Dynadot

discuss An Experiment That Didn't Work!

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch
Impact
2,448
A person today on Twitter said he invested in 2000 three letter .io domain names between 2018 - 2020 with a total loss of about $100000.

He owns more than ten 2L .coms and 50 3L .coms and many more premium names. A hundred thousand dollars may seem a lot to most, but it’s a drop in the ocean for a person with a stellar portfolio like him.

upload_2021-6-1_12-29-34.png



Have you ever done an experiment while registering domain names that did not work out? What were the learnings?

I believe many little experiments and plenty of non-fatal failures, is actually the more common strategy used in successful businesses. Does it apply to domain names?
 
14
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Business is a mix of successes, failures, and learning. No one bats 100%.

Brad
 
Last edited:
17
•••
3
•••
.io was promising back then, I can understand his attempt.

I wonder what the results would have been using the same names on .co.
 
5
•••
4
•••
I can appreciate his position. It could be more about time than budgets: At some point it's easier to let 'em drop than to keep thinking/worrying about them.
 
2
•••
I understand the "cut your losses" -- especially considering the other names in his portfolio.

If you know you're going to let them drop at renewal time (few months before renewals), just put a BIN on their landing page at $25 each. If they all sold at that price you would cut your losses in half...

But I totally agree it's a drop in the bucket considering the other names he owns.

I cut my losses on a bunch of 3-letter .co names years ago. The renewals were killing me because they were about $25 each to renew. But nowadays I wish I held on to some of those as I think I would have come out ahead if I just held on to them...
 
5
•••
in the beginning, i didnt renew my domains and noticed they were either swiped up or the registrars put premium labels on them, so i started renewing. :)
 
6
•••
I respect anyone that experiments in this business. New trends / new demand pops up all the time ...he made a bet, it didn't work out - Life goes on

I have just one speculative bet, being specific IDN domains (I own domain.com in Chinese, and a small number of other hybrid styled domains). However, I haven't spent anywhere near the level of money he spent, my risk is relatively small ...I don't care that much
 
2
•••
Hi

the loss, is expensed against earnings, which reduces taxable income.

imo...
 
9
•••
What I don't understand is, why someone with the said glorified portfolio would experiment with .io domains for ONLY 2 years! .io is a popular TLD compared to some other TLDs, but it's no .com.

IMHO, despite how good those names were, one would expect something like .io to take much longer than .com to make any profit at all. Many outstanding .com(s) remained unsold for decades. I wonder what sort of profit he was expecting with a bunch of .io domains in just two years.
 
5
•••
That's not an Experiment.
That's a Lesson.
 
5
•••
1
•••
Too soon to judge with only a 3-5 year hold if speculating on a trend that could still be on the horizon, or not.
 
Last edited:
4
•••
in the beginning, i didnt renew my domains and noticed they were either swiped up or the registrars put premium labels on them, so i started renewing. :)
how to know if registrar label a name as premium?
 
1
•••
how to know if registrar label a name as premium?
when you see it for sell at the registrar as a premium, they labeled it as a premium. :)
 
1
•••
What I don't understand is, why someone with the said glorified portfolio would experiment with .io domains for ONLY 2 years! .io is a popular TLD compared to some other TLDs, but it's no .com.

IMHO, despite how good those names were, one would expect something like .io to take much longer than .com to make any profit at all. Many outstanding .com(s) remained unsold for decades. I wonder what sort of profit he was expecting with a bunch of .io domains in just two years.

Too soon to judge with only a 3-5 year hold if speculating on a trend that could still be on the horizon, or not.
2000 names, large sample.
one category (3L's).
One TLD (.io).
imo, 2 years was enough.
 
1
•••
2000 names, large sample.
one category (3L's).
One TLD (.io).
imo, 2 years was enough.

I'm wondering what the outcome of a similar experiment with .coms in 1990s would look like 🤔
My guess is: it'd look very similar (i.e. an apparent failure).
 
2
•••
I'm wondering what the outcome of a similar experiment with .coms in 1990s would look like 🤔
My guess is: it'd look very similar (i.e. an apparent failure).
Nah, 1990s no one had computers/smartphones.
Imo whether 2 or 5 years the result will remain the same.

With other tld's, 1 words and domain hacks will work, the rest wont be viable.
.co is next up.
.io .xyz and the likes, you can venture into other categories but you would then be dealing with random luck, as we just learned with this experiment. He could had luck and sold one 3L .io for 200k and be profitable this year, but that still wouldnt have made this category a viable category.
 
1
•••
Djq.io is 3L .io domain, art.io is also a 3L .io domain - but they are very different in quality.
The result of the experiment is not very useful to us if we don't know which type of 3L.io he had. Did he have a combination of dictionary words + pronounceable & non pronounceable 3L or just completely random 3L?
 
4
•••
Back