discuss In your opinion what is the most profitable registering domain names or buying them from auctions?

For me it's hand registering but you need to work extremely hard to find any worth registering.

But If I had the budget, I'd rather buy better quality names at auction and hold out for the bigger payday.

What do you mean by most profitable? The greatest monetary gain, or the best roi.percentage? Good hand regs can give you the best roi from a cash point of view, but may take up a lot of your time. Auctions can give you the greatest potential for a cash profit, and the greatest potential for a cash loss.

Both are profitable if you know how to do it. The advantage of hand-registration is that it is less risky and you can operate with a lower budget.

I do both, but focus on hand-registration and it is consistently profitable.

I can buy domains at auction and resell them for a profit. This was easier back in 2003 as less competition on drops. In terms of ROI though I've made more from hand regged/expired drops. I've spent $8 and pulled in numbers all across the board 1k, 2.5k, 5k, 6.5k, 7.5k etc... so the first guy to get to a domain will see the biggest ROI reward as once big money is spent on a domain it would be hard to replicate that same percentage of ROI reselling it. So can make money from both but the guy that spends $8 can be patient and sit 10 years and still only be out $80 so a big sale would then be all profit. Spending big money to resell a domain now you have a cash investment risk so gotta be sure you can resell it as no longer a simple $8-$80 investment anymore. Honestly the low end transactions interest me more as easier to buy a domain for $500 and resell for $750-$1000. Buy a domain at $8 and get 1-10k for it and be able to repeat that process and now ya got skills.

Publicly-announced auctions which are promoted weeks in advance will tend to have a selection process which allows investors to quickly identify quality domains worth bidding on. However, the competition for such domains quite often means the winner ends up paying close to end user price.

Hand regging can potentially lead to phenomenal ROIs but if after 20+ years of internet that name is still available, one has to ask why. It takes some experience to garner whether that available domain is really worth regging.

Many domainers look for quality expiring domains as a means of finding something valuable that for some reason was not renewed. Again though one has to sort through 99.9% of junk drops to find that rare domain worth backordering. And you may not be the only one who spotted it.

Unfortunately domainers do not seriously attempt to acquire quality aftermarket domains. Yes, some make lowball offers or place ridiculous requirements in the Domains Wanted thread. But I am talking about offering a fair return to the seller but still upside to the buyer. I guess the reason why domainer to domainer sales are such a small part of the market is that industry turnover is in the one percent range. Consequently, acquisition costs must be kept low because it is likely any domain acquired will not sell in the near future.

thank you guys
me too i agree that the risk on handregs is less than the risk on buying from auctions

If you know what you are doing, there are countless domains, that have dropped over the years (and that are now available) that can be acquired for registration fee - if you have enough of the brand-types, a small % will sell over time for $x,xxx.