*Jumptap* mobile search

As a gesture of goodwill towards the excellent mobile company Jumptap, which has been an occasional visitor to our blog, please take Jumptap's mobile search technology for a spin. We found a link for Jumptap mobile search here courtesy of the DigitURL founder, Andrew Gray, who since we last blogged about his efforts has moved on to launch Firxt.com, a customizable mobile web search portal that is unlike any other AND that's soon to be compatible with the iPhone. Firxt has links to tons of mobile search engines.

Two players in a quiet harbor, for now

When we think of mobile portals and numeric domains, the New Zealand company named WordDial first comes to mind. Since the 1990s, WordDial has been building a portfolio of thousands and thousands of generic dotcom wordnumber domains, or numeric domains that spell generic terms on a mobile keypad such as 6397.com (News) or 3462623.com (Finance). Many domains in WordDial's immense portfolio are featured on the company's free interlinked set of portals, which allow mobile customers to access a type of yellowpages to the mobile web.

According to a webpage spidered recently by Google, it appears that another company may launch a portal for seven of its generic dotcom wordnumbers. Skias Corporation, the first publicly-traded numeric domain company that was founded by Scott Smith, owns such generics as 66639.com (Money) and 32737.com (Fares), which will belong to the to-be-launched portal(s).

Smith knows he has a good thing with these domains. Few numeric domain investors own domains that spell generic words since probably over 90% of the best of these are owned by WordDial, which appears to be highly resistant to selling them. It's hard to know what kind of success privately-held WordDial has had with its portals. Therefore, it's hard to know how much success Smith's public corporation will have with its version of the portal revenue model for numeric domains.

One thing, however, is for certain: when the numeric domain boat comes in, and mobile users begin visiting 66639.com over Forbes.com and 6397.com over Cnn.com, both Smith and WordDial will be hearing two sounds.

The foghorn. And 'ch-ching.'

The Fed's gonna need an awfully big vacuum to suck all this cash back (one day) before inflation sets in

Don't lose 20% of your nest egg each month: buy numeric domains

If you've lost money in the stock market, you did so because you didn't want to do the work of researching stocks and you gave that job to a company that screwed it up for you. And, worse, they even made a commission off your nest egg by losing you money!

What are you going to do now? Put your smaller nest egg in the hands of another complete idiot? No! You need to do the investment research yourself. You need to not be foolish ever again with your hard earned money. You need to do your homework.

So let me tell you in a nutshell about the profits that can be made in domaining. You ought to know that - first of all - the cost of a domain name is the annual registration, or about $9. That's your cost. Done. When you sell that domain privately, meaning without a broker or a third-party website (and many domainers sell privately), you keep all of the profits. You just need to pay taxes on that as business income/capital gains.

Second thing you should know: being a domainer is also about being forward-thinking. Since Jamptap is all about purely numeric domains, I'm going to tell you how to be forward thinking as a NuDom (numeric domainer). (There are tons of other blogs about non-numeric domaining.) Although two (i.e., 23.com), three, four and five digit dotcom numeric domains are all sold out, you may be able to find some good deals in the domain aftermarket (buying from individual domainers with or without using a broker).

To give you an idea of how hot three-digit domains are now, an auction at Sedo.com for 867.com ended yesterday (October 14) at 8,200 GBP or about $14,268. That's a huge profit if the seller bought it for $9 years ago! 867, in case you don't know, is a Canadian area code.

A very similar domain, 887.com, is now for sale, and was first listed on a domaining forum on October 11th. If you're interested, just type 887.com in Google.

If you want to grab numeric domains though that are only 9 bucks, meaning brand new from a domain registrar like GoDaddy, you should know this: there are literally thousands of six digit or more numeric domains that spell common words and brands that aren't bought yet. Go to a bunch of very new Web 2.0 social networking or e-commerce sites, then translate the brand to a wordnumber (what it spells in numbers on a keypad), and see if it's bought (using the free site domaintools.com).

There are several domainers that focus exclusively on this niche but they haven't bought all of the good ones -- this is where and how you can get in on the action.

Third thing to know: numeric domaining is a long-term play. Sit on the sidelines. Wait a few years. And if for some reason you lose, know that you haven't paid a commission to some investment idiot. You just lost a few $9 domain registrations.

Think about it. Read our blog. And go domaining!

Analysis shows .com numeric domains grows 200% every 2 years

The analysis completed by Law9.com shows that numeric domains in 'the .com has surged from a [sic] 2500 $ to 7500 $ in 2 years.'

I'm not sure where the data is really coming from, but if it's right, then that's 200% per every 2 YEARS! Although the analysis has a small sample size and unclear source data, it's great to see more analyses on number domains of the sort we usually see at Nnnnndomains.com.

Read Law9.com's analysis here

At some point you have to ask, what's backing up all that credit?

So investors are considering numeric domains, what now?

Markets are crumbling, investors are fleeing. A bunch of individual investors begin investigating other asset classes. And a few read about numeric domaining (yeah!).

So how do we convert them? How do we convince Joe Investor who just closed out his mutual fund portfolio on Wednesday and has $350,000 in cash coming to him soon that numeric domains are a safe investment that can bring a good ROI, or return on investment?

Even though sophisticated investors (of all types) likely acknowledge that domaining is a 'long-term play,' the problem is that the numeric domain market is illiquid. There's not an adequate marketplace of buyers for most numeric domain types, and so that presents lots of concerns. (NN.com's and NNN.com's are probably the only exceptions.) If there was a more liquid marketplace, then outside investors could (1) better appraise our numeric domain holdings for purposes of making an offer, (2) see that there are some serious profits being made already and (3) know that they won't be stuck in 1, 2 or 10 years holding an asset they can't get rid of.

Until Bear Stearns kicked the bucket and the stock market started tanking, investing in stocks made sense on all three accounts: the market price of just about any stock was well-defined, there was a history of long-term profitable returns for most diversified stock portfolio types, and shares have been usually very liquid (you can sell most stocks in seconds or minutes, and the spreads were small).

NOW, all that's changed. Stocks are plummeting because no one knows companies' exposures to real-estate derivatives products that aren't liquid, the profit-potential of stock-market investing is in serious question, and people are worried that if a company goes under their shares will be worthless.

Numeric domainers may, in the end, have to solve liquidity problems themselves before attracting investors. And increasing trading may be the answer. If numeric domainers increase the volume of transactions then that might attract outsiders if enough trading brings sufficient liquidity, more clearly defined domain values and a track record of steady profitmaking.

Sell all your stocks and invest in numeric domain names

Jim "Mad Money" Cramer come out today with a heck of a surprise statement: “Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”

Jim cares about you, and so do we. So when you ask 'What to do with the money?,' we advise you to do just one thing: Buy numeric domains! Learn about numeric domaining here and at NumericDomains.com.

Jamptap has no domains for sale, but we do have the most extensive blogging archive on the topic where you can learn about this niche; afterwards, you'll have no problem finding sellers out there who are willing to let their domains go for bargain prices.

The Numeric Domain market is showing signs of strengthening in an otherwise sour economic environment. Three-digit numerics (NNN.com) are going for $XXX,XXX these days, NNNNN.com's COMPLETELY SOLD OUT in 2008, and wordnumbers, dotcom number domains that stand for words (466453.com = Google.com), are going to be the best investment of all.

Why will dotcom (and other dotTLD) wordnumbers be the best investment of all?

Because check this out: all of these companies: Google, ChaCha, Expedia, 4Info, Sony, Reuters, and Yahoo; they all own a .com/.net/or .mobi wordnumber domain. Yet thousands of upstart Web 2.0 companies don't. They're clueless. They'll kick themselves when they realize you got in on the action before they did. So cash out those wretched stock portfolios and buy numeric domains before the landrush is, well, over. Start your journey today!

The crisis worsens....