In a new industry, it's often difficult to know where to start. Coming in with an abundance of enthusiasm and a desire to make money quickly, it may be hard to resist the urge to start acquiring new domain names immediately with the hope of selling them within days or weeks.
It's been well documented on forums and blogs that the domain name industry is a difficult place to succeed. Many investors buy and sell names purely for a hobby, with polls such as this one indicating that it's far harder to make a profit from domain investing now than it was ten or more years ago.
However, building a successful portfolio can be done. Joshua Schoen (@jstenn13), for example, started investing in 2016 and has built a phenomenal portfolio which includes names such as Sign.com, Mockingbird.com, and Overlap.com. His story was featured on a recent episode of DomainNameWire's podcast.
Here are ten tips for you if you're just starting out in the domain industry.
Join a Forum
One of the best moves you can make as a potential domain investor is to join a forum, such as NamePros, to start interacting with other investors. Some of the discussions will be irrelevant and you'll need to focus on helpful topics, but immersing yourself in a forum can be beneficial.
Read Blogs
The domain industry has a wide array of blogs that you can follow, written by some very talented investors. DomainNameWire, TheDomains, DomainInvesting.com, DSAD, and DNJournal are my five favorite blogs to follow, but Domaining.com aggregates current news stories and a couple of visits per day to Domaining.com should get you up to speed with the latest news stories and domain sales.
Explore DomainSherpa
Founded several years ago by @Michael Cyger, DomainSherpa is a treasure trove of useful information available in video and podcast format. Review shows, interviews, and advice are all abundant at DomainSherpa. Now owned by @MediaOptions and hosted by Tess Diaz, the website is going from strength to strength.
Study Sales
To know what to invest in, you need to know what sells. Fortunately, there are some purpose-built resources that will help you here.
NameBio and DNPric.es do a stellar job of congregating domain sales data daily, with NameBio having recently introduced a new subscription service to give access to a wider array of data.
These two resources, studied daily over an extended period of time will help to give a greater understanding of the type of domains that are selling right now. DNJournal also collects a weekly list of verifiable domain name sales and has done so since 2003.
Unfortunately, the majority of domain sales never get reported, but Twitter accounts such as @DotWeekly do an excellent job of tracking some corporate sales and acquisitions that will show you what some of the bigger companies are buying.
Connect With Domainers
Domain investing is fairly individualistic because you're making decisions with your own money for your own investments to produce more money for yourself. However, creating a network of domain industry connections can produce more opportunities to buy and sell names.
A good network can also lead to some very productive discussions about domains and can prove to be very thought-provoking.
Attend Events
Before 2019, I was never an advocate for domaining events. However, NamesCon 2019 in Las Vegas transformed my own opinion, and I can recommend domaining events as a NamesCon to newer investors. These larger events are excellent places to chat with fellow domain investors and meet some of the company representatives from the domain industry.
It's also an excellent place to learn with a wide array of seminars and discussions on every day of the conference. At NamesCon 2019 in Las Vegas, I believe it was calculated that around 40% of attendees had never been to a NamesCon before, so it's an event where new investors are definitely welcome.
Don't Buy Domains Immediately
The temptation is there to start buying domains immediately, whether that's at an auction or via hand registration. Having limited knowledge of the type of domain names that are selling at the moment will leave you blindly acquiring domains without a specific plan.
Before buying any name, I would recommend learning as much as you can. If guided learning is how you absorb information best, then Michael Cyger's DNAcademy may be for you.
Test Yourself
Testing your knowledge is a perfect way to grow, and fortunately, it's fairly easy in the domain industry. Before buying any domain name, you may want to follow auctions on DropCatch, Sedo or NameJet to try to guess the sales price of a domain. Accurately predicting the value of a domain name based on recent sales data is a valuable skill.
Another method of testing your knowledge is to download "The Domain Game" app for iOS and Android. From the creators of NameBio, The Domain Game asks you to accurately predict price ranges for real-life domain sales from the NameBio database.
Understand Why Certain Domains Sell
Following on from understanding the price range for certain domain names, I would recommend working out why certain domains sell for the prices that they do. Why do three-letter .COM's sell for five, six or seven-figures? Why did a five-letter name sell for $2,888?
These questions can be answered by understanding who the buyer may be (an investor or an end user), the venue and other useful information such as business trends. An example of a trend would be CBD Oil. The exact match CBDOil.com sold for $500,240 in Q1 of 2019.
Be Trustworthy
The domain name industry is fairly small, so word spreads fast. It's important to be an upstanding, trustworthy member of the community, especially when it comes to following through with transactions amongst other investors.
It's been well documented on forums and blogs that the domain name industry is a difficult place to succeed. Many investors buy and sell names purely for a hobby, with polls such as this one indicating that it's far harder to make a profit from domain investing now than it was ten or more years ago.
However, building a successful portfolio can be done. Joshua Schoen (@jstenn13), for example, started investing in 2016 and has built a phenomenal portfolio which includes names such as Sign.com, Mockingbird.com, and Overlap.com. His story was featured on a recent episode of DomainNameWire's podcast.
Here are ten tips for you if you're just starting out in the domain industry.
Join a Forum
One of the best moves you can make as a potential domain investor is to join a forum, such as NamePros, to start interacting with other investors. Some of the discussions will be irrelevant and you'll need to focus on helpful topics, but immersing yourself in a forum can be beneficial.
Read Blogs
The domain industry has a wide array of blogs that you can follow, written by some very talented investors. DomainNameWire, TheDomains, DomainInvesting.com, DSAD, and DNJournal are my five favorite blogs to follow, but Domaining.com aggregates current news stories and a couple of visits per day to Domaining.com should get you up to speed with the latest news stories and domain sales.
Explore DomainSherpa
Founded several years ago by @Michael Cyger, DomainSherpa is a treasure trove of useful information available in video and podcast format. Review shows, interviews, and advice are all abundant at DomainSherpa. Now owned by @MediaOptions and hosted by Tess Diaz, the website is going from strength to strength.
Study Sales
To know what to invest in, you need to know what sells. Fortunately, there are some purpose-built resources that will help you here.
NameBio and DNPric.es do a stellar job of congregating domain sales data daily, with NameBio having recently introduced a new subscription service to give access to a wider array of data.
These two resources, studied daily over an extended period of time will help to give a greater understanding of the type of domains that are selling right now. DNJournal also collects a weekly list of verifiable domain name sales and has done so since 2003.
Unfortunately, the majority of domain sales never get reported, but Twitter accounts such as @DotWeekly do an excellent job of tracking some corporate sales and acquisitions that will show you what some of the bigger companies are buying.
Connect With Domainers
Domain investing is fairly individualistic because you're making decisions with your own money for your own investments to produce more money for yourself. However, creating a network of domain industry connections can produce more opportunities to buy and sell names.
A good network can also lead to some very productive discussions about domains and can prove to be very thought-provoking.
Attend Events
Before 2019, I was never an advocate for domaining events. However, NamesCon 2019 in Las Vegas transformed my own opinion, and I can recommend domaining events as a NamesCon to newer investors. These larger events are excellent places to chat with fellow domain investors and meet some of the company representatives from the domain industry.
It's also an excellent place to learn with a wide array of seminars and discussions on every day of the conference. At NamesCon 2019 in Las Vegas, I believe it was calculated that around 40% of attendees had never been to a NamesCon before, so it's an event where new investors are definitely welcome.
Don't Buy Domains Immediately
The temptation is there to start buying domains immediately, whether that's at an auction or via hand registration. Having limited knowledge of the type of domain names that are selling at the moment will leave you blindly acquiring domains without a specific plan.
Before buying any name, I would recommend learning as much as you can. If guided learning is how you absorb information best, then Michael Cyger's DNAcademy may be for you.
Test Yourself
Testing your knowledge is a perfect way to grow, and fortunately, it's fairly easy in the domain industry. Before buying any domain name, you may want to follow auctions on DropCatch, Sedo or NameJet to try to guess the sales price of a domain. Accurately predicting the value of a domain name based on recent sales data is a valuable skill.
Another method of testing your knowledge is to download "The Domain Game" app for iOS and Android. From the creators of NameBio, The Domain Game asks you to accurately predict price ranges for real-life domain sales from the NameBio database.
Understand Why Certain Domains Sell
Following on from understanding the price range for certain domain names, I would recommend working out why certain domains sell for the prices that they do. Why do three-letter .COM's sell for five, six or seven-figures? Why did a five-letter name sell for $2,888?
These questions can be answered by understanding who the buyer may be (an investor or an end user), the venue and other useful information such as business trends. An example of a trend would be CBD Oil. The exact match CBDOil.com sold for $500,240 in Q1 of 2019.
Be Trustworthy
The domain name industry is fairly small, so word spreads fast. It's important to be an upstanding, trustworthy member of the community, especially when it comes to following through with transactions amongst other investors.
