For some reason, I've been thinking of quitting domaining recently. Yeah - go figure. I'm sharing the thoughts, feel free to share yours.

[twiki]

That doesn't mean it's not making money for me. It is. But it's not record-breaking stuff. Though it has better ROI than some other stuff I have currently.

That doesn't mean it consumes a ton of my time. It doesn't - or at least not anymore. I've streamlined stuff. I can get away with as little as 15 minutes a day if I want to. OR take 2 weeks off - completely if I want.

That doesn't mean I won't be holding domain names anymore. I will - some, my best ones. The others? I'd probably either clear or let them drop.

As one of the most frequent posters in the sales thread: You didn't see this coming from me, right?

But there are reasons I'm considering it. I'm sharing my thoughts, please change my mind. Or not.

What is currently changing my ideas:

- I don't like the current status of the market. I've never seen summer days so empty - in the sales thread. And in my own sales.

I'm making a good ROI, was expected to go past 100% soon (edit: might be there already) and past 100K profit per annum - next year. But it looks as if it doesn't get there. The world is going south - economically.

Edit: 100% annual ROI is not very good in business. Stock size vs. earnings I mean It means your stock rotation time is 6 months, which is not great. Say I have $50k in domains, I make $100k in sales, pocket $50k, that's 100% ROI and 6 months rotation.

- It does require investment. Money you keep locked in your names.

So for example with Dotible (my recent project in the sig) I have low costs and high margin - just like most tech startups would do. Domains aren't that. To make $100k you probably need $50k -$100k in assets (unless you are one of the older top domainers who have very good names).

I'd rather swing my investment towards less risk, more reward areas. Such as tech projects as the aforementioned one.

- It's a positive-feedback business, economically. That's not good right now. What I mean here is: If the economy prospers, you get more money; but if things go south, less domains are being sold. That's the positive feedback. And the downtrend has been already visible in 2022 although the business is still working and some are going quite well. But not everyone.

Things are going south worldwide as you know. I can see the writing on the wall.

In such times, good business is either 1) corporate that is solid and won't probably be touched, 2) small business but with very small cost and overhead, you just simply go ahead, or 3) negative feedback ones.

Example for 3: Repairs, pawn shops/loans or whatnot - anything a person would need in times when cash is low so they need to save or borrow etc. Domains are not of this kind.

I'm thinking of cutting a lot of the overhead, keep a minimal portfolio, have it automated... then off to new things and especially one meeting above criteria: negative feedback business OR high margin / in demand stuff, or catering to enterprise customers that would continue to be just fine in such times.

So what do you think? About what I posted above. Feel free to approve it, or criticize this, or maybe offer me some ideas (hopefully) and most importantly share your thoughts. They will be appreciated nevertheless.

P.S. Oh, and please note I'm also not scared or a quitter or whatnot. I do have good planing in general in business, and my instincts and experience tell me this is a turning point. Now. End of August 2022.

 

[redemo]

If you look at my posts, they are generally elaborate and with great detail, lots of analysis. So it's rather a personal trait, which works well for me and not an issue caused by worries or something.

Which is why you'd make the perfect blogger on some of your developed domain names .....

 

[Laguna]

Wow, tough going over a year of no sales - did that make it easier to decide which names to renew and drop?

Domaining can feel like a banging head against the wall venture even in the best of times

4 years is even worse

 

[twiki]

I wouldn't be too sure about that

Have a little faith!

 

[phaethon]

The reason they don't sell is they're not good enough. It makes sense to keep those with inquiries but this doesn't mean those will sell. It depends on a number of factors. Trend, client, price etc.

The fact that a domain is captured after drop also doesn't tell much. Captured by DC? Also doesn't tell much, I've seen loads of crap being taken as well by DC lately.

All the domains I sell never had an inquiry on them. And I did sell quite a shitload (check sales reports).

If I lower offer and accepting offers, that won't result in a sale in most cases.

My suggestion is - get a better appraisal on your names and keep those valuable indeed.

Depending on your names (if they fit the appraisal profile), my tool in the signature might indicate whether one of them has a problem or not as it checks a number of things. If the evaluation result is low (below $800 or so), you might have an issue with the domain. It's not a set in stone rule but it;s a good indicator in general.

The appraiser software also helps me sift through my own lists of domains faster for the same reason. (Edit: it's getting improved a lot these days based on user feedback loop)

You can check Huge Domains portfolio- dumpster diving.. Some diamonds here and there in the garbage. Buyers who can afford paying high prices doesn't necessarily mean they have quality criteria.
They simply have the money to do it.

 

[Robert27]

Everything I have read says that its going to be bad economically for atleast two years so for me is just about staying in the the game until things pick up.
Thank you Twiki for all your posts.

 

[golan]

Over 4 years and not even a lowball offer or fake offer. I'm constantly on here or twitter trying to get exposure for my names . I know everyone says patience but I've had a few of these names from the beginning. And yes there's a lot of crap there too but a few of them should have received some kind of offer by now. It's demoralising and hard to keep pressing on for zero reward. I'm extremely busy at work too so don't have much time to do any more than I already do. I admit I only have 6 I will renew forever or until sold . Anyway back to the day job for me. Hope you guys have a fantastic day

Because your domains are sh*t, bro. I remember everyone here said it to you few years ago, and here i logged in to the forum again but you are still owning crap. You seem to be a nice guy, but it seems you just don't learn, you can't put yourself at the buyer's place, think like a buyer, understand what buyers need. What business on the Earth would want to call themselves NTTED? And not for reg fee but for $2k. Give me a break. Maybe domaining is not for you, it's nothing bad or wrong with it, just find yourself another hobby.

Name Liquidate also seems dead. Not sure if you have a better experience..

Not at all. I'm getting hundreds bucks every months liquidating there.

 

[twiki]

If anyone could find a formula to make 150% roi, he'd be soon a billionaire and wouldn't be crying about it.

150% roi means 2.5x of your investment every year.

2.5^10=9537x

So if you invest 10k now, in 10 years you would have $95 million.

Only theoretically. This is not exactly like buying stocks or something.

There are other factors at play, such as scalability (not enough supply for that), time (limited) and more.

And there are other factors at play as well. Including the fact that if current sales trend continues, I will have much less profit by the end of the year.

(edited - to early for me to do math without coffee)

 

[Edukar]

I think the domain business is a good investment for pensioners and people of art. For those who can wait. To start investing, you need at least 1000 quality domains. That is 10 thousand dollars. With average sales indicators, 1%, 10 domains will be sold per year. I don’t know how others have, my net profit is $ 2,000 from one domain. This means that for 1000 domains renewalls per year it need pay $10,000, and get net gain 20,000-10,000 = $10,000 per year. It turns out a little less than a thousand dollars a month. It is not enough. But with this money you can buy food and not die in a developed country. And this is a lot of money in the third world countries. In addition, there is still one big factor. This is now the average STR is 1%, but before the crisis of this year, my indicator was 2-3%. Therefore, I consider it inappropriate to part with Domaining business. I believe in success.

 

[Edukar]

You're forgetting something.

Unless you have better avenues. Much better, though it takes a bit. Which I have.

Edit: Also, I cannot live with $1000 per month or not even $2000, by far. That K would cover just for my daughter's tuition costs in UK, she's at uni right now.

I described the hypothetical situation for 1000 domains and low STR. If you have 5,000 domains and good STR, then the benefit will be 5-10 times more. By the way, I have 5 children, and only one eldest daughter received higher education. In our country, if the child is smart, he(she) can study for free. We have a rule in our family, if you cannot study yourself, then no one will pay for you. If the child wants to study at university, he will receive the highest score and will study for free. But the essence of our conversation is different. I see the profitability of this business, although I have 400 domains, while large sites such as Dan and Sedo kicked out the inhabitants of my country, Paypal, Mastercard and Visa also left my country. This means that I can position my domains on a limited number of sites, I have problems with the purchase and renewalls of domains, but I do not give up and continue this thorny path. Everything is very simple - I am a man of art. And I need time to write books. And if my books are not published and are not sold, only the domain business will help my family afloat.

 

[evil]

Dear twiki,
thank you for sharing your plans with us. Interesting ideas.
I can suggest to evaluate if the market is interested and willing to pay for a tool before investing on it.
Moreover there are premium tools sold for few dollars on seo group buy.
Another point is competition: suppose you want to build a domain evaluator. Are you sure you can compete with an establish tool like estibot?

A big difference of the domain business compared to other businesses is that buyers are looking for your domains while it's your task to look for buyers in traditional businesses.

The introduction of ngTLDs has increased the offer; we must take this into account and adapt.

I'm not an expert in domain sales but I can confirm that domain parking is performing well in the last years.

 

[topdom]

Parking: You can park at Sedo, get 10K visits, and 100 clicks, and earn 0.
PPC was profitable in early days of adsense. Not before, not after, just in those (about) 7 years.
It was like being early .com or crypto investor, or buying meta domains.
There is bigger scam in parking, than selling domains, so I think, if you say, I have 10K domains,
and 100K visits per day, so I would make 100 per day,..you are totally wrong. You can make 1 on some days,
and you will never reach minimum payout amount.

 

[WNC HOLDINGS]

Existentialism.horse.... - .wtf

I guess it is the thrill of the chase...like a beautiful woman...and now you have her and yet you tire of the everyday monotony...she's a 9 out of 10 but such high maintenance...phew!!!

Life can sometimes make no sense at all or it makes complete sense. There are too many tragic tales through history of those that thought that they were on to the next big thing, a sure fire hit. A dead cert. Do you know who really made the money during the gold rush? The guy selling picks and shovels. Go figure..right.

You're probably a bit bored too. It happens. I'd say get better and richer (if that is your true motivation) doing what you already know and aspire to go on to greater things. Life is too short to worry about what may have been or what opportunities you may miss out on.

Personally, I wake up every day and the first thing I think of is domains and it is the last thing that I do everyday. Check one last time whether I've made a sale or not. The adrenaline keeps me hard...at it. I love everything about it. It is what drives me to become totally financially independent and never having to go back to working for a living. This isn't work. Its way too much fun.

Sometimes in life you just have to take your foot off the gas for a while and slow down a little and stop and smell the roses and reflect truly on what is important and what is not.

Everyone has their own journey and as we have never walked a mile in your shoes we can only guess the journey that brought you to where you are today. We should be grateful for the opportunity that being a domain name investor gives us and maybe if you are not happy anymore then you should just go and do something else. Be a llama farmer or a beekeeper but do it well and wake each day and just be happy.

The only guarantee in this life is that there are no guarantees.

Rgrds,

Redd

Well stated.

 

[DomainNature]

Hello @twiki
I wanted to ask you a question about your appraisal tool in your AMA thread but it is closed, maybe you can reply here.
If a domain is appraised at above 2K using your tool, do you put the exact BIN price or add some more, eg. twice as much of the appraisal?
Thanks.

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

You are absolutely correct -- its not the same as it was. I know exactly where you're coming from.

I dont know what it is, blame it on the global pandemic or the globally depressed economy. I really dont know. All I know is I've been in this domaining business for 22 years and never, ever have I experienced over a year of no sales. Last sale (was a lease) was April 2021. Before that August 2020. TONS of inquiries though. Same number, perhaps slightly lower number of inquiries but sales - gone. Its a stage-1 drought.

Wow, tough going over a year of no sales - did that make it easier to decide which names to renew and drop?

Domaining can feel like a banging head against the wall venture even in the best of times

 

[Embrand]

And the world is not ending.

I wouldn't be too sure about that

 

[twiki]

I renew every domain which has ever had an inquiry in the past couple of years as I keep track of the domains I drop and sure enough, people will wait long for them to drop. I had one domain which I had an inquiry with a back and forth email discussion about it but never converted to a sale. A few years later, no more inquiries and little traffic - I dropped it. It was picked up by that person a month later. This was 12 years ago before drop catching pretty much grabbed everything.

I've also dropped domains without inquiries and they, too, were picked up. So the way I thought of it was if there was still a viable business use for the domain (wasnt an old trend) and there were inquiries then I renew it. If there werent any inquiries in years and there is still a trend with the keywords, possibly traffic (not bot traffic but I wonder about even bot traffic - people checking the domain daily for it to drop?) then I renew them too. It only costs $8.49 to renew (now thats increased ) Or I'll use NameLiquidate where I've had success getting something back for it and being content to "drop" / sell it at a fire-sale price.

The reason they don't sell is they're not good enough. It makes sense to keep those with inquiries but this doesn't mean those will sell. It depends on a number of factors. Trend, client, price etc.

The fact that a domain is captured after drop also doesn't tell much. Captured by DC? Also doesn't tell much, I've seen loads of crap being taken as well by DC lately.

All the domains I sell never had an inquiry on them. And I did sell quite a shitload (check sales reports).

If I lower offer and accepting offers, that won't result in a sale in most cases.

My suggestion is - get a better appraisal on your names and keep those valuable indeed.

Depending on your names (if they fit the appraisal profile), my tool in the signature might indicate whether one of them has a problem or not as it checks a number of things. If the evaluation result is low (below $800 or so), you might have an issue with the domain. It's not a set in stone rule but it;s a good indicator in general.

The appraiser software also helps me sift through my own lists of domains faster for the same reason. (Edit: it's getting improved a lot these days based on user feedback loop)

 

[sparks_lu]

My Dotible.com project is a life changer already.

Never had so much interest with something so early stage. Yet not even 1% of the stuff is live yet (it's in a ridiculous state so far). And it caters to multiple industries, domain investing etc is not even a primary target for the site, although I plan to serve such users just as well of course. But domaining is a tiny niche and there's not much money flowing around in paid services. ( I shamefully admit as well, I only have one paid subscription, which is Namebio).

It's great to finish what you started. Getting deeper into the industry to solve real problems, that's real differentiation from what "normal" domainer's doing.

 

[zomainhacks]

Hey, don't be depressed. That was not my intent anyway.

It's not like I don't make money. I do.

But I'm also aware this is not the same as it was 1-2 years ago.

Who knows what the future holds. I'm just preemptive due to my business-formed instinct. (might be right, might be wrong)

The biggest problem I see now for my model is that clearance doesn't work anymore. I clear better and better names and get fewer and fewer sales, close to 0 in the last months.

But other domainers are still making good money and each one's portfolio is different. I'm talking just about my particular case and thoughts.

Market changed, that's a reality and I completely understand your point.

I still love too much domains and I really hope a prolonged stagflation will not burn everything.

I'm convinced there is a bottom segment which will be always profitable no matter the economy and I'm striving to find it.

Might be a wishful thinking but I'm still confortable with the risk involved and excited to become a better domainer.

 

[twiki]

Sorry, I've expressed badly what I wanted to say.

What I mean is that I'm convinced there is a segment that can perform well even under economic turmoil.

You are correct on this. There are different buyer segments obviously.

However the trick is to make sure you make money overall, good pricing, perhaps outbound etc.

 

[VadimK]

Define "good combination"?

What kind of price are you looking at, and what is the sales ratio you're looking at? ( there are names which carry value but might take longer to sell)

@twiki , man, don't turn the conversation around. You said with an exception of 4-letter, there are ''tons of similar stuff'' - go ahead, bring samples of still non-taken crypto, art and Country-Geo names that are still hanging there. I never attacked any of your personal names, that was a bad idea to go to mines (even I agree they are definitely not the best ones I have).

Also - use your logic

If there were no such names left at drop, or just a few as you say. Would you have ever seen my countless drop sales?

Do you really want to calculate the ratio of your reported sales to your overall portfolio size to to see that currently it's way below 1%? (I know the market is down, but again, it's towards of your claim of TONS good, sellable names, many of which you don't even pick up).

 

[StartupsBrandsCom]

I have absolutely no idea what you just said...it must be fluent intellectualese...keep it simple mate...I'm a bit tick loike!!!

Ok, i was bit out of context, and tried reaffirming old quotes you re-posted about gold rush game changing - in the end. Still, nowadays are many overlooked developing industries (new innovative companies on stock markets) that sadly most of the society are screened-off during some, more or less, systemic inadequacies. Mr. Rob Monster has one the rare domaining collective materialization idea as domains in form of banking/stock/liquid assets.

 

[satsdifference.com]

i got into nbatopshot nfts past couple years instead, looking forward to retiring off it..

still a heart for domaining as a hand-regger anything new in WHOIS thats available mindful

 

[Lox]

In the beginning, your mind is focused on
$xxx.xxx (or more)
later on
$xx.xxx
$x.xxx
$xxx
$xx
I Quit

Post #27

 

[twiki]

In the beginning, your mind is focused on
$xxx.xxx (or more)
later on
$xx.xxx
$x.xxx
$xxx
$xx
I Quit

Post #27

 

[lock]

I feel same way so stuff it i am now end user woohoo.