The issue becomes even more difficult when you are surrounded with investment ideas that bring results a lot faster and more certain with less effort.
If the domain isn't worth 10 renewals prepaid right now don't buy it. If you only buy names that you handreg or are the only bidder, it's probably not worth much.
Patience is one factor, but even more important is to be ready to spend 1000's for a good name and wait. Spending 5000 on 500 bad names and waiting is doing nothing because none will sell anyway, so really all you are doing is waiting to either renew or drop.
Almost everyone has a problem spending on good names, this is why most will never make any money in this.
Some domainers did figure this out, now you have a rise in price on good names on aftermarket and drop auctions. Others continue piling up garbage using coupons and drop catchers that you could beat using a bot running on windows 3.1 with a 36k connection.