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advice 480+ Domains Later - My Journey

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ReachDomains

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Hello NamePro’s,

I’m grateful to be a part of NamePro’s and I wanted to post a breakdown of my approach to domaining so far, with the hopes of learning and improving.

Domain Strategy: Currently my domain strategy has been focused on .com, mainly hand registered domain names. No set niche or industry, registering a wide range of domains (basically randomly - which might be part of the problem).

Actions: I register new domain names, then list them on Afternic and Sedo, mainly as Make An Offer.

Recently I’ve been trying to experiment with BIN prices as well on a few domains.

Landing Pages: Domains registered with Epik, I use their make an offer parking pages, other domains I list with Dan.com as Make An Offer.

Domain Portfolio:
  • 379 .com domains - hand registered
  • 20 .com domains – back ordered (Total Spent $1 495)
  • 4 .com domains - auction won (Total Spent $2 700)
  • 80 .co domains – hand registered (recently registered based on the recent promo)
  • 4 .co.uk domains – hand registered
Brandable domain names – I have also registered a few potential brandable domain names, these have been listed as follows:
  • BrandBucket – Submitted 70 domains, rejected 55 – currently 15 listed
  • BrandPa – Currently 15 domains listed. These domains in total have had 281 000 views, with 3 domains each having been added as a favorite. One domain has been listed at $9 245 - which would be an amazing sale if possible.

With the above, I have received 4 enquires and made 2 small sales. ($450 and $800).

I’m really worried because I’ve spent a considerable amount acquiring these domain names, but unfortunately the journey so far has not gone well at all.

I’m determined to make this a success and I know that just two or three sales can completely change my success and turn this around and that is my motivation each day and why I continue to try and invest in domaining.

I would really appreciate any guidance or advice, thank you for your input.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
It might assist if I list a few of my domain names to give you an idea of the types of domains I have registered:

A link to my Dan.com profile is: https://dan.com/domain-seller/reachdomains

All of the domains below are .com

Favorite Domains:
Laboratorie
PicView
DroneFixing
BurstPipes

FXwallets
FixCurrency
StorageInside
TroutHooks
StyleBraids
TestMakeup

Keyword Domains:
DogDips
FertilityChecks
BookAHelicopter
DampDetection
TruckValuations
FizzyCandy
HoofRepair

Domain Related:
FeatureNames
ChangingDomains
NegotiateDomains
PickupDomains
 
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I'll leave this post to you. Since you're doing the same thing over and over again and it's not working. You should stop. Handregs is not working for you.. Stop.

Looking at your Dan portfolio, i saw cTLD. (co.za) which is not advisable to spend money on those types of domain.

I've been in the industry for 5 months amd all this while, I'm reading and still reading..

If you are not Making Money in Domaining YOU are doing Something Wrong. Very Wrong

Morning Folks!!

I look at Domaining and see so many ways to make BIG money that it strikes me when those, some of them good friends, are making NO money. First you have to come to the reality you are making no money. Then, as I have stated for years, then you just must STOP. If you are going the wrong way, why would you want to get FURTHER from the goal not closer? So stopping is the first thing you MUST do. There are no other ways. That is why you are frustrated. You have tried everything but the #1 thing. STOP. Stop. Take a weekend off.

I hear ya, you can’t afford to. I am telling you that you can’t afford not to. Go back to the base of the mountain. Look at it via fresh eyes. Look at it in a new way. Some of you have been doing this for many years now and that means you know more than you did when you tried the first time.

Go back to the base of the mountain. Go 1 mile away. Look at the big picture. You don’t need money in domaining to make money. You just need know how and that part you already have.

There are many paths at the base of the mountain. There is no path where you are at. Start again!! When you get to the base, you are way ahead of the others there. Just choose your path. Not the same one you were just on. Go to the other side of the mountain and start there. Do the opposite of what you did the first time.

Stop delaying. Pick your best domains, get rid of all the other crap and hit that mountain with a lighter load. The opportunities are there. They are everywhere. But you need to be on the right path to begin with to see those things. Look, I don't have to prove shit. I see what I see and I am giving you the best advice I can so that hopefully you can get a better result.

Have a GREAT Day!

Rick Schwartz
 
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1. Stop buying.
2. Read everything here on Namepros, listen to every episode of DomainSherpa, go through Namebio like a vacuum cleaner.
3. Re-price your domains, and drop the ones that has no real prospect of ever selling.
4. Add BIN prices on Afternic.
5. When your sales have generated enough money to cover renewals for at least a year ahead, then go ahead and buy more domain names.
 
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I'll leave this post to you. Since you're doing the same thing over and over again and it's not working. You should stop. Handregs is not working for you.. Stop.

Looking at your Dan portfolio, i saw cTLD. (co.za) which is not advisable to spend money on those types of domain.

I've been in the industry for 5 months amd all this while, I'm reading and still reading..
I wonder how many cctlds do you have? There are some cctlds where you can have a 10-20 times higher STR than with com, if you know what are you buying.
 
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I did
It might assist if I list a few of my domain names to give you an idea of the types of domains I have registered:

A link to my Dan.com profile is: https://dan.com/domain-seller/reachdomains

All of the domains below are .com

Favorite Domains:
Laboratorie
PicView
DroneFixing
BurstPipes

FXwallets
FixCurrency
StorageInside
TroutHooks
StyleBraids
TestMakeup

Keyword Domains:
DogDips
FertilityChecks
BookAHelicopter
DampDetection
TruckValuations
FizzyCandy
HoofRepair

Domain Related:
FeatureNames
ChangingDomains
NegotiateDomains
PickupDomains
I didn't checked all your portofolio, but from the number of your .co.za domains, I guess that you are form South Africa so you can make a good ROI knowing the local market, but you need to make sure that you have the EMD of at least 2-3 local companies.For example, you have fume.......co.za, so you need to make sure that you have at least 2-3 companies using fume+keyword and usually you buy these kind of domains from the drop, brandables don't really work for cctlds, only if they are some really premium one's. Second, brandables are hit and miss, so it's hard for the rest of us, doing this long time, for you it's normal to sell less brandables at the beginning. A strategy for you will be to try to go something like 33% geo's, selling them for xxx through outbound( experience+cash flow), 33% brandables that you hand register, so that you keep learning what sells and 33% closeouts, cheap auctions and some backorders( to have a chance for a jackpot and keep most of them as long time investment). The $2700 spent on 4 domains at auctions probably was not wisely spent, so until you get a real fell of the market, you should limit yourself to cheap auctions and closeouts, my opinion.
 
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The most important question.
When did you start?
 
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The most important question.
When did you start?
Yes, it's to early to see the results...also, at this stage, pricing domains at BIN(xxx-low xxxx) at afternic and sedo, it's vital.
 
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With all these domains you've acquired, what is your marketing strategy for them?
 
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First of all, its a fallacy to think you should be rolling in money after 6 months. Hand regs, even good ones, usually take years if you are looking for end user prices. Hand regs or backorders done well (non crap) can be lucrative it just takes time.

Read what sells every single day. If you are into brandables follow those sales. There are patterns that do better than others. Avoid overly long names. Don’t buy more than you can afford to hold. Don’t invest heavily in non com as a beginner.

Another option to clear some names out and potentially faster results is low pricing. You can reinvest into better names at that point.
 
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1. Stop buying.
2. Read everything here on Namepros, listen to every episode of DomainSherpa, go through Namebio like a vacuum cleaner.
3. Re-price your domains, and drop the ones that has no real prospect of ever selling.
4. Add BIN prices on Afternic.
5. When your sales have generated enough money to cover renewals for at least a year ahead, then go ahead and buy more domain names.

Thank you for this solid advice, I'm going to work through my domain portfolio and start to add xxx BIN prices for most of the domains, starting from the older ones and working through.
 
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The $2700 spent on 4 domains at auctions probably was not wisely spent, so until you get a real fell of the market, you should limit yourself to cheap auctions and closeouts, my opinion.

Thank you for the advice, you are right - I have a number of cctlds for .co.za - but the enquiries have been very few, even solid dictionary domains. Do you have any experience is selling .co.za domains? If so, there might be an opportunity for us to work together to try a few different marketing avenues.

You are right about the auction domains, one of the domains I got a little too carried away on and ending up paying $1220 for it, which has set me back a lot.

Overall I don't have a set domain strategy and I think that is where I'm going wrong in my approach.
 
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The most important question.
When did you start?

Thank you for the question, I've been reading and learning about domain names for the past 5 years, but I have only started to register .com domains and built a portfolio over the last 1.5 years.
 
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Hello @ReachDomains
You've invested a lot of money in a very short time. I've fast checked your domains an the good thing is that the biggest chunck of your domains are .coms.
I see that the reality will hit you in december and january when renewals for the most domains are due. I'm not the smartest person therefor my advice could be wrong. If I had to deal with your situation I would probably do this:
1. Stop buying new domains
2. Turn off all auto renewals on all handreg domains and list them on all marketplaces dan, afternic, sedo, uniregistry for low price $299, because you have only 5 month left to sell them
3. Concentrate on the expensive domains you've paid big money. Check on the internet if you can find some potencial buyers for them - normally you should do this before you buy a domain. Don't let them expire because they probably must have some value and it can take several years to sell them
4. Make some outbound on your co.za domains if you can target potencial buyers
5. In december and january you should be able to determine which of your hand reg domains you should drop - probably more than 90% of them - this is vital to learn to let go if you want to survive in the long therm
6. Find the niche which fits you the best - you probably have some expert knowledge or experience in some fields. Obviously you are willing and able to invest therefor learn and try to make the best of your money you put in domains
7. You can also try to sell some domains here on namepros. You will learn a lot about pricing, negotiating and the transfer process and probably get some nice contacts from domainers all over the world
8. Read and learn here on namepros and other sources - domaining is hard work!
There is probably a lot more to do but I think that this is a shortterm action plan until end of the year! :xf.smile:
I wish you all the best and many future sales!
 
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In my opinion, you would be MUCH better off buying a few high quality domains at auction rather than hand reg hundreds of mostly junk domains. Hand regs seem cheap, but they cost the exact same to renew as high quality domains. If you were to renew your ~450 hand regs it would literally cost you more than you paid for your 20 backorders + 4 auction purchases. I would remove auto renew on all your hand regs and set them all to a low BIN price as @1Darko suggested. Maybe you'll sell a couple over the next 5 months. If you have some favorites you can renew them, otherwise I would drop almost all of them and focus your effort on your high quality names. You can do outbound via LinkedIn, Twitter, Google search + email, etc. and once you make a sale can reinvest in high quality names. I would encourage you to check out the auctions in the "Liquid Domains" section here at NamePros, many excellent 4 letter .com's available at low prices. If you have a high quality name and it doesn't sell, you can always sell it for a "wholesale price" (cheap) to another domainer and invest in a new name. With a hand reg name, however, if it doesn't sell it's likely worthless and no other domainer would pay you for it so you've lost your entire investment.
 
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Thank you for the advice, you are right - I have a number of cctlds for .co.za - but the enquiries have been very few, even solid dictionary domains. Do you have any experience is selling .co.za domains? If so, there might be an opportunity for us to work together to try a few different marketing avenues.

Just be careful registering too many .co.za names, the SA domain market is not a strong one. I'm from Durban myself and have sold a few .co.za names over the years (mainly cloud names) but its not easy and most have been outbound sales.
 
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In my opinion, you would be MUCH better off buying a few high quality domains at auction rather than hand reg hundreds of mostly junk domains. Hand regs seem cheap, but they cost the exact same to renew as high quality domains. If you were to renew your ~450 hand regs it would literally cost you more than you paid for your 20 backorders + 4 auction purchases. I would remove auto renew on all your hand regs and set them all to a low BIN price as @1Darko suggested. Maybe you'll sell a couple over the next 5 months. If you have some favorites you can renew them, otherwise I would drop almost all of them and focus your effort on your high quality names. You can do outbound via LinkedIn, Twitter, Google search + email, etc. and once you make a sale can reinvest in high quality names. I would encourage you to check out the auctions in the "Liquid Domains" section here at NamePros, many excellent 4 letter .com's available at low prices. If you have a high quality name and it doesn't sell, you can always sell it for a "wholesale price" (cheap) to another domainer and invest in a new name. With a hand reg name, however, if it doesn't sell it's likely worthless and no other domainer would pay you for it so you've lost your entire investment.
Clarkemarketing you offered great advice. Brandable domains are strictly based off of the imagination an end user might have to really build out that brand. Your imagination for those domains has to be clearly illustrated to someone else in a comprehensive way if you are ever going to see any ROI. Being a great logo graphic artist will help tremendously when it comes to marketing that domain. Most are not that.
1Darko, also really great advice. You mention listing all his domains on dan, afternic, sedo, so obviously I have been unaware of a domainer being able to put their portfolio up for sale on multiple channels without having to pay each one a commission on the sale regardless of where it actually sold. If anyone here can clarify for me how this works I would be very grateful indeed. With 160 original 1990s TLD .coms, I could be a very savvy alliance for you if you know how to go about marketing domains that have very high values. My domains represent the global industry for dozens of products, each one usually in the high billions yearly, so selling one for a few million dollars would be chump change for a fortune 500 that is interested in owning the global domain for their industry (like RetirementCare.Com for instance). Thanks guys.
 
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I almost a year here and still newbie, still learning. i stop hand reg at 10 domain (the only domain i have), and never make any sale.
Thank god i active in name pros when i start with domaining and recive many warning about newbie mistake especialy about hand reg.

Seeing you did newbie mistake that going too far to 460 hand reg... wow you must be never ask question before doing anything.

Don't hesitate asking about anything, everybody is kind to anybody in here.

Good luck.
 
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