Early domainers

Seabass said:

it was insight and guts.

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Speculation, acquisitiveness, and luck. Describing it as insight and guts is domainer self agrandisement. Rick Schwartz paid $200,000 for Flowers.mobi so it was more than just noobs who got burnt.

akcampbell said:

Speculation, acquisitiveness, and luck. Describing it as insight and guts is domainer self agrandisement. Rick Schwartz paid $200,000 for Flowers.mobi so it was more than just noobs who got burnt.

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It's easy to tell you were not investing back then.

There was a time nobody would give $100 for Sex.com, which makes $800,000 a day. Then one day somebody saw that there might be some potential in Sex.com. The rest is history. That is not insight? That is luck that Sex.com has value?

If I had bought California land in mass in 1962 and it went up would that be luck? Would that be self-aggrandizement that I recognized that the fertile lands of Sonoma Valley was unlike anything else I had seen and therefore took advantage of the low prices?

There is possibly more to the Flowers.mobi story than you are aware of. Also, I don't think making a bad domain purchase is indicative of a bad investor.

You almost sound like the Net purists of the early 90's who were sickened to death by the commercialization of the Net. Should nobody have invested in domains and only have done development? That was a theme back then too......developers/techies hated domain investors

Seabass said:

It's easy to tell you were not investing back then.

There was a time nobody would give $100 for Sex.com, which makes $800,000 a day. Then one day somebody saw that there might be some potential in Sex.com. The rest is history. That is not insight? That is luck that Sex.com has value?

If I had bought California land in mass in 1962 and it went up would that be luck? Would that be self-aggrandizement that I recognized that the fertile lands of Sonoma Valley was unlike anything else I had seen and therefore took advantage of the low prices?

There is possibly more to the Flowers.mobi story than you are aware of. Also, I don't think making a bad domain purchase is indicative of a bad investor.

You almost sound like the Net purists of the early 90's who were sickened to death by the commercialization of the Net. Should nobody have invested in domains and only have done development? That was a theme back then too......developers/techies hated domain investors

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Its definitely insight but also a gamble as there was no promise the net would continue to develop as it has. Although I very much doubt sex.com makes 800,000 a day. That would 292 million dollars a year and it didn't sell for anything close to that.

Jasonn said:

Its definitely insight but also a gamble as there was no promise the net would continue to develop as it has. Although I very much doubt sex.com makes 800,000 a day. That would 292 million dollars a year and it didn't sell for anything close to that.

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Gamble = Guts

I was a young snot and invested $30,000 on my credit card in 1995 when I was 24, not including the domains I got for free before they charged for them.

I had very little cash to my name......just good credit from a business I had been running for two years. Back then a measly $100 was a lot of money to me. I took the full gamble at losing everything. I did not even own a computer in 1995..... I made lists of domains and then ran to my buddy's house to check the list almost every day. I bought my first computer in Jan. 1996..... a Gateway 2000 that set me back $3,400. Computers were very expensive back then. I literally threw every single red cent I had at the Net.....b/c I had the vision it would blow up.

As a matter of fact, the third day after I learned about the existence of domain names for registration..... I sent two employees home and closed the shop at 1:00 P.M. and went straight over to my friends house and started registering domains(mid-August, 95') That's how overly excited I was. I could not believe what I was seeing..... my buddy too. Back then, you would put in a registration request and wait for it to be approved by the next morning by email....... and sometimes I would literally pace the entire evening around the house anticipating I might get that primo domain.

It was a total balls move and if I did not succeed I would have had to declare bankruptcy....... b/c I was just out of college with tons of college debt too.

Maybe the info. about Sex.com making $800,000 day is old info. ...... the adult industry does not make the crazy money the same way it did in the old days. I'm positive I had read that though. There was a time when some of my adult sites were converting 1:20 to sales...... impossible now. I know that back in the day there were some players were making $30 million + a month on adult.

I did read that Porno.com, which I am assuming is not as good as Porn.com, currently makes $1.2 million in parking each year..... and it is not developed like Sex.com.

I had very little cash to my name......just good credit from a business I had been running for two years. Back then a measly $100 was a lot of money to me. I took the full gamble at losing everything. I did not even own a computer in 1995..... I made lists of domains and then ran to my buddy's house to check the list almost every day. I bought my first computer in Jan. 1996..... a Gateway 2000 that set me back $3,400. Computers were very expensive back then. I literally threw every single red cent I had at the Net.....b/c I had the vision it would blow up.

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Your one paragraph imho blows away every story Schwartz has ever told about his insight and forward thinking.

$800,000 at sex.com might have been yearly parking income which would set it inline for it's $10 million sale price...tbh..I would rather own porn.com. Wordtracker confirms it's searched a little more.

Speculation, acquisitiveness, and luck. Describing it as insight and guts is domainer self agrandisement. Rick Schwartz paid $200,000 for Flowers.mobi so it was more than just noobs who got burnt.

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I mostly agree. History is written by the victors. For every domainer that made millions there are dot com startups that lost many more millions. It could easily have been the other way around. Parking is really what has created domaining. Where would Rick be if he couldn't park and earn from his domains? The innovation was Sedo and other parking company startups that saw potential. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to register a domain. Maybe some research at most. I could train my 12 year old to do what you can do for research.

Thanks Labrocca.

One thing that helped Rick is that he had sold a drop shipping company for seven figures and was already successful...... that helped him make some strategic purchases that others with vision and less cash could not do. Kudos to him though.....I would have done it too. I imagine if parking had not come around he would be back into drop shipping, but still keeping his domains. I always knew domains had unrealized potential...... I still feel most domains still have not even begun to be monetized correctly. Will there be a day when one click pays $50,000? I don't know....... but I don't see why it is not possible if I sell $1,000,000 worth of computers, for example, through one click. Salesmen make that kind of commission through one sale, why should we not also?

Before parking, I survived by employing a multi-prong attack of monetization...... it was redirect deals, custom deals, adult sites, and a network of 500 sites set up each on unique IP's my buddy and I set up that had every great generic we owned interconnected that got us literally all ten, every position, on the first page of Webcrawler in several niches. We then were able to sell advertising on the sites and the advertisers got an avalanche of traffic from us having all ten positions. They would rejigger Webcrawler, but we would just reoptimize and be back in at least eight of ten positions. :hehe:

I also had a couple of large sales in the late 90's that helped a lot.

Looking to the future, I have a suspicion things are going to get really strange with parking in 09' and 10' and domainers may have to get exceptionally creative to stay afloat. And, this has nothing to do with the economy..... just G's long-term plans for us. These generics that many of us have are very, very valuable but I see big G as slowly marginalizing us to the point many of us begin to crumble if we are not diversified or nimble enough to get our hands dirty and hustle for that elusive dollar. It will be totally intentional by Google...... we are competitors and they want us gone. All the signs are there. I simply don't trust Google with my future.

I suppose that is where your dev efforts save you Labrocca. :hehe:

labrocca said:

Parking is really what has created domaining. Where would Rick be if he couldn't park and earn from his domains? The innovation was Sedo and other parking company startups that saw potential. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to register a domain. Maybe some research at most. I could train my 12 year old to do what you can do for research.

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Parking didn't "create" domaining. It is just a way of monetizing the traffic, the key point is the traffic. If parking had come around something else to monetize the traffic would have.

<Originally Posted by labrocca
Parking is really what has created domaining. Where would Rick be if he couldn't park and earn from his domains? The innovation was Sedo and other parking company startups that saw potential. It doesn't take a lot of creativity to register a domain. Maybe some research at most. I could train my 12 year old to do what you can do for research.>

snoop said:

Parking didn't "create" domaining. It is just a way of monetizing the traffic, the key point is the traffic. If parking had come around something else to monetize the traffic would have.

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Yeah, where do some get that idea...
I guess losers have their own version of history, too...

In fact, the domainers pre 2000 - before the existence of parking companies as we know today - were mostly in porn and gambling domains.
And made money via affiliate programs.

People can thank the porn industry for 'inventing' online affiliate programs.

Seabass said:

I still feel most domains still have not even begun to be monetized correctly. Will there be a day when one click pays $50,000? I don't know....... but I don't see why it is not possible if I sell $1,000,000 worth of computers, for example, through one click. Salesmen make that kind of commission through one sale, why should we not also?

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I agree with that thought.

Its not beyond the realms of fantasy to think that the monetization model of parking, that we've grown used to - whilst easy for domainers - seriously undersells the value to the link-beneficiary for the 'introduction'.

Whilst the domainer might get, say, 50c, or a $1.00, for the click through, the outfit that the visitor ends up with might make $2000 from a sale.

Domains are valuable 'introducers'.

I can envisage making deals direct with an end user company, where your domain is, effectively, seen as a Commision Agent for him....ie we agree an intro fee with the end user organisation that is relative to the value of leads generated by a domain to him, just like a commission agent.....And, it wouldn't be 20c - it'd be linked to the value of the sale that may eventuate, IF it eventuates....Maybe something like 3%-5% of the sale.....Something like that.

Or, variations of that.

.

DomainTalker said:

I agree with that thought.

Its not beyond the realms of fantasy to think that the monetization model of parking, that we've grown used to - whilst easy for domainers - seriously undersells the value to the link-beneficiary for the 'introduction'.

Whilst the domainer might get, say, 50c, or a $1.00, for the click through, the outfit that the visitor ends up with might make $2000 from a sale.

Domains are valuable 'introducers'.

I can envisage making deals direct with an end user company, where your domain is, effectively, seen as a Commision Agent for him....ie we agree an intro fee with the end user organisation that is relative to the value of leads generated by a domain to him, just like a commission agent.....And, it wouldn't be 20c - it'd be linked to the value of the sale that may eventuate, IF it eventuates....Maybe something like 3%-5% of the sale.....Something like that.

Or, variations of that.

.

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its called affiliates :hehe: :sold:

i think people like frank schilling etc do this more than ppc
ppc is dead. hard to negotiate god affiliate rates unless u get quality targetted traffic or have a developed site imo
back to square one. imo you are better doing this with the better traffic names or DEVELOP & with the others just market for sale with a google search box to cover ass or even redirect to a sales site

etittle52 said:

I remember back in 1995 when I was 17-18 years old, I was amazed at the fact that I could pick up girls while chatting online (AOL of course).

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Depending on results, this sounds like a valid use of time. Don't knock it.

Seabass said:

One thing that helped Rick is that he had sold a drop shipping company for seven figures and was already successful...... that helped him make some strategic purchases that others with vision and less cash could not do.

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It comes without saying that the rich get richer...

S~ said:

Depending on results, this sounds like a valid use of time. Don't knock it.

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I met my fiance through myspace. Now I sound bad lol And I'm almost 26

arnie said:

its called affiliates :hehe: :sold:

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It is, too....lol (shaking my head).

Maybe the deals need to be better?

Back on topic....

I was online in 1996...Never occurred to me to think about domains as an investment...And, I even knew a guy in 1999 who was making a fortune in those days with some Adult sites...He said the money was just pouring in...STILL, I didn't 'connect' that to domains, as such...!!

Every time I log on to this forum - or read about a huge .com sale - I rue the days when it was all there, but, I just didn't see it.

...But I DO love to hear about the 'wins' folks have in this game...And, I live in hope of finding that bit of sheer gold...

.

DomainTalker said:

It is, too...Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by my own stupidity...lol (shaking my head)

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cj.com is a good affiliate.. and let's not forget amazon

Hahah...Got me while I was editing, Archangel....!!

.

DomainTalker said:

Hahah...Got me while I was editing, Archangel....!!

.

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lol it's cool. I'm not too happy that I missed out back in the 90s but I'm kinda glad it's all passed us up. I don't feel as jaded knowing that I wasn't the only one who missed the train

i smell nostalgia in the air!

very cool stories Seabass... makes me think my time spent on IRC in the 90's wasnt put to good use.

I had bought my nickname and a few other domains, but already by the time I started looking in 1998 words of almost every shape and size were gone. Being a gamer I was always interested in fantasy rpg names and most great terms were taken.

I used to play MultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGames, and MORPG.com had already been taken. But we never called it a MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame and to me, MORPG was shorter so why register MMORPG.com?

Ten years later it's worth almost a mil, who would've known? ... C'est La Vie!

akcampbell said:

The downside to ccTLD's is you might not understand the market as well as a local and the prize might not be as big as you think. For example, the UK, is the world's fifth largest economy, you have alot of boffins, high Internet usage, 1,000 years of accumulated capital, but according to dnsaleprice.com only 7 .co.uk sales over $100,000, it's missing Cruises.co.uk which sold for $1.1m in May 08, but still, for the size of our economy and 7m .co.uk domains registered that's pretty lame. It means you've got a 1 in a million shot of scoring a 6 figure sale.

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To say there have only been 7 sales over £50,000 in .co.uk is a joke and speaks volumes of the source you quote.

I can think of two .co.uk names in the last couple of weeks that have hit £100k alone / $200k .

I have posted elsewhere reasons why I think UK people are less likely to make sales public, but there is a reason why the sales figures dont seem right - as they are not

i started to go online in 1997.Have been trading online since then from posting on classifieds online n swapping stuff back then since i am still studying then into auctions n now domaining.. got into domaining in end of 2005 when i wanted to build an ecommerce website after selling online for few years.n only then i got my first domain.IF ONLY i get into this earlier..but no regrets...there are always "IF" in lotsa stuff..but look ahead n dont look back.no point dwelling in the past n knocking our head telling ourself why dint we get into this earlier.