domains Why did you become a domain investor?

First, it made sense. Then, it didn't. Then, it did.

I fell into it. Beginning with registering domains for clients. I can honestly say that I almost never register domains for the explicit reason to resell. They are 99% with development in mind. I see a great domain and think "this would make an amazing brand". But, of course, you come across so many domains that you can't possibly develop all of them into brands in one lifetime. So they are either put up with landers or redirected to developed sites.

My ride started with "How to make money online".

Then I stick to it because It's a thing, An industry that's connected to all the other industries. A window for new ideas, Knowledge, Money, Entertainment, Opportunities, You become a salesman, You build a network & connections. You're part of an amazing community. You learn about other businesses, You catch up with the latest trends and fads and so on... For me I don't have a reason to not do it.

Short answer: passive income! Read about different ways to make money online and started a little experiment with handregs and sold them quickly at GD and eBay for around 8-12x. Then moved on to higher-quality domains and had a decent five-figure sale (where else can you 30x your money?) Other advantages are - no shipping, no storage, investing rather than speculating, dealing with professionals from all types of business sectors, and the knowledge that comes with staying up-to-date with digital developments.

Hi

i didn't become an investor,
until my investments started paying returns, on those investments.

up to that point, i was a speculator,
buying that i thought could be resold, for more than i paid.

didn't start out with any preconceived notions, like those that walk in the door today
there were no videos, podcasts, ebooks, domain courses or appraisal tools.

i stumbled upon a domain forum while searching internet, to help another person
and a couple of years later, i was a moderator of that forum, making sales on daily basis.

but it took a minute, to get to "investor" level.

imo...

Because I couldn't sing or dance.

Besides the obvious, I enjoy mining and thinking up use cases.

for some money

I was looking for another job and i found it with domains, have made some money and decided to invest.
Hope for a better future with my hand regs, because i know some things from the future.
Maybe will become very rich someday. :D

In 2019 I was trying to register a domain and realized that the dot com was already taken then I continued to try with other names all with the same results taken, taken, taken. I said OMG this is a challenge I want to be part of, now I already sold 4 domains for a total of 47000$ but will a lot of mistakes before achieving that number. I still continue to make mistakes and learn from them in regard to succeed.

I'm a fan of digital space in general and to me domain names are digital real estate. online addresses for business are the same thing as real life addresses for those businesses in my eyes. (I would argue even more valuable due to easy access from global community)

so I started collecting the best addresses online (which is why I only reg dotcoms) with a focus on tech space and finance (two sectors flushed with cash)

now I have an eye on .crypto domains as well because I think .crypto is the ultimate decentralized domain extention for crypto space (exactly like dotcoms but with full ownership and without renewal fees!) even though there are similar extentions (like .eth for example) I find the lack of renewal fees a huge plus as well as not being named after ethereum which makes it more useful for projects that aren't centered on eth specifically but are still decentralized in essence.
I try to pick up .crypto domains of my dotcom portfolio (the dotcoms that I'm hodling for 10 years) because I'm sure in near future even most dotcom brands will need their own .crypto domain for managing their cryptocurrency payment systems and maintain a link to decentralized space.

I still think dotcom is king. but I'm afraid the new generation will become more tech savvy as they are growing up with computers and the decentralized space (lack of centralized authority) is very likely to become more popular than ICANN based extensions.
never check the depth of a river by both legs, they say. so I try to keep one leg in dotcoms and one in .crypto and hope for the best!

I stumbled on domaining more seriously back in 2013, around a similar time to when I was brokering second hand cars (all cars I attempted to sell owned by tacky dealerships, all cars priced under $2k. I didn't own the cars, just struck a commission deal if I could sell one). Long story short, with this little venture, I sold the name of my brand (IgnitionCars.com at the time) for a 4 figure sum...I made more money selling that one name, than I did selling those cars...which wasn't hard to achieve as I made little to nothing selling those s*** cars

Inventor (be creative) and investor (be smart) together. GLTA

I started in 2003 initially because I enjoyed spinning up names .. it was like putting a puzzle together .. except 10,000 times more fun … investing wise all started with getting into Liquid domains .. I joined NamePros in 2005 .. and that is when all the real fun started and then I began investing in development of domain names .. domain parking started another domain investment venture for me .. I don’t .. and have never really felt I am investing in the industry so much .. more like having a great time and meeting awesome people would characterize my existence in the industry .. and why I stay in the industry .

It is a good field to monetize things I was already interested in like research and learning.

I also like fields with subjective values, as you can create an advantage for yourself with knowledge and experience in a way that is hard in mature fields with high liquidity.

Brad