Are you (at least) break-even with your Domain investments?

[ruzeen]

Most people that invest in domain names are only losing money, or so I heard. I am just about break-even now. I have gone through losses but my profits are outweighing.

Are you making or losing money? If you are making money, how much do you make on a regular month? If you are losing money, what are your plans for the future?

 

[yogiDomain]

Being in this industry not to long i have not earned much from domaining and parking.
I have not sold any of the domain as most of them are not sellable and my handreg are worst then qwertyu.com.
Though parking domain has earned me $10 so far and my 2-3 picks have some clicks now and then.
I have spend not much but around $600 on every thing from buying domain to listing on flippa to godaddy auction fee to hosting services.
I have 2 hosted domains, i have been facing problems hosting them and they are not yet live (no knowledge of web hosting). One of this domain getting daily 200 unique visitors and google has indexed it. But as it has no contents or even i am not able to place ads on them no revenue is generated from it.

My plan for future is to follow not to do list.
- No hand regs (unless they are brandable or keywords)(Hand regs is my 2nd highest money eater).
- No spending money on crappy backorder and expired domains.
- No Flippa listing.
- No research no buying domain.
- For 4 letter domains stay away from x,z,q,y,j letters (4 letter domains is highest money eater)

 

[NameOmnia]

Domaining is a long term investment. Flipping is another story and NOT so easy anymore

 

[discobull]

I've been fortunate to be making a decent living at it ( knock on wood ).

 

[SpareDomains]

Making money. In 2003 had a couple sites and received an offer on a domain I hadn't developed yet and sold it for 1k which started the madness/addiction. 10+ years later I have over 35+ developed sites and 500+ domains for sale. The sites bring income so I can be passive on domain sales and wait for the right buyer. Turned down 5k this week on a domain I picked up for $8. Domain receives a handful of offers every month combined with the website income makes it easier to say no if I believe the offer is low. Don't make a ton of sales and never have but all fall in the x,xxx-xx,xxx range so doesn't take many sales a year to hold a 500+ portfolio. Never made much from parking but never had an end user ask for parking stats.

Happy with my shift of building more sites over the last few years and will continue to develop more sites until the right buyer comes knocking on the domains I have no desire to develop myself. So more of a diversified approach, domain sales income, brokerage income, website income, parking income (minimal), etc... which I think is safer than relying on one source for all your income. The amount of sites I've created has also created my own traffic source which makes it easier to jump start new projects as I don't have to advertise as much just link it up from my existing sites as groups of my developed sites are in the same niche. Couple more sites I wanna build but gotta get caught up before losing any more sleep with additional work. A few of the sites I built were on domains that sat in my portfolio for years that I forgot I owned and after a review decided they were strong enough and a niche I was interested in to warrant development. Once ya hit over a few hundred domains sometimes ya forget what ya own.

 

[mariusv]

At the moment, looks like flushing money down the toilet. Planning to develop few of them, see where it goes.

 

[ruzeen]

Love your story, man! Would you mind sharing with us your top 5 most popular/ best developed sites?

Making money. In 2003 had a couple sites and received an offer on a domain I hadn't developed yet and sold it for 1k which started the madness/addiction. 10+ years later I have over 35+ developed sites and 500+ domains for sale. The sites bring income so I can be passive on domain sales and wait for the right buyer. Turned down 5k this week on a domain I picked up for $8. Domain receives a handful of offers every month combined with the website income makes it easier to say no if I believe the offer is low. Don't make a ton of sales and never have but all fall in the x,xxx-xx,xxx range so doesn't take many sales a year to hold a 500+ portfolio. Never made much from parking but never had an end user ask for parking stats.

Happy with my shift of building more sites over the last few years and will continue to develop more sites until the right buyer comes knocking on the domains I have no desire to develop myself. So more of a diversified approach, domain sales income, brokerage income, website income, parking income (minimal), etc... which I think is safer than relying on one source for all your income. The amount of sites I've created has also created my own traffic source which makes it easier to jump start new projects as I don't have to advertise as much just link it up from my existing sites as groups of my developed sites are in the same niche. Couple more sites I wanna build but gotta get caught up before losing any more sleep with additional work. A few of the sites I built were on domains that sat in my portfolio for years that I forgot I owned and after a review decided they were strong enough and a niche I was interested in to warrant development. Once ya hit over a few hundred domains sometimes ya forget what ya own.

 

[AEProgram]

like in any industry only a few make money and the reason in almost all cases is greed

most people who lose money on stocks had an opportunity to sell when they made a little money, they felt it was too little

a ton of people turn down to many offers or feel their name is worth more than it is. Sometimes its the fault of brokers, in order to get clients they only tell them about the few domains that sold for lots of money not the million other names they represent that they cant sell for 5 cents. Funny how people feel that a fancy website with nice graphics will make people forget that they are overpaying for a domain.

Ive seen people let names drop they I offered 500+ for

 

[Spade]

I have been in the Domain industry since about 2005. I have made good money in it and still continue to turn a profit each year. It was my main source of income between 2007-2008 and now it is just a side business for me that makes a few thousand dollars per year. I passively sell domain names when I get a good inquiry. I hold about 200 domain names now (down from about 1k).

 

[Abdul Aziz R]

I have 250+ domain names. about 25% don't have a reg fee (starter domains). about 25% I bought them for parking, but didn't work. about 40% I know I can sell at low-mid xx. about 10% they are good domains, and I got some offers, some were not serious and some were too low. this 10% domains, If I sell any one of them, I will cover all the money I had spent it on this business.
till now, have no never sold a domain.

my problem is, I know these domain (the 10%) are good. But because I am afraid of selling them too low, I priced them too high.

From reading this thread, I decided to put one domain at GD auction, starting price $10, no reverse. I will see what will happen

 

[ruzeen]

Another tip is to not turn down decent offers. Because, sometimes, you'll never get a better offer for those domains.

I have 250+ domain names. about 25% don't have a reg fee (starter domains). about 25% I bought them for parking, but didn't work. about 40% I know I can sell at low-mid xx. about 10% they are good domains, and I got some offers, some were not serious and some were too low. this 10% domains, If I sell any one of them, I will cover all the money I had spent it on this business.
till now, have no never sold a domain.

my problem is, I know these domain (the 10%) are good. But because I am afraid of selling them too low, I priced them too high.

From reading this thread, I decided to put one domain at GD auction, starting price $10, no reverse. I will see what will happen

 

[Domainerr]

This Business is pretty good , i only profited from it...u may loss money if you are registering Bulk amount of crappy Domain names without a proper research..Hot niche + Research = Nice Domain name and this Formula gives you profit..

 

[alien51]

It would be good if you guys DO NOT include profit from developed sites that earn money from third-party advertising (adsense/affiliates/e-commerce).

This way we can much better gauge how "pure" domaining is really working out for people.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

I started domaining 14 months ago and these are my "stats":

I'm confident that i will make a profit this year

 

[Domainerr]

I started domaining 14 months ago and these are my "stats":

I'm confident that i will make a profit this year

So u are at Loss??...U invested 15K and Your ROI is 12K?..

 

[NameOmnia]

So u are at Loss??...U invested 15K and Your ROI is 12K?..

Actually I think he is doing pretty well.
I also wonder if Andrew Rosener knows you are advertising and taking offers for some of his names...

 

[Ralph2472]

I've been buying and selling domain names since 2002 as a hobby. I've never had to depend on it for a living.
I have made a small profit each year, which for a hobby is pretty good. Most hobbies cost a lot of money.
The highest price I've sold a domain for was $550 I've sold a few around that price mark.
So far this year I've spent $197 on domain names (which are mainly hand registered), and sold domain names to the value of $402
I know it's nothing fantastic in the big scheme of things; but I've doubled my money so far this year. You can't do that by leaving money in the bank.
I haven't included parking because it's not a lot, and it seems that parking revenues have fallen over the years anyway.
I own approximately 100 domain names at the minute (a lot of them are robot domains), which is down from a peak of about 350 three years ago.
I've let about 50 drop over the years.
I'm prepared to sell domain names at a lower price than some people would; but that gives you cash flow to buy more without getting into debt for them.
We've all had crappy domain names; just accept the fact that they are crappy and sell them here or on eBay for a couple of dollars. There's usually someone who is prepared to do something with them if the price is right. I've also given a few away for free. It's better than just dropping them.
I hope this helps some people, and is not too boring.

Regards

Ralph

RobotPortfolio

 

[Doron Vermaat]

So u are at Loss??...U invested 15K and Your ROI is 12K?..

Yes, if you look only at how much i invested/spend ($15.3k) minus how much i made in sales / revenue ($12.4k on 4 sales) and minus the sales cost (commissions for Afternic, BB etc) ($2.5k) then you could say i made a loss.

I do still hold a portfolio of 176 domains however that represents a significant value so i'm positive that my sales revenues will soon exceed my investment from the last 14 months.

 

[alien51]

You would have made money on the stock market for 15k.

The only ones who would demand a disclaimer on that, are those who are just picking stocks like a lottery ticket.

 

[ruzeen]

Bump