends at least working in your favor?
[edited by: Webwork at 11:12 pm (utc) on May 3, 2009]
I've got a couple of predictive domain groups. I've scored well on one group, this technology is up-and-coming...it is here and is used, but barely starting in US. Revenues are tiny, in the neighborhood of $2-$20 per year per domain. In the worst case, I'll bundle and sell to a major eCommerce site in the niche, will be worth $5-10K I hope.
The other 2 groups I've got...one is in legal, sort of...and it is somewhat geographical...but it isn't paying for itself; the other is geographical, and I let quite a few of the bunch expire few months back (out of a few hundred). There were very few good ones, and basically 0 hidden gems.
On another note, I just picked up 2 domains for reg fee couple of days ago that I KNOW are strong niche 2-word domains. They are in one of our niches, that is how I know they are good. They were dropped. One of those "free appraisal" tools estimates each one at $2K.
So it is hit-and-miss.
Have you thought of becoming a registrar, or a web hosting provider?
