What do you think 2009 holds for the domain name world? Do you see domain name parking revenue continuing to decrease? What about domain name prices — can we expect another .com price hike from VeriSign? All those new domain name extensions soon coming out… We’ll no doubt hear much more about them in 2009. Reckon we’ll see a brand new flock of domain name investor who are seeing gold in these new domain name extensions? What will happen to existing domain name extensions resultant of this decision to open up the namespace? How will the recession impact domain name prices? How much longer is the recession going to last? As for cybersquatting, can we expect companies to come down harder on those domain name investors who choose to invest in domains which infringe on their registered marks? Read on to see what I predict the domain name world will see in 2009, as well as what other domain name investor think 2009 will bring to the domain name world.

A thread on Namepros about what the next few years hold for domaining got me thinking about how I see the next few years playing out. As I’ve said many times, I see development becoming more and more a part of day to day domaining and I do see PPC continuing to decline as CPA begins to rise. I see Call to Action domains becoming increasingly desirable, especially Call to Action domains receiving traffic — I expect we’ll see many of these convert very well under a CPA model. Over the next few years and largely thanks to increasingly lower PPC, I expect the idea that “all traffic is good traffic” to largely become a thing of the past with domainers increasingly focussed on targeted traffic which converts — this is what advertisers want and this is what advertisers are paying for hoping to get.

As has always been the case, good domains will continue to be worth good money. Having 100,000 domains is no longer going to be regarded as something one should be proud of, rather it’s going to increasingly be regarded as what it really is — a $1 Million/year liability. Domainers will continue to cut the fat out of their portfolios — domains which have little enduser potential, little development potential, and don’t make earn enough to justify their keep. The combination of higher registration and renewal fees, combined with lower RPM and a weak economy will hasten this process.

I expect to see many new domainers overjoyed by the possibility of investing in these new extensions — “A real gold rush, a new beginning for the Internet” they’ll say. We might hear a few success stories, however more often than not we’ll here of more domainers getting burnt. Webmasters are already licking their chops thankful that paying good money just to have a nice keyword domain for SEO will finally be a thing of the past. Strong .coms receiving sizable amounts of type-in traffic will of course continue to be prized by the people who can afford them. CNO + ccTLDs will remain the professional choice, .org will overtake .net and .web will be one of the few new extensions to achieve moderate success, becoming a cheap alternative to .net (which really is itself a cheap alternative to .com).

And lastly, I expect that a few years from now we’ll see plenty of newcomers to the domain world moaning about how if they would have started in 2008 they’d be so much ahead of where they are now and that it was so much easier to make money back then. People have been saying that one for the longest time, now haven’t they? If memory serves me correctly, there were according to many people no opportunities to make money domaining left in 2002 — it was all over, right? How many people want to go back to 2002 and reg a few more? If I’ve learn one thing in life, it’s that saying “never” is a word which pretty much always comes back to bite you in the $$$. It’s impossible to say with certainty what the future holds — all we can do is make our best guess and try to adjust what our next move is accordingly.

With credit card offers not coming as often in the mail, people will have to learn to live within their means and we’ll all benefit from that if people remember that moving forward. And as the WSJ says, I think it’s safe to say you’re likely not going to be paying more taxes in 2009 which is always a bonus

As I’ve mentioned a few times now, I really do see 2009 being a year where more domainers start shifting towards domain name development, looking for better methods of monetizing their domains, and cutting the fat out of their domain name portfolios. We’re going to see more companies aggressively protecting their marks, and likely more bad press about cybersquatters, especially as these new extensions from ICANN start to be rolled out. Cash is King. Domain flippers will be increasingly few in numbers, many converting to long term domain name investors. Good domains will continue to sell and I see stronger ccTLDs having a good year.

Scott from TrendDomaining.com sent me an email asking what I saw as some trends to watch for in 2009. So with that, I’ll post below what I do see happening. Be sure to check out Scott’s blog if you haven’t done so already — great information on there for niche domainers and those looking for trends to follow in 2009.  Scott’s working on a post which will cover what a diverse group of domainers see as trends to watch out for in 2009 which should provide us all with new insight into trends to watch out for in 2009. Elaborating on my prior post about 2009, I’ll cover some other subjects which I believe will gain popularity in 2009 — this time it’s not related to domaining or web development, rather, it’s about developments in the offline world which may create new opportunities for trendwatching domainers to pick up domains which may one day be worth considerably sums of money. As I’ve mentioned a few times here, be careful when buying into these kind of names — it can be fun, it can be a learning experience, and it can certainly be profitable, however it can be a very expensive lesson if you get carried away and start registering too many domains speculatively.

I see Cyberterrorism starting to be something governments around the world will start better planning for. I think we’ll see Cybercrime continue to increase and the barriers to entry continue to be lowered. We saw a lot of firsts in 2008 such as widespread availability of ready-made phishing and other malware kits, the outsourcing of certain parts of social engineering scams to native English speakers, the increasing presence of international hacking networks and criminal organizations in Cybercrime. Domains related to cybercrime present an opportunity for domainers in 2009 — properly developed, they may present both a financial opportunity and an opportunity to better help the general public protect themselves from people who would like to see harm done to them.

I’m a big fan of the health and technology niches and I expect we’ll continue to see major advances in technology (display technology, nanotechnology, MEMS, increasing popularity of software as a service and grid/utility computing, continued advanced in broadband and mobile Internet technology and increases in global internet penetration ), further research into the benefits of antioxidants (new antioxidants, new research on existing antioxidants, new superfruits) and continued advances in biotechnology (pharmacogenomics, gene therapy, cloning/stem cell research).

The great thing about niche domains and trendwatching is that it never ends — who remembers Joe the Plumber? New buzzwords and phrases are being coined all the time, new discoveries and scientific advances are constantly being made,… Barry from PredictiveDomaining.com had a great article recently about using Urban Dictionary to find new slangs. I expect we’ll see social media continue to evolve in 2009, Twitter and microblogging will continue to gain popularity, and Myspace will continue to lose out to Facebook.

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1. Domain Name Traffic, Domain Name Research
2. LLLL.com Domain Buyout: One Year Later
3. Domain Name Ebooks