discuss 1998 vs 2008 vs 2018

In 2008 longtail keyword domains were king, a goldmine almost.

Basically there was still many .com's available to register that had lots of search volume per month on the big G (say 10,000+). This could be a name like Over50sCarInsurance.com for example. Back in those days exact match domains had massive weighting in Google's search results. In fact a top 3 spot was almost guaranteed, irrespective of the sites quality.

For example, a small website on Over50sCarInsurance.com would rank highly when somebody searched for "over 50's car insurance".

This basically meant people like myself and others were registering domains like this, putting up single page lead sites with forms and profiting through commission, affiliates and such.

This all came to an end when Google had the Panda update (I think that was the name) in around 2010-2011ish I think and the majority of those type of sites fell off the face of Google, unless they were well developed. I was one of the guilty ones that didn't bother to put in time to build the sites properly. I basically let all those type of names expire as I knew it was over.

Dave said:

In 2008 longtail keyword domains were king, a goldmine almost.

Basically there was still many .com's available to register that had lots of search volume per month on the big G (say 10,000+). This could be a name like Over50sCarInsurance.com for example. Back in those days exact match domains had massive weighting in Google's search results. In fact a top 3 spot was almost guaranteed, irrespective of the sites quality.

For example, a small website on Over50sCarInsurance.com would rank highly when somebody searched for "over 50's car insurance".

This basically meant people like myself and others were registering domains like this, putting up single page lead sites with forms and profiting through commission, affiliates and such.

This all came to an end when Google had the Panda update (I think that was the name) in around 2010-2011ish I think and the majority of those type of sites fell off the face of Google, unless they were well developed. I was one of the guilty ones that didn't bother to put in time to build the sites properly. I basically let all those type of names expire as I knew it was over.

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That is indeed very very interesting and educational post @Dave

Thanks for sharing that piece of wisdom.
I still see top10webhosting(dot)com sites doing affiliate marketing and ranking on top.
Is that an exception you would say?

People, can you give more insights? It will indeed be very helpful for all the members here!
Old time experienced domainers? @AbdulBasit.com @Soofi

I was thinking about becoming a domainer in 1998 (even if I probably never heard of that word then), but instead I mainly became a website developer, until 2014. I should have focused on both!

Arpit131 said:

That is indeed very very interesting and educational post @Dave

Thanks for sharing that piece of wisdom.
I still see top10webhosting(dot)com sites doing affiliate marketing and ranking on top.
Is that an exception you would say?

People, can you give more insights? It will indeed be very helpful for all the members here!
Old time experienced domainers? @AbdulBasit.com @Soofi

Click to expand...

Like I mentioned, any well developed site that actually focused on content rather than some copycat lead form would continue to do well. Top10WebHosting is one of those types of sites.

Crazy how time flies, I remember back in 2008 not even thinking twice about buying and selling domains and instead focused on creating these long tail keyword mini sites with Google Adsense. I remember how excited I was to see daily revenue from it and motivated me to make a ton of sites haha. Wish I would have paid more attention to the value of a domain name and got a bunch of great names back then.

It is pretty cool to look back and see how much things have changed since and continue to change now, seems a lot more faster now for sure.

- Will

Willox Perez said:

Crazy how time flies, I remember back in 2008 not even thinking twice about buying and selling domains and instead focused on creating these long tail keyword mini sites with Google Adsense. I remember how excited I was to see daily revenue from it and motivated me to make a ton of sites haha. Wish I would have paid more attention to the value of a domain name and got a bunch of great names back then.

It is pretty cool to look back and see how much things have changed since and continue to change now, seems a lot more faster now for sure.

- Will

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Ah a fellow longtailer!

Dave said:

Ah a fellow longtailer!

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1998-vs-2008-vs-2018?
2020: "Long-Tail" Crypto domains

Arpit131 said:

That is indeed very very interesting and educational post @Dave

Thanks for sharing that piece of wisdom.
I still see top10webhosting(dot)com sites doing affiliate marketing and ranking on top.
Is that an exception you would say?

People, can you give more insights? It will indeed be very helpful for all the members here!
Old time experienced domainers? @AbdulBasit.com @Soofi

Click to expand...

Since I wasn't buying/selling in 1998 or even 2008 so I couldn't add much of that era. But when I look some 7-8 years back and comparing these days, I find it very difficult for any one to enter into domaining and make living solely relying on this business. Still one can make it in countries like where I currently reside (Pakistan) but U.S/Canada/Europe and many other countries it's not easy if you're starting today with limited budget and planning to do full time living with domain earning. Too much competition and loads of money been poured in.

But 7-8 years back, it was pretty easy to acquire domains at closeouts which in today's market we've to pay 200-500 for such names. Crazy bidding war going especially at GoDaddy. Back in golden days, with lack of knowledge and funds, I was unable to buy domains which I can't even think of how many I left.

I made some good money with .CO domains though I registered very few of them. Still have around 50 from which mostly are 3Ls. It was good time to invest and after the launch of .CO there was no backordering company after 1st year of launch, so I hand reg very few 3L dropped names.

In today's era, it's better to bring in some good amount of money and get some good level of education before investing.

Arpit131 said:

People, can you please share your memories or experiences and how times and trends have changed over the last 20 years.

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Times and trends will change, always. What will never change is what people actually want and what they will buy; domains that bring value to their business and save them time (the most valuable commodity).

In 2008 I was mainly domain parking with a network of good monetized adult names, Hand registering 4L.com names, learning landing page development and adsense, having a damn good time here at NamePros with friends and moderating the chatroom.

Little did i know that a development site selling homemade Picante sauce would be my ace in the hole for the true beginning of my ventures in the domain name industry, that being in 2012