From a fresh outsiders point of view domains seem innocent enough. You pay $8 and you get a name you can use for a website. But if you get into the world of domains, it's not as easy to turn a profit despite what you might believe from million dollar sales in the news like Pizza.com.
Here is my advice to a person asking whether or not he should make the plunge into becoming a domainer:
My short answer is no, you should not get into domaining. I think you already answered your question.
Originally Posted by Poster
I'm not risk-tolerant enough to throw my entire savings into this.
This is good.
Originally Posted by Poster
I also know that even though a jack-of-all trades is a master of none, I am not secure enough to throw all my eggs into my potential domaining basket.
Nor should anyone be.
Originally Posted by Poster
Yet I know I am a fool, and every time I try my hand at a task that involves a moderate amount of risk, I almost invariably come up on the losing end.
With domains, it depends if you're buying domains from resellers or you're just hand registering (though even hand registering can be a slippery slope). If you start buying domains from resellers, that can start getting risky as you purchase more and more. If you limit yourself to 2 hand regs a month, you can just write it off as a night of entertainment and there will be virtually no risk.
Originally Posted by Poster
I also am not a business person by nature, as I lack that driven passion most people who are successful business people have.
I don't think you have to have a business mind to know a good domain, but if you want to sell, buy from sellers, negotiate and everything that goes into it you do need to have some good business/commen sense. (ie when to walk away from a deal, when the market is inflated, when to sell, etc.)
Originally Posted by Poster
I'm more passive and reactionary, which is bad because it would lead me to deliberate when I should simply act.
This is not a good trait for domaining. You wait and you can lose big time with domains in a variety of ways (when to buy, when to sell, when to hold). Also, for purchasing domains now, if you want the big return, you have to have foresight and believe in that foresight. Someone, I think it was Reece, said something very profound the other day in response to pizza.com being sold for $2.6m. To paraphrase he said something to the effect of:
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A lot of people say oh I wish I was domaining in 1995 and lament on how they missed out but how many people would have even had the domain in 2008? It takes a lot of determination and patience to register a domain 10 years ago when the Internet was just something "computer geeks" were doing and then keep paying the renewal fees for 10 years and not sell it when offers of $50,000 and $100,000 were coming in.
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I think that is very true. I can't say that I wouldn't have sold it myself. Look at Beer.com. Some college kid sold that for $80,000 in 1999*. Who wouldn't have been tempted to sell something you bought for $20-$30 bucks a few years earlier and sell it for $80k?
Anyways, the point is with domaining you need to be acting instead of reacting. If you react, you better be able to react fast.
Originally Posted by Poster
So, should I really go for it and dip my toe into the water?
Originally Posted by Poster
My brain says no, but my gut says yes. My brain's been right more times than my gut, though...
I don't think you should and I encourage people to domain all the time, but given what you have just said, you don't sound like you want to have an excel spread sheet of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of names with renewal fees coming at you every month of the year.
You'll hear and read a lot of domain glory stories, but usually no one tells you the ugly side of domaining. If you want to see the ugly side go look at an expired domains site. Look at the millions of dollars people have thrown out the window over the years. And I'm not saying it's all a bad thing - it's better to let a domain expire than to keep renewing something that will never be worth $1, but still there are a lot of people that flat out suck at domaining.
To me you sound like someone who should hand register a maximum of 3 domains a month. 1 name that you personally like as well as think it's inherently a good name and want to develop and the other 2 for pure speculation/domaining purposes. This way you can be in the world of domaining, but limit your risk to about $200/year which is pretty fair if you consider how much money people spend on dvds, news stand magazines, movies, and other more trivial stuff.
Just like most things in life, there are a few people who are successful and a lot that aren't. A lot of the rhetoric you read on this board may be from those who are successful as it's evident many NamePros members are profitable domainers, but just remember for every one of them there's 30 that aren't/will not be profitable (as of now I'm in that group - hopefully not in a few years).
Your post resounded of honesty so I thought I'd give you my truth. There's nothing wrong with being risk adverse. You won't become a millionaire that way, but you probably won't go broke either. Now that you have read the preceeding sentence think about the percentage of people are millionaires.
Last thing. When I was reading your post I thought of a great quote from one Stewart Gilligan Griffin:
Originally Posted by Stewie Griffin
Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.
*He was ...
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Yes, it's $50,000 but runs is a great name that I think would go much higher on Sedo if sent to auction. You can see this premium domain listing price at Godaddy.com by searching runs.
Also, Drunker.com is on sale on Ebay. There is a reserve or else the current bid of $15 would be a nice take home.
Ebay is also featuring another nice domain in Drafted.com with a buy now price of $79,000.
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Here is the link with all the information for .ME registration:
http://www.domaininformer.com/news/press/080410RegistrarsPrepareforAllNewDomainExtensionME.html
Wake me up when they launch .web.
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If you aren't thinking tv already, it's about time you do. The TV and Internet are coming together (for the masses) in the very near future. Already, there is a psuedo tv phenomenon happening because of youtube. I bought over $200 of hand regs tonight - roughly 75% vlog/tv speculation, the other 25% were very solid domains like warriortime.com and usws.org. But the gem I'm anxious to see what happens to is dltv.tv. I know, I know it's tv back-to-back, but think about it - download tv dot tv. I believe there's a lot of potential there. It's my first dot tv ever and as much as I thought it was superfluous before, if the name fits with the .tv, I'd start believing in it. Internet tv is coming to a laptop near you... or right in front of you.
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While Pizza.com's bidding has stalled, NorthCarolinaJobs.com has skyrocketed to $50k. That surprised me. It's a good name, but $50,000 seems like more than it's worth to me. At what point do you as a buyer think, well why not just get the .net for $3,000?
Another good sell for a seller. If the buyer is launching a huge operation - which I assume he or she must be - then it will all pan out in the end, but in this writer's estimation, this bid is above market value. From what I've read $50k was the reserve. If that's the case, I'd let it sit.
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