New domainers are often told to learn before investing. But how exactly does one learn about domain names?
There is no single right way to learn anything. What works for you will depend on your personal learning preferences, the learning resources available to you, and what it is that you want to learn.
In this article I look at some of the ways we learn things, making specific reference to domain names.
A Few Questions
Here are a few questions to consider when you set about to learn something new:
Perhaps the most obvious way to learn something is to take a structured course. Fortunately, the Domain Name Academy covers most of aspects of domain name investing. I wrote about it in detail in the NamePros Blog, Everything You Wanted To Know About Domain Academy. The article provides an overview of the course, how to sign up, and reflections from a few people who have taken the course, including my own.
The positive side of a good course is that someone with expertise has put thought into what should be included. If you compare to a more self-directed learning approach, it is less likely to have significant knowledge gaps, although no course will be perfect.
Read A Book
Another structured way to learn something is by reading an authoritative book. The author has thought about what needs to be known, and sets out a systematic and efficient path to learn that.
While no lack of books about domain investing, many only deal with a subset of domain investing, some others lack depth and balance, or are written by those without recognized expertise in domain names. Writing a good book is probably 100 times more work than most imagine. Sure AI can now help.
While certain books definitely are worth reading, I have decided not to highlight specific ones in this article. Readers should feel free to comment below about domain related books they found particularly useful. I do plan to share a few more reviews of books worth reading in future NamePros Blog posts.
Take a MOOC – Learn Something Specific
If you have been in domains for some time, odds are you have mastered most of the general knowledge. But perhaps you want to learn something specific, such as the art of negotiation, modern branding trends, legal aspects of intellectual property, marketing and promotion, probability and statistics, contract law, AI agents, or something else. One of the most efficient ways to do that is to take a course designed by an expert in that topic.
You may be familiar with the privatized set of online courses through Udemy – they offer courses on most applied topics, with wide range in length and technical complexity.
But the academic institutions offer many of the best courses, often with a low cost or free option. The excitement over MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, is now some years in the past, but there continues to be an impressive array of courses on almost any topic, many of them available with a free option. Normally you will need to pay if you want the testing/evaluation component and certification, however.
A few of the top MOOC sites are:
Example – Contract Law
Let me give you an example of an online course relevant to domain investing that I have personally taken (well not quite completed, but that is not due to any failure of the course). A few years ago I signed up for the Harvard EdX course Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contract.
The course is delightfully presented, interesting, and provides useful background for a domainer. What is a contract, and what is not, is a pretty central question in our business. The course is self-paced, and you can start at any time. They suggest it requires about 8 weeks if you have 3-6 hours to invest per week, and I would say that is about right. While the course is offered in English, there are video transcripts in a number of languages.
The course was created by the late Prof. Charles Fried, who passed away early in 2024. He authored about a dozen books, and was Solicitor General of the USA during the Reagan administration. This is indicative of the superb credentials of many of the creators of courses on the academic platforms. There is a free option if you just want to access the course materials. If you require testing and a certificate, the cost is a few hundred dollars. You can read more about this specific contract law course here.
Individualized Learning
You don’t require a class to learn something, and sometimes the most effective learning is individualized learning. You will face issues such as how to know what it is you need to learn, how to keep motivation up. Without clear evaluation you may not feel comfortable that you have really learned at the right level.
The more than 1.2 million discussion threads, with more than 8.7 million posts, means that you have at your fingertips a valuable learning repertoire at NamePros on almost any topic related to domain names.
As with any type of learning, though, critically assess anything you read or hear, both on NamePros and in blogs, podcasts, books, and other formats. A key part of becoming a true learner is to assess the quality of inputs. Because NamePros is a discussion forum, odds are that if something is biased or simply wrong, that the flaws will have been cited by other members.
Some of the obstacles of individualized learning in the context of an early domain education can be alleviated through something like the learning challenge discussed in the next section.
The NamePros Learning Challenge
A good way to start is to chart your own path by listing what it is you want to know about domain names. That may seem daunting at first, but fortunately very active NamePros member @Future Sensors has produced a great list of questions for those starting out in domain name investing.
He calls it The Learning Challenge, and it is 30 questions to guide learning as you start your domain name journey. Questions range from “What is a domain name?” through “How to check the history of a domain name?” See the full Learning Challenge list here.
I urge you to first work on finding answers on your own, but he does provide in the discussion links and information for some of the questions. For example, see his superb answer to the question “How can your transfer domain ownership to a buyer?”
Problem Based Learning
Problem based learning is not what you probably think the term means – it has nothing really to do with math or physics problems. While PBL is now widespread in many disciplines and institutions, that was not always the case. A Canadian university, McMaster, made a radical shift in how doctors were trained when they switched from a conventional to PBL approach back in 1969.
The central idea of problem based learning is that rather than learning in the steps someone, like a textbook author or course instructor, has set out to learn about a subject, you learn by researching your way through a problem that you need to solve.
Let’s put that in a domain name context. You will be most primed to learn about a topic when you need that learning right now. Maybe you ended up acquiring a portfolio that included a variety of types of names. You mainly wanted the exact match legacy extension names, but they would only sell the entire package, so you have acquired some brandable names and a few numerics, that you have not handled previously. You have the problem of deciding whether these are worth keeping, how to price them, how to list them, etc. You would use a variety of resources and research tools to learn, not months ago when you had no intention of investing in these niches, but now when it is relevant.
Collaborative Learning, NamePros Style
Often the best way to learn something is collaboratively – you work with others to understand and master some topic. Collaborative learning has been proven effective in a wide variety of subjects.
As this page from Cornell summarizes in answer to “Why use collaborative learning?”
But how would collaborative learning work with domain names? I think the answer lies here at NamePros! Imagine this:
Inspirational Learning
Sometimes what we need most is to be inspired. With inspirational learning, it is not so much that your are getting new information, or insights even, although that may happen, but you are inspired by what you view, hear or read about.
If you have attended a TED or TEDx event, odds are that you have experienced inspired learning. Quite probably you have heard an inspiring keynote speaker at a conference or locally.
I think time is overdue to have a TEDx style naming and branding event. I hope someone makes it happen, and then we all would benefit when sessions are shared online. Or has it already been done? If so, please share the link in the comments section.
What are the most inspiring posts you have read here at NamePros? What are the most inspiring blog accounts or posted videos related to naming, branding or related topics? Please share links in the comment section.
Serendipity Learning
Learning happens even when we don’t plan it. I spend time every day on NamePros for a variety of reasons. I am often rewarded by learning something incredibly useful or important at NamePros, even though I wasn’t looking for it.
Let me share something I recently stumbled across on NamePros. There are tons of different marketplaces, registrars, research tools, SEO tools, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone put together all the name-related links in one place? What about all of the possibilities relating to parking and monetization, or all the brandable marketplaces? It turns out that NamePros member @D Hanes has created a site that does exactly that. Head over to DOMlinks.com. If you scroll to the bottom, you will see he acknowledges NamePros membership in helping put together the list. I bet I was not the only one who had forgotten about this helpful site.
You can help serendipity happen by posing a problem. Before the Dan migration period started, I was wondering if there was an easy way to preserve all of the Dan domain name descriptions I had written. It turns out there is a super easy way to do this. You just select all your names in Dan (there is a checkbox for that), then under Options select Export domains, and a few seconds later your email will have a spreadsheet compatible file with all your names, including the descriptions in a column. While that feature was in Dan for many years, I had never used it before – thanks to @Future Sensors for telling me about it. Now that the Migration Center has opened, exporting your names, as well as invoices and more, is handled by that.
Learn Before You Acquire Names?
It is good advice to say “don’t acquire any domain names until you have done your basic learning about domain names.” But i don’t think it is realistic.
You need to be invested in a few names to have the motivation to do the heavy work of learning about domain names. Having a few names will let you practice getting names listed on marketplaces, TXT verification, lander options, etc., as well as to learn how to transfer domain names. Therefore, I would suggest that you limit the number, or total value, of names early on, but go ahead and acquire a few.
Final Thoughts
As with most things, in practice most actual learning bridges across the different types. Asynchronous courses can be individualized learning, but there might be collaborative learning portions of the course. We usually have some aspects of problem based learning in practice.
Don’t worry much about what you are calling it, but that you are learning. The best learning will leave an impact forever. And be rewarding. And often fun. And challenging. And frustrating.
I hope you learn something today. And that I do too.
Thanks to @Future Sensors for the superb Learning Challenge that was one of the motivators for this article. Shout out to @D Hanes for DOMlinks. But the biggest thanks goes to the amazing people of the NamePros community who make it what it is – an incredible place for learning and interacting.
There is no single right way to learn anything. What works for you will depend on your personal learning preferences, the learning resources available to you, and what it is that you want to learn.
In this article I look at some of the ways we learn things, making specific reference to domain names.
A Few Questions
Here are a few questions to consider when you set about to learn something new:
- Do you know what it is you want to learn?
- Are you willing to pay to learn, or strictly interested only in free resources?
- What limitations do you face? How much time do you have available to learn this? Is your time flexible?
- How do you prefer to learn? Some like structure, and some prefer a more open learning path. Some like to take a lot of independence, while others prefer to be closely guided. Some prefer learning by video, or from a podcast, while others prefer written learning materials.
- What is your motivation level? Are you highly motivated and willing to put in hard work before seeing rewards, or do you view learning about domain names more casually?
Perhaps the most obvious way to learn something is to take a structured course. Fortunately, the Domain Name Academy covers most of aspects of domain name investing. I wrote about it in detail in the NamePros Blog, Everything You Wanted To Know About Domain Academy. The article provides an overview of the course, how to sign up, and reflections from a few people who have taken the course, including my own.
The positive side of a good course is that someone with expertise has put thought into what should be included. If you compare to a more self-directed learning approach, it is less likely to have significant knowledge gaps, although no course will be perfect.
Read A Book
Another structured way to learn something is by reading an authoritative book. The author has thought about what needs to be known, and sets out a systematic and efficient path to learn that.
While no lack of books about domain investing, many only deal with a subset of domain investing, some others lack depth and balance, or are written by those without recognized expertise in domain names. Writing a good book is probably 100 times more work than most imagine. Sure AI can now help.
While certain books definitely are worth reading, I have decided not to highlight specific ones in this article. Readers should feel free to comment below about domain related books they found particularly useful. I do plan to share a few more reviews of books worth reading in future NamePros Blog posts.
Take a MOOC – Learn Something Specific
If you have been in domains for some time, odds are you have mastered most of the general knowledge. But perhaps you want to learn something specific, such as the art of negotiation, modern branding trends, legal aspects of intellectual property, marketing and promotion, probability and statistics, contract law, AI agents, or something else. One of the most efficient ways to do that is to take a course designed by an expert in that topic.
You may be familiar with the privatized set of online courses through Udemy – they offer courses on most applied topics, with wide range in length and technical complexity.
But the academic institutions offer many of the best courses, often with a low cost or free option. The excitement over MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, is now some years in the past, but there continues to be an impressive array of courses on almost any topic, many of them available with a free option. Normally you will need to pay if you want the testing/evaluation component and certification, however.
A few of the top MOOC sites are:
- Coursera About 7000 courses to choose from more than 300 universities. They used to have many free courses, but now mainly through a subscription program. There is a short free trial period.
- EdX Superb online courses from some of the world’s top universities, such as MIT and Harvard, often with a free option if you don’t need certification of completion. You may find it helpful to access EdX through the site MOOC.org.
- FutureLearn Unlike the previous two sites, I have not personally taken a course through FutureLearn, but I believe they continue to offer both free and paid options. They have about 1400 courses from a variety of universities.
- Open Learning is out of Australia, with a wide variety of courses across topics and offered by a number of universities. They stress that their learning platform is AI-powered. I have not directly taken courses, but believe there are still free and paid options.
- Udacity grew out of Stanford, and is particularly strong in AI, coding, tech, and related digital technologies.
Example – Contract Law
Let me give you an example of an online course relevant to domain investing that I have personally taken (well not quite completed, but that is not due to any failure of the course). A few years ago I signed up for the Harvard EdX course Contract Law: From Trust to Promise to Contract.
The course is delightfully presented, interesting, and provides useful background for a domainer. What is a contract, and what is not, is a pretty central question in our business. The course is self-paced, and you can start at any time. They suggest it requires about 8 weeks if you have 3-6 hours to invest per week, and I would say that is about right. While the course is offered in English, there are video transcripts in a number of languages.
The course was created by the late Prof. Charles Fried, who passed away early in 2024. He authored about a dozen books, and was Solicitor General of the USA during the Reagan administration. This is indicative of the superb credentials of many of the creators of courses on the academic platforms. There is a free option if you just want to access the course materials. If you require testing and a certificate, the cost is a few hundred dollars. You can read more about this specific contract law course here.
Individualized Learning
You don’t require a class to learn something, and sometimes the most effective learning is individualized learning. You will face issues such as how to know what it is you need to learn, how to keep motivation up. Without clear evaluation you may not feel comfortable that you have really learned at the right level.
The more than 1.2 million discussion threads, with more than 8.7 million posts, means that you have at your fingertips a valuable learning repertoire at NamePros on almost any topic related to domain names.
As with any type of learning, though, critically assess anything you read or hear, both on NamePros and in blogs, podcasts, books, and other formats. A key part of becoming a true learner is to assess the quality of inputs. Because NamePros is a discussion forum, odds are that if something is biased or simply wrong, that the flaws will have been cited by other members.
Some of the obstacles of individualized learning in the context of an early domain education can be alleviated through something like the learning challenge discussed in the next section.
The NamePros Learning Challenge
A good way to start is to chart your own path by listing what it is you want to know about domain names. That may seem daunting at first, but fortunately very active NamePros member @Future Sensors has produced a great list of questions for those starting out in domain name investing.
He calls it The Learning Challenge, and it is 30 questions to guide learning as you start your domain name journey. Questions range from “What is a domain name?” through “How to check the history of a domain name?” See the full Learning Challenge list here.
I urge you to first work on finding answers on your own, but he does provide in the discussion links and information for some of the questions. For example, see his superb answer to the question “How can your transfer domain ownership to a buyer?”
Problem Based Learning
Problem based learning is not what you probably think the term means – it has nothing really to do with math or physics problems. While PBL is now widespread in many disciplines and institutions, that was not always the case. A Canadian university, McMaster, made a radical shift in how doctors were trained when they switched from a conventional to PBL approach back in 1969.
The central idea of problem based learning is that rather than learning in the steps someone, like a textbook author or course instructor, has set out to learn about a subject, you learn by researching your way through a problem that you need to solve.
Let’s put that in a domain name context. You will be most primed to learn about a topic when you need that learning right now. Maybe you ended up acquiring a portfolio that included a variety of types of names. You mainly wanted the exact match legacy extension names, but they would only sell the entire package, so you have acquired some brandable names and a few numerics, that you have not handled previously. You have the problem of deciding whether these are worth keeping, how to price them, how to list them, etc. You would use a variety of resources and research tools to learn, not months ago when you had no intention of investing in these niches, but now when it is relevant.
Collaborative Learning, NamePros Style
Often the best way to learn something is collaboratively – you work with others to understand and master some topic. Collaborative learning has been proven effective in a wide variety of subjects.
As this page from Cornell summarizes in answer to “Why use collaborative learning?”
Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning.
But how would collaborative learning work with domain names? I think the answer lies here at NamePros! Imagine this:
- You and several others decide you want to learn some topic together.
- You start a NamePros discussion thread for that topic. It works best if you all activate Watch so you will be notified of new posts.
- The thread could start with people sharing what exactly they want to know.
- Then people could share tips and links that they found useful related to the topic(s).
- People would also post what they are struggling to understand.
- A central idea of collaborative learning is you help other people learn. That actually helps you both, because helping someone else learn something is the best way to learn it yourself at a deeper level.
- Creatively the group can come up with ideas to make the learning fun, engaging and effective. Maybe some sort of presentation day at the end. The key idea is that everyone helps each other learn.
Inspirational Learning
Sometimes what we need most is to be inspired. With inspirational learning, it is not so much that your are getting new information, or insights even, although that may happen, but you are inspired by what you view, hear or read about.
If you have attended a TED or TEDx event, odds are that you have experienced inspired learning. Quite probably you have heard an inspiring keynote speaker at a conference or locally.
I think time is overdue to have a TEDx style naming and branding event. I hope someone makes it happen, and then we all would benefit when sessions are shared online. Or has it already been done? If so, please share the link in the comments section.
What are the most inspiring posts you have read here at NamePros? What are the most inspiring blog accounts or posted videos related to naming, branding or related topics? Please share links in the comment section.
Serendipity Learning
Learning happens even when we don’t plan it. I spend time every day on NamePros for a variety of reasons. I am often rewarded by learning something incredibly useful or important at NamePros, even though I wasn’t looking for it.
Let me share something I recently stumbled across on NamePros. There are tons of different marketplaces, registrars, research tools, SEO tools, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone put together all the name-related links in one place? What about all of the possibilities relating to parking and monetization, or all the brandable marketplaces? It turns out that NamePros member @D Hanes has created a site that does exactly that. Head over to DOMlinks.com. If you scroll to the bottom, you will see he acknowledges NamePros membership in helping put together the list. I bet I was not the only one who had forgotten about this helpful site.
You can help serendipity happen by posing a problem. Before the Dan migration period started, I was wondering if there was an easy way to preserve all of the Dan domain name descriptions I had written. It turns out there is a super easy way to do this. You just select all your names in Dan (there is a checkbox for that), then under Options select Export domains, and a few seconds later your email will have a spreadsheet compatible file with all your names, including the descriptions in a column. While that feature was in Dan for many years, I had never used it before – thanks to @Future Sensors for telling me about it. Now that the Migration Center has opened, exporting your names, as well as invoices and more, is handled by that.
Learn Before You Acquire Names?
It is good advice to say “don’t acquire any domain names until you have done your basic learning about domain names.” But i don’t think it is realistic.
You need to be invested in a few names to have the motivation to do the heavy work of learning about domain names. Having a few names will let you practice getting names listed on marketplaces, TXT verification, lander options, etc., as well as to learn how to transfer domain names. Therefore, I would suggest that you limit the number, or total value, of names early on, but go ahead and acquire a few.
Final Thoughts
As with most things, in practice most actual learning bridges across the different types. Asynchronous courses can be individualized learning, but there might be collaborative learning portions of the course. We usually have some aspects of problem based learning in practice.
Don’t worry much about what you are calling it, but that you are learning. The best learning will leave an impact forever. And be rewarding. And often fun. And challenging. And frustrating.
I hope you learn something today. And that I do too.
Thanks to @Future Sensors for the superb Learning Challenge that was one of the motivators for this article. Shout out to @D Hanes for DOMlinks. But the biggest thanks goes to the amazing people of the NamePros community who make it what it is – an incredible place for learning and interacting.
