"since you asked" Not saying I'm a pro or anything but just to make conversation: I started buying off the drop lists in 2012 after reading a kindle book about domaining. I never lost money but didn't make a lot either because I was selling the domains for less than $100 each. I stopped doing it until 2016, when I thought it would be a good side gig and I've always been a "techie." I followed sort of a "bottom feeder" strategy which no one would have advised even to this day. I bought off the drop lists, which they say not to do, and also closeouts from auction sites. Within a month I had received an offer by email for $1500 for one of my hand-regs which to me at the time felt like a million dollars (especially since I had invested <$100). I accepted and the transaction went through. I had a few more like that that year. My biggest hand reg sale from that year was $5k for a gambling .com domain. Beginner's luck. Then the crypto market hit and the domain market (from my perspective) tightened up considerably for a few years after that. I made a lot of mistakes and tried to learn from them only to make a different mistake the next time, but if you research and buy only the best domains off the drop lists every day, keep a good portfolio, dump off your junk domains, and hit the black friday transfer sales and stuff like that, then you will make enough in sales to cover renewals and then some, even if the market declines a little in your niche. Plus if you deal in .coms then your portfolio is constantly increasing in value as time goes on, this is due to the constant 4% decrease in supply year over year per verisign reports. However, they are getting ready to raise the yearly prices, so it will become more costly to carry a large portfolio. Now in 2020, due to covid and more people joining the industry, there's a definite boom happening in the wholesale market, meaning it's becoming harder to get good domains. Every domainer does it differently to some extent. You definitely have to find a niche that works for you that other people haven't clued into yet. There's enough domains falling on godaddy that no one can keep track of them all and sometimes you can get away with a monster for only like $20. That's becoming less frequent however. You have to be the one who has the judgment to decide if it's a domain that you think a certain someone else would pay a lot of money for.. no one else can tell you this because if they did and it was a good domain then they would buy it first..... and exactly who is that person who you believe is going to be paying a lot of money for that.. if you don't know the answer to that then it's a brandable, which is good but you have to advertise it more; if you do know the answer then it's a squat, if it's both then that's even better.
