Think emoji domains are a bad investment — I still

My opinion hasn’t changed and here’s why.

I’ve had a few people email to ask what I think regarding emoji domain names as an investment, especially following domain investor Gregg Ostrick paid $11,201 for ☯.com (Punycode: xn--w4h.com).

My answer hasn’t changed since I wrote regarding this back in May: people are flushing money down the toilet.

With the exception of the 33 emoji domains registered in .com, people are investing in emoji domains in extensions they would never invest in otherwise, such as .ws. These emoji domains will only ever be gimmicks, especially since they render differently on various devices.

What would change my mind is if big end users started buying some of the domains that investors have picked up. Domainer-to-domainer sales don’t make a market. Eventually, they have to have demand from end users.

I don’t see that happening given the limitations of these domains.

Another warning: once domain investors go from snapping up all of the good domains in a niche to spending most of their time promoting how good of an investment that niche is, you’ve probably missed the boat.