Domain Mistakes I Have Made (Please Share Yours)

[netmeg]

Well, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I've been doing this about three months now, and I have built up a healthy portfolio of about 560 domain names; 60 to 65 of them are developed in some fashion, a handful belong to clients or friends or family, and the rest of 'em are parked.

I've learned a lot over the past three months. I was fortunate in finding this forum fairly early on, before I made *too* many mistakes that cost me big money. Actually, it has been somewhat comforting to find out that my essential strategy for choosing names is probably pretty sound - I bought them figuring I probably wouldn't make any money this year, but I sold one off quick for $750, and the rest are parked in various places, and slowly but surely, the money is starting to trickle in. I haven't had a day with NO domain income in a month; even a few pennies is a few pennies I didn't have the day before.

That said, I know I have made some errors in my time, and I figured I would post them here. I have two reasons for doing this: first, to prevent anyone else from possibly committing the same errors, and second, to maybe convince some of you more experienced pros to share some of YOUR mistakes, in the hopes that I don't have to commit those too (ork ork)

So, in no particular order, here is what I feel I did in error:

1. Registered a trademark name: Opps! I read an article, got an idea, and thought "wow, I should check and see if this is available!" and it was, so I took it. It had not one but TWO trademarked names in it! Then I found out that was not such a hot idea, specially if it looked like I was actually making money on it. Bleah. Well, fortunately, I just got the one. I picked up two others with a part of a trademarked name them, but they also include "monthlyplans" in them, so I'm probably safe with those. But who knew? Everyone but me, I guess. I suppose there's a market for this, but it's not for me. Lesson learned: Stay away from trademarks if the potential hassle is more trouble than it's worth to you.
   
   
2. Lack of patience: I wanted to try different parking companies, and I was moving my various domains all over creation and back, every week - sometimes every few days, testing things. BIG mistake. For one thing, it was a logistical nightmare; after a while I had no idea what was where. Specially since so many of my names are similar. I keep all my domain info in a spreadsheet, and it was getting too difficult to even update the damn spreadsheet. Then I would spend hours optimizing the names, only to hear about another parking company to try, and do it all over again there. The worst of it was because I was moving them around so much, they would get spidered in Google at least three different ways, which is pretty much a great way to guarantee they won't come up for anything. I'm going to be recovering from this for a while, till the old entries fall out of the search engines. Plus, you just can't tell anything about a parking company until you've given it time to settle in. Lesson learned: Park 'em some place, optimize, and then forget about them for at least a month. Maybe two.
   
   
3. Mind Your Nameservers: I got so confused by everything, I accidentally found I'd changed some nameservers incorrectly, and domains weren't pointing to the right place, forwards weren't working - it was a mess. Every now and then it pays to just download the entire shmear from your registrar, load it into a spreadsheet and eyeball it. Just to make sure you didn't accidentally move something someplace useless. Lesson learned: Organize and pay attention, and check up on myself periodically
   
   
4. Watch Out for Typos: By which, I mean my own. I accidentally registered two domains that made no sense (just had random letters tacked on the end) because I was registering in bulk, and again, not paying attention. I typed two in wrong, didn't look at the final page before checkout, and now I have two domains that are probably totally useless. Oh well. Lesson learned: Pay Attention, Check before checking out

Ok, there's more, but I gotta get back to work. I invite you to laugh at me for my mistakes, and share some of yours. Maybe we'll all laugh and learn.

 

[fatter]

I probably regged a few to many brandable domains at first, probably 50 in total, I have only a few of them left I learned early that just about anyone can make up brandable names for reg fee so to get a premium on them is tough, I now concentrate on names with traffic and future traffic names that havent materialized yet.

 

[dave9713]

I've only been getting into domains (a lot) in the last couple of months but i have to say my biggest mistake was doing all my business with 1 & 1, constant hassle with bills eg. invoice number: 139488974 £98.70 when i haven't bought anything and when i enquire you get some silly answer like "please pay by paypal, you can do this by clicking here" i've been in touch with management for the last 9 emails and they still haven't told me what i owe it for! As if the daily email reminder isn't enough i get daily post from them reminding me when they won't even answer my questions!

 

[jido]

Having a "great" domain name idea, then buying 10 variations of it in .org and .net. In fact it was not a great domain idea.

BTW I think that Namepros members should make more efforts to appraise domains for newcomers in the Appraisals section, it does help avoid mistakes.

 

[enlytend]

Watch Out for Typos: By which, I mean my own. I accidentally registered two domains that made no sense

I've registered a few "unintentional" typos myself.

Lack of patience - sales - In my early days, I got so frustrated that I couldn't find a buyer for my names that I sold a lot of things in bulk and/or really cheap.

Though some were definitely "clunkers", there are a few I now wish I'd kept! More recently, I received a legitimate mid-xxx offer for a name I tried to sell on a forum for $5 (fortunately, nobody wanted it!). If you really believe in a name, bite the bullet on the fact that you may be paying reg fees on it for some time before you find a buyer.

And don't register more names than you can afford to keep!

Settling for 2nd (or 3rd) best - Sometimes I would get these great ideas for names, look them up - all taken. So in frustration, I'd scramble around for something similar that's available to register. Maybe it's the word in an exotic cctld extension, maybe you scramble the word order, maybe you start trying to come up with similar combinations of words or a longer phrase ... One thing this is guaranteed to produce - a 2nd rate or 3rd rate name (or worse!).

Is your original idea strong enough to still pack a punch in a watered down version? That's a judgement call, but often the answer is no.

 

[Sleepys]

One of my biggest mistakes I made early on, was paying way to much money for domains, based on Sedo or TDNam traffic numbers, which rarely, if ever, are accurate.

 

[johname]

I registered a name that turned out to be a "clunker" but i forgot to turn the godaddy Auto Renew off and I ended up paying a second year reg fees on a crappy name

 

[tpruby]

I regged close to 100 brandable names my first month. It seems that I didn't know what a brandable name was, but figured that everyone would pay me tonnes of cash for the name I paid $7 for...hahahaha Ouch, sold 99 of them off for about a 70% loss.

Now refocused on the long term and in a whole new direction.

 

[GILSAN]

Initially after reading various articles about Domains and how a lot of peaple were making great profits from selling them, I decided that I should also give it a go and started researching about the best registrars for a week or two. I decided to go with Goddady and spent $1700 on 300 hand reged names that I thought were pretty decent names. 40% of the names were .info.

Inicially I bought only .com then after reading some articles I bought the .info which were cheap at $0,99.

Then I came across Namepros and started reading and getting interested in Parking. Slowly I started to realize my big mistake was that I bought so many hand reged names, many of them are no dought crappy names, a lot of them I'm still not sure if they are good or how to judge what a good name is.

So my biggest error was that I did not do enough research about a subject that I new nothing about.

But the best part was joining NamePros (pity it was'nt earlier). It's like joining a free University with great professors like Varon, IntelBank, Donny, Badger, .X., and lately a new and rising star called Netmeg, this, to name just a few, as well as everyone else that has contributed in helping the less knowledgable.

Lately I've spent a lot of time reading a lot of threads to make up for the initial mistake. Thanks everyone for you help

GIL

 

[snoop]

-Overpaying on some names (hard not to do some of the time)
-Speculating in new extensions (mainly .info)
-Buying names for resale potential that had very little traffic

 

[bgmv]

Like everyone has already said I just didnt do enough research. I thought i would walk into the domain industry buy my $7 crap name, which I thought was brilliant, and have someone pay me $XXXX for it. Well, it didnt turn out like that, at all. Then I started reading on the NP forum and gathered a wealth of knowledge. So I decided to start regging LLLL.com before they all ran out. I started regging them 3 days ago when there were approx 5k left, and I managed to get the worst ones available. I am finding ones today that are better than the ones I regd three days ago. So I have decided to just buy as many high quality LLLL isntead of reg about 50-100 crappy ones.

Hindsight is 20-20, especially in domaining. There is alot to learn and it isn't easy. The thing is that the market is very fickle, someone might tell you that the name XYWZ.com is worth reg fee but then there is some company X that just so happens to have the same acronyms as your domain. There are alot of variables that cannot be factored into domaining, almost like the stock market. There is no formula for success which is what makes this so capricious.

BGMV

 

[DnPresident]

Keywords

1. Started out spending thousands of dollars on domain names that sounded good instead of investing in high paying keywords.

2. Recently got really excited after registering a dictionary name........It was spelled wrong

 

[NPKJB]

My biggest mistake was reading the Kevin Ham article in Business 2.0 and thinking this business is a piece of cake. Man.... That was stupid!!

That day I registered 40 domain names using only Overture scores. Well... out of those 40 only five are making me SOME money on a daily basis. I've since purchased another 20 names that are much better than my first batch. Using all of the available tools such as Overture, Keyword Discovery, WordTracker and a host of others has made the process a little easier.

The other problem is that I think about domains all day!!! Everywhere I go I see potential names that can make money. I dream about domains. I eat domains. I sh*t domains. I spend more time on this business than I ever thought I would. Its very addicting. But I've learned to keep my emotions in check and just think sensibly. I will succeed in this business with the help of NamePros and a few special members like Varon, IntelBank, .X., Spade, SDX and NetMeg. I give a special thanks to all the members who take the time to answer my questions.

Now.....back to work on my business!! :hehe:

 

[DnEbook]

Biggest mistake is not discovering ....... namepros , also registering names with too long to wait for relevance ... 'freespacetour.com' for example , but so much info here , i think fair to say it's ok to make mistakes as long as you learn from them , i try to spread the risk a bit more these days

 

[clocker24]

Registered what I thought were two good names, only to discover they were typos when I tried to sell them and the buyer pointed it out... what a disappointment.

Early on I drove traffic to my parked pages by advertising; made a lot of money fast before I found out it was a violation of TOS; luckily my parking account was not suspended.

Like everyone else, I registered a bunch of useless names. Now I only buy revenue-earning names or generics in certain promising ccTLDs.

 

[exponent]

1) - Overpaying if I really want it (see #2)
2) - Buying on impulse. (often leads to #1)
3) - Responding to ultra low offers, with ultra high counter-offers.
4) - Holding out too long because I suspect the interested party is another domainer.
5) - Being short with customers with bad communications skills because I suspect a scam.

 

[namebug]

Not renewing domains a month out before Katrina hit .

 

[trendicator]

it seems that we all make mistakes...nice...

some of mine:

1. registering domain names without doing any research at all, so end up with crap domains

2. after registering domain names, leave them be so end up forgetting that they are mine

 

[german2006]

Registering great keywords with hypens, this isnt a bad practice to develop a website or positioning, but my experience tells me that is pointless to the reseller market.

 

[netmeg]

Early on I drove traffic to my parked pages by advertising; made a lot of money fast before I found out it was a violation of TOS; luckily my parking account was not suspended.

Opps, I did this one too - I didn't actually drive traffic by advertising, but I put a page of links to all my domains up. Fortunately, I discovered this board at around the same time or shortly after, and read somewhere that that was generally not allowed, and took it down before it was discovered by the parking company. Since then, I've read every TOS that I've come across. Whew!

But I'm STILL making stupid mistakes - I have a bunch of holiday shopping and holiday gift domains that I bought in August and September, and I meant to get them all optimized at Fabulous "some day" and I got about a fifth of them done but then got distracted with other things, and now all of a sudden they're getting traffic while sitting in limbo on Namedrive, before I've even finished optimizing and moving the DNS - gack! Opportunity wasted! I know what I'll be doing this weekend, while watching the UM-MSU football game on tv...

 

[PowerUp]

My biggest mistake is.... :sold: at BIN

 

[GILSAN]

My biggest mistake is.... :sold: at BIN

BIN? what the hell is BIN?

GIL

 

[johname]

BIN? what the hell is BIN?

GIL

BIN Buy It Now? intead of trying for a lower price?

 

[Mike]

1, Investing in overpriced ccTLDs that have virtually no chance of success as their registry doesn't adequately promote them.

2, Not sticking with .com as primary extension
3, Not having paid enough attention to .US as i believe this extension to be a "sleeper" that once it wakes up, should generate a revolution.

4, Not going into parking earlier
5, Not utilizing arbitrage earlier

6, Registering absolute CRAP, thinking that i've just discovered a diamond in the rough and that i'll beat Da Vinci to making gold out of steel.

7, Relying on unreliable programmers to build sites for me. By that i don't mean mini-sites, but full sites that are functional with a built database. (I'm still looking for a reliable partner that can program)
7.5, Not having the nerve to sit down and learn programming myself and relieve myself from dependency.

8, Not reading NamePros attentively enough as there are threads that could have easily helped me to avoid stupid mistakes.

9, Being impatient, always attempting to re-invent the wheel, while it's blatantly obvious that domaining is an exact science that thrives on research, forecasts and ...yes, research...

and last but not least....

10, Carrying the pride factor deep within me that tells me that even when i should just let a domain expire, i still contemplate to renew my "baby". Domaining is NOT an emotional business, yet i catch myself often that i believe in my even crappy selections. It's a case of virtual denial, that's going to hit me hard this year when renewals come around in less than 2 months.

IB

PS: Thanks for mentioning me Gilsan, i appreciate it, but in the end, i'm just a small fish in the deep water.

 

[yoshine]

.us a sleeper.???? i dont think so .com is our .us