The domain industry was estimated to be north of $6B in 2019

People are often surprised when I tell them that rather than investing in the stock market or real estate, my investment focus for the last thirteen years has been domain names. The initial assumption is, the domain name sales space must be tiny, and heck, some bloggers even called it dead back in 2011.

Domain Investing is Dead

As those of us who have been investing in domain names for years know, the industry is not only alive and well, it has been thriving and growing over the years. When I went to NamesCon this year I told some of my friends I was going to a domain investing conference and I kid you not, they didn’t believe me. I had to actually show them the NamesCon website and sent them pictures from the show so they knew I wasn’t pulling their leg.

One datapoint I like to highlight to really get people to understand the opportunities in the domain investing space is the size of the domain industry as a whole. Since I find myself sending people this data more and more now, I decided to do a post about it so I can send them to my blog and you can do the same next time someone says something like, “is there really any money in domains names?”

According to the research firm IBISWorld, the domain industry is $6B and consists of over 17,000 companies, here’s a snapshot of the data:

(Source – IBISWorld)

As for the size of the domain investing space itself, this is an incredibly tricky number to get to because the vast majority of sales (especially big ones) are done under NDA and never reported. That being said, you can only assume, in a $6B industry, yes – there is a real investment opportunity.

Of course, as I say to those who still scoff at the thought of investing in domain names, “no problem – you’re right, there’s no opportunity in domain investing, all the good names are taken and you really shouldn’t buy any!”

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton