Mistakes you made as a newbie

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

As a newbie in the domaining world. What mistakes have you made in regards to name registration or closing a deal or any other mistake you made generally. Let others learn from you.

The experts can also share some info, it will be appreciated.

- As for me I registered some crappy names. I hate seeing them in my portfolio.

Samer · May 18, 2020

three-word .coms

they’re available and everywhere.

I was always tempted hand reg, and buying.

Keep it short “Less is more”

Samer

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

I don't get you tho.

But am sure the prices for the three-words domains are way beyond my budget.

Am sticking to ED for now

FolioTeam · May 18, 2020

Registering 50 bad names in one day

mr-x · May 18, 2020

Don't settle for bad names, i.e. carssale.com. People buy these because they are lazy, don't have a good understanding of english or are overly enthusiastic.

Don't register names by hand unless you have a solid buyer in mind before hand. Before you know it, you've spent $100 on a yearly liability.

Use discipline, save the $40 a month you'd spend on lousy hand registrations and buy a decent .com.

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

FolioTeam said:
Registering 50 bad names in one day

Wow. So how did you go about It.

Did any results into a sale?

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

mr-x said:
Don't settle for bad names, i.e. carssale.com. People buy these because they are lazy, don't have a good understanding of english or are overly enthusiastic.

Thanks for this piece. This is my mistake. Laziness and overly enthusiastic. Am reading up tho.

J Sokol · May 18, 2020

My biggest beginner's error was thinking that names I found to be funny or clever would have market value. This was not ever the case.

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

J Sokol said:
My biggest beginner's error was thinking that names I found to be funny or clever would have market value. This was not ever the case.

But do you think there can be an expection?
Maybe an iota of luck in getting those clever names marketable and valuable

J Sokol · May 18, 2020

Yes, there could be exceptions, but I've found it's best to study and learn what gives domains value. It's not an exact science at all and it takes some time to grasp, but it saves a lot of money in the end.

FolioTeam · May 18, 2020

Joseph David said:
Wow. So how did you go about It.

Did any results into a sale?

Registered another 30 shortly after. Made a sale of 1650 (my first) from the second batch. Dropped the rest (a total of 79 when added to the first 50). So, I made some profit my first year but barely. Luckily, I have a day job.

By my 9th month, when I was sure I was dropping the rest, I hunkered down and studied like my life depended on it. It took me another 6 months before I bought another name. The rest is history.

Now, I mostly buy from auctions, aftermarkets and bargain bins. I still register some names but they are mostly in future tech.

WhoaDomain.com · May 18, 2020

registering domains without checking these websites below for the keywords in my domain.

uspto.gov
wipo.int

Trademarks

Millionaire · May 18, 2020

Though I still consider my domain knowledge equivalent to a newbie, now I have a small portfolio of around 110 domains which doesn't make me feel bad. Some are good, some average, some below average. But the majority of them are saleable but when no one knows.

As a complete newbie, I wasted around $200 on hand reg. on my 2nd day of domaining. But luckily somehow I recovered that amount from this lot. I was surprised when I made a sale of .exchange extension. This was the 3rd name I registered & returned 50% of the amount I spent on the whole lot. Then I sold those names at wholesale price & reinvested in better names after reading this forum for the next 4-5 months. Repeated this again & again. All these 110+ are acquired from domains income only. No fresh capital. Now payment for one small retail sale of $200 is pending, expected to get credited today. Will get more names.

But still, a lot to learn!

Few points -
*Spend at least 3months learning on this forum before investing in your first domain

* stay away from hand reg for 1st year.

* Read & make notes for future reference.

*When you start hand registering names, don't register it immediately. Write the list & look at it at least 4-5 times within 2 or 3 days. If you still feel them worthy, go for it.

TheBaldOne · May 18, 2020

Biggest mistake as a newbie I made was not planning from the start to develop domains into stand alone websites. I think that actually applies to 99% of domainers as well.

sadiq3051 · May 18, 2020

Well I made some sales on namejet auction in my first year of domaining, then decided to re-invest into brandables names.. I was dealing on geo domains.. I registered about 20names without the basic knowledge of brandables.. thank God I use netsol 1$ for those registration... Drop all those names and now research about brandable names... but unfortunately no much capital now to boost my portfolio.... Making use of squadhelp suggestions option presently to raise enough capital to buy names from majorly GD closeout. This is my mistake..

xbank · May 18, 2020

mr-x said:
Don't settle for bad names, i.e. carssale.com. People buy these because they are lazy, don't have a good understanding of english or are overly enthusiastic.

Don't register names by hand unless you have a solid buyer in mind before hand. Before you know it, you've spent $100 on a yearly liability.

Use discipline, save the $40 a month you'd spend on lousy hand registrations and buy a decent .com.

what if finding a name takes 2 hours .. hunting and then finding a good name, will that be okay?

xbank · May 18, 2020

loosing more than 17k USD on registering names and not putting them on marketplace

NickB · May 18, 2020

Before finding Namepros I spent around £800 - £1,000 based on Godaddy valuations

Took a while to stop registering names that I thought looked good

Took a long long time to start to developing a website on one of my domains

Lessons learnt........

BaileyUK · May 18, 2020

Back in 1999/2000 all the decent .coms were long gone. So my logic at the time was that .Net must be in demand before long, probably registered about 300 of them over a year or two. But that wasn't the biggest mistake - That was holding on to them for about ten years. Lesson learnt Don't settle for second best in anything because buyers certainly wont

Second biggest mistake, was letting my portfolio get to large.and too diverse. At its peak it was around 2000 domains in 2007. Never really got to concentrate on selling domains until I had reduced the portfolio to around 600. Lesson learnt Keep control and manage your expenditure ahead of time. Concentrate on what brings in the money

Have to add whats kept me in the game (over 20 years) and in profit. Recognizing that good Brandables and Product names were ready to be the next best sellers while everybody was chasing generic domains. I just had to know what was coming on to the market - so put all my efforts into understanding new technologies. There was plenty coming to market as computing power was ramping-up and miniaturizing. Lesson learnt, we all have our skills and fortes you just have to discover where they lay .

karmaco · May 18, 2020

Newbie mistakes or people who do not have a grasp on the English language can be witnessed all day every day on dropping lists and auctions. The level of pure random trash that routinely gets registered is astounding. Many make my original crap registrations look not that bad after all.

While I made registering mistakes like everyone the first year, I am fortunate because I was able to make a great profit anyways with crypto and coin names that year. This is not typical and I got lucky in that regard to begin not long before a big trend.

Since then,its been all about refining and getting better names. I think another mistake anyone can make is not sticking to their wheel house. Some people seem to have no clue what a good two word is. You have to work with your strengths.

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

xbank said:
loosing more than 17k USD on registering names and not putting them on marketplace

What were you thinking for not listing them on marketplace?

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

TheBaldOne said:
Biggest mistake as a newbie I made was not planning from the start to develop domains into stand alone websites. I think that actually applies to 99% of domainers as well.

You develop all your domain into website? Is that not an extra cost? And how is it better than just selling domain?

Joseph David · May 18, 2020

BaileyUK said:
Back in 1999/2000 all the decent .coms were long gone. So my logic at the time was that .Net must be in demand before long, probably registered about 300 of them over a year or two. But that wasn't the biggest mistake - That was holding on to them for about ten years. Lesson learnt Don't settle for second best in anything because buyers certainly wont

Second biggest mistake, was letting my portfolio get to large.and too diverse. At its peak it was around 2000 domains in 2007. Never really got to concentrate on selling domains until I had reduced the portfolio to around 600. Lesson learnt Keep control and manage your expenditure ahead of time. Concentrate on what brings in the money

Have to add whats kept me in the game (over 20 years) and in profit. Recognizing that good Brandables and Product names were ready to be the next best sellers while everybody was chasing generic domains. I just had to know what was coming on to the market - so put all my efforts into understanding new technologies. There was plenty coming to market as computing power was ramping-up and miniaturizing. Lesson learnt, we all have our skills and fortes you just have to discover where they lay .

I have read your post over and over again, I must say am learning from this.

I have a question tho : many says domaining is a game of numbers, the higher your domain portfolio, the higher the chances of making a sale. How true?

Thanks man for sharing.

CraigD · May 18, 2020

Transferred my domains from Network Solutions to a registrar called RegisterFly.
I lost some good domains in the meltdown of that registrar, many many hours wasted, sleepless weeks/ months and $$$ down the drain.

EDIT: I wasn't really a newbie as I'd been buying and developing a few domains for about 10 years at that point, but it was a learning experience that I hope no-one has to go through.

BaileyUK · May 18, 2020

Joseph David said:
I have a question tho : many says domaining is a game of numbers, the higher your domain portfolio, the higher the chances of making a sale. How true?

Not true. Those that talk about it being 'Purely' a numbers game are usually those that already have got caught up in over bloated portfolios or think they have made no sales because they don't have enough.

The basics are, you can have thousands of rubbish domains, where does that lead to a sale ??. You have to understand that the market you are selling into is 99% professional as either a business or a successful domainer. Having a basket of a thousand rotten apples does not make you an apple salesman. But having a small tray of ripe apples will.

You build on what is successful and that's Never bulk. Indeed You have to build your skills on buy-and-try but that doesn't require thousands of buys. Far too many here get over committed on a bad buying policy, then find themselves in too deep to acknowledge or even look for a way out. They tend to be the most vocal on here NP about everything they 'Think' they got right without wanting to face everything they've got wrong.

You'll soon spot them - They only know how to sing off one hymn sheet

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