I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year, I am here at the helm, Mike and Judi are in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. Michael might be better at college and pro football picks than domaining.
Mike is somewhere in there
He has been hot for the last month. He and Judi also got to see the playoff game between Clemson and Ohio State live.
This blog is 12 years old now, I have been here for 6, and it does seem like a longer time than that. This starts year 23 of buying domains for me, I wish I was more focused back in 1997 on domaining.
It’s 2020 now and some things that were once new are no longer new, finding the right opportunities and making your money on the buy side of the transaction will be important. Smaller domainers should make sure they have a safety net and a budget. If you own 100 names and haven’t had an offer on one, stop buying. Figure out what you own and why you own it? 2019 showed me a lot of people are lost in this business, some I believe it has brought about mental health issues.
This is an easy business to start into, it’s not an easy business to make money in on a consistent basis. Anyone can make a sale, can you make sales year in and year out that make the domaining juice worth the squeeze?
I want to say from all the emails and all the comments and posts, some people while I am never telling anyone what to do, they need to take some time to assess whether or not this business is good for their wallet and their mental health.
This can be a very lonely and depressing business, if you own a portfolio of average names, you are not getting offers every day. You might go months without an offer, I spoke to people who received no offers all year. That’s a problem. Outliers trap people, I have always believed that while we want the sales data and it’s not to blame, it does however trap a lot of people into throwing money out the door through renewals.
People see names sell that are an obscure name that meant something to one entity on this planet, it was a misclick, it was someone playing games, or it was a name they thought wasn’t good but meant something in another language.
The common response is to say, “I have names better than that so I am just going to keep doing what I am doing.” or “This industry is such bullshit, I can’t believe that name sold, crooked, rigged, **(^^&** business.” Those are common emails sent here every week via email. Outliers are not a business model.
The other problem is many don’t know who they are, they can’t define what they are in this business. Part time, hobbyist, troll. On polls on Namepros when you looked at the voting most were really hobbyists or the money from domaining did not affect their standard of living in any way.
That makes competing in this business hard, because these people will still participate in auctions and list their names but think the industry is rigged against them. When I was a stockbroker none of my peers were hobbyists, the money mattered, every day at work mattered.
There are people in this business who do it full time and are well financed, it’s going to be hard to compete, that along with the HD bot and other goings on, it makes you wonder if people who love the domain business so much, but can’t or won’t commit to it, should just own GoDaddy and Verisign stock. (That’s not a recommendation). Michael has said to me for years he believes if you love .com you have had to own some Verisign right? Especially big players as a hedge to price increases.
There are people who are stuck in names that have premium prices in new gtlds, while the attraction to owning that perfect one word. one word is there, you are going to have to think about how you become an active seller, you can’t pay $130 or $250 a name x 20 or x 100 and make no sales.
I am not telling anyone to drop their names, but just waiting for someone to come along might be too costly, you finally get an offer but the renewals have added up to make it not so exciting. Of course you see Chad Wright sold Free.games for $335,000 but Chad has invested serious money and you don’t know his total costs, New.Life has had some nice sales this year but as he stated on Namepros his renewals are $28,000 a year, he needs to have this success each year. One of the things Michael dealt with was each new year he was looking at $800,000 in renewal fees, last year might have been great, but got to go cover that nut again.
So work on your plan, be smart, get help from those willing to help and change things up if you are not making sales.
I want to thank all our readers for coming here in 2019, thank you to our advertisers for their support.
So from Michael, Judi and myself may you have a happy and healthy 2020 and may you have the life that you desire.
Thanks for reading.
