Almost a full decade since the “new gTLDs”, now simply referred to as gTLDs, have made their dubious debut in promising to offer exponentially more domain options than that of saturated legacy domain extensions — so some think.

While many arguments have been made for and against the release of gTLDs, there have been just as many cases made for and against investing and developing the same domain extensions.

It’s been 2 years since I last attended NamesCon out in Las Vegas at the Tropicana.

Fast forward two years, and tick tock goes the clock as we count the weeks, days, and hours until NamesCon 2020 arrives here in my backyard, the growing metropolis of Austin, Texas.

There is a bit of everything under the sun here in Austin — the college boomtown known for TRAFFIC, LONGHORNS, tech, music, festivals, food, and sprawling fun for days that covers every square inch of Downtown Austin, from one block to the next.

Nevertheless, 1,000+ persons, not including locals, will descend upon Austin to connect and re-connect at the world’s biggest domain economic forum: NamesCon Global.

While there is much to anticipate and look forward to during this jam-packed 4 days of everything domains and more, below are a few sessions I’m keen to attend and learn from:

The domain industry can be quite an insular experience, especially if you don’t connect with others, attend meetups and conferences, or participate in online forums and blogs.

Then, the complexities of domain buying, selling, leasing, and development increase exponentially when adding in language barriers, time zone, cultural and socioeconomic differences.

It’s one thing to be a domain hobbyist, domain investor, domain developer, domain broker, or domain consultant within one’s own backyard, per se.

However, today’s podcast guest truly understands what it means to be a global domain investor in one of the world’s fastest growing major economy, India.

Here’s a look at the top 5 podcasts for Kickstart Commerce in December, ranked by number of downloads:

Amidst the back and forth mincing of dialogue concerning a private equity firm, Ethos Capital, purchasing the .org registry, ICANN and Verisign turn heads and make news headlines with its “pay to play” move to increase .com prices.

Domain investing blogs — DomainNameWire.com, DomainInvesting.com, TheDomains.com, OnlineDomain.com, RicksBlog.com, DNIncite.com, and many others — have long sounded the alarm about Verisign’s pure play for billions of dollars — $2 billion dollars based on back-of-napkin math — in profit, dating back to mid 2018 and earlier.

While old news to most domain industry professionals, Verisign’s latest bribe and ICANN’s abdication of price regulator to the U.S. government places domain investors dead center in the crosshairs of slight to complete elimination.

It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone, and with it, a decade too.

The sky is the limit in 2020, and the future is quite bright for all aspects and persons in the domain industry.

It’s that time of the year to look back to see how those lofty predictions actually turned out.

For 2019, I made 9 predictions pertaining to domain sales, new domain extensions, bloggers, conferences, and the overall economics of the domain industry in general.