discuss Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

Renewing marginal-quality domains is probably a common mistake many domainers make. Renewing 100 marginal-quality domains for two years at $8 each is $2500 in total cost (initial + renewals). Keep those names for five years before you finally drop them and you are out $4k. Imagine the caliber of domain you could have acquired with that money. Registering hundreds of senseless domains in any TLD which you will never sell is digging your domaining grave. Add premium renewals for some of those and you get into trouble real quick. I have had to pare back .TV holdings because those $28-$30 renewals just get too expensive but some nTLDs have renewals of hundreds of dollars.

Shane Bellone said:

I have the opportunity to buy 200 double repeating premium LLL.in at $90 a piece and I passed on it due to my uncertainty. Turns out that was a big mistake.

What was your most recent shoulda, woulda, coulda moment?

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My regret was not snapping up any and all the NNN.ins i could a few years ago at $50-$100 each. End up with a few, but not as many i wanted. their prices are high now..lol.

Shane Bellone said:

I have the opportunity to buy 200 double repeating premium LLL.in at $90 a piece and I passed on it due to my uncertainty. Turns out that was a big mistake.

What was your most recent shoulda, woulda, coulda moment?

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Same as you, not enough LLL.in

Last summer someone let hundreds of 4L domains expire, so many that there were about 20 - 30 chips that reached closeouts at $10 each. I put off buying them thinking they'd drop again in price since the aftermarket was flooded at the time. An hour later someone bought them all (lucky them). A couple of months later they were selling for $1500 each. I would've been holding on to $40K - $60K in 4L domains had I just bought them on the spot.

Risk = reward.

Dropped good pattern 6n .com in last april.

Similar regrets for me too, not picking up hundreds of LLL.in at $40 a piece a couple of years ago that were offered to me as a bulk deal, not buying enough NNN.ins and selling the rest that I had off for very cheap prices to the chinese last year, only leaving me with two in my portfolio.

Another major regret was selling off some great category killer .IN keyword names over the past 5 years, until I recently learnt my lesson that it was much better to hold and wait for the .IN extension explosion (which is happening right now). Although I always think about those regrets...and the cat killer .IN names I let go of for pennies back in the day!

Selling several lll.coms for low $x,xxx just a few years ago. It hurts to think about it

Shane Bellone said:

Turns out that was a big mistake.

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I disagree it was a mistake for the same reason I don't feel I made mistakes with unpredictable CHIPS. And this can be applied to most peoples "mistakes" or "regrets".

Seeing something in hindsight does not necessarily mean the original decision was a mistake, as long as it was a logical and calculated decision with the only info available at the time.

Buying "potential" CHIPS is a risk as their spilling into all kinds of TLDs was and still is always a fairly high risk with potential for a loss. No-one can really say if a certain TLD is the next bubble, or how high prices will rise.

So it's mostly a risk either way - Either buy early at high risk they become tradeable at all; Or wait to see a trend forming and buy at a higher price which is then a risk in getting ROI.


So yes you would have made a good ROI, but you could have lost a fair bit too. Given the risk factor, it's not a mistake just simply a decision to not take a risk. I think this is just good business sense TBH. Risk are needed in domaining, but calculated risks not pure gambles.

james haw said:

I disagree it was a mistake for the same reason I don't feel I made mistakes with unpredictable CHIPS. And this can be applied to most peoples "mistakes" or "regrets".

Seeing something in hindsight does not necessarily mean the original decision was a mistake, as long as it was a logical and calculated decision with the only info available at the time.

Buying "potential" CHIPS is a risk as their spilling into all kinds of TLDs was and still is always a fairly high risk with potential for a loss. No-one can really say if a certain TLD is the next bubble, or how high prices will rise.

So it's mostly a risk either way - Either buy early at high risk they become tradeable at all; Or wait to see a trend forming and buy at a higher price which is then a risk in getting ROI.


So yes you would have made a good ROI, but you could have lost a fair bit too. Given the risk factor, it's not a mistake just simply a decision to not take a risk. I think this is just good business sense TBH. Risk are needed in domaining, but calculated risks not pure gambles.

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You make a very valid point, which actually makes me feel a little better.

Not buying LasVegas.city because of the $440 per year renewal cost.

LasVegas.city seemed very expensive compared to most of my .CITY domains which renew at Uniregistry for $22, $36 or a few at $72 per year.

Really dumb move. Las Vegas.online sold at NamesCon for $4,750 and LasVegas.Asia went for $30K a few months ago to the same company that owns LasVegas.com.

Is there a liquid market for LLL.in right now ?

Kate said:

Is there a liquid market for LLL.in right now ?

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Yes I suppose, I receive 2 or 3 brokers inquiry each week, and 2 very active auctions here this week:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/eyx-in.926320/#post-5372803
https://www.namepros.com/threads/mjt-in.926321/page-2#post-5370169

Well, I was watching HomesPrint.com on pending delete around January. It met all my criteria for picking a name but I just somehow let it slip and didn't take interest. It ended at pheenix at $89 and sold in february for $4500. That's life.

oh probably something every day. there are just so many domains out there its impossible to not miss opportunities constantly .one that still bugs me from years back was a LLL.com that a company was going to give me that they had let expire but they were too slow to get the domain out of the redemption period so it went to pending delete and sold for $40k on snapnames.

Premium gTLD said:

Not buying LasVegas.city because of the $440 per year renewal cost.

LasVegas.city seemed very expensive compared to most of my .CITY domains which renew at Uniregistry for $22, $36 or a few at $72 per year.

Really dumb move. Las Vegas.online sold at NamesCon for $4,750 and LasVegas.Asia went for $30K a few months ago to the same company that owns LasVegas.com.

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LasVegas.City is developed now.

A domain name I had been watching at Namejet pre release didn't get any bids and went to the pending delete list.

At the pending delete auction, went for a little over 11K.

Or the time I didn't raise my bid by $10 in a NJ auction and that domain sold a few months later for a lot more than I ever thought it would. I should have just put that extra bid...o well.

-Omar

Was looking at buying Chinese LLL.cc back in May / June of last year. They were selling for $150ish. They're around $2,000 now. : )

In my early days (2007), I passed on a Go Daddy closeout domain (it was a poker domain); a few months later, it sold for $31,000.

But we learn from these missed opportunities.

Sadness

But next time you have that issue, hit me up. I'm sure we could work something out.

I almost developed a content platform / niche specific writing community for which there was a huge demand and ready made user base at my disposal and decided against. That was in 2011. I had an awesome domain for it, which I sold.

I've now come back to this project, repurchased the exact same domain (fair price) and will be building that platform with a 2017 launch.

I knew it would work in 2011, I know it will work now in 2016, only it would be a lot easier to establish in 2011 and I'd have a massive business right about now. There is still a decent ready to go userbase for me to go and grab, only its shrunk significantly.

At the time I was well connected online and respected within a specific niche community / subculture and its only with hindsight that I realise how valuable it is to have a big network to tap into when it comes to getting a startup off the ground.

So I've got the chance to undo my mistake, but I still regret it.

On the plus side, I've been busy liquidating my domain portfolio and got back into developing web properties, at a time when there is a very healthy market for selling established sites.

That has been a natural progression from domaining, after domaining got me back into the game and interested again (pretty much after just collecting a few domains that I simply don't want to part with, and now have a hunger to develop). I built a nice little empire on the net back in the day which got destroyed by some algorithm updates, it left me with depression and no desire to build anything for 4 years, now I'm building again and I thank dabbling in domains again for getting the fire back into my belly.

I'm enjoying the internet again.

(If it has to be domain specific, then I remember reading an article forecasting an LLLL.com boom when the low quality ones were still $40, so I suppose not dropping a couple of grand on those is my relatively recent domain regret).

I had an opportunity to buy a hundred LLL.co Chips for $30 each, not very long ago. Arrrrrrrrgh...!

loved connaught.com didnt bid, winner went on to sell it for 250k
sold some great NNNN.coms in 2014
sold a LLL.com for 238,000usd but the buyer accepted my first offer!

betthelot said:

sold a LLL.com for 238,000usd but the buyer accepted my first offer!

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You never know, they may agreed a maximum of $200k and had to have a heated argument in the boardroom about whether they could meet your price. At $250k they might have blanked you and resorted to plan B, so it is silly to regret that one. No solid reason to think that you left money on the table, maybe you simply hit the sweet spot.