Hand registered domains, has time lapsed?

[sandyhere]

We are new domainers.
When we first step in to this industry we look forward for hand regged domains for obvious reasons:
1. They are cheaply available. We do not want to invest lot of bucks without much experience in the industry.
2. Even if sold for less amount, its still a decent profit comapred to its cost
3. Better to play in low tone till you get ideas about domain drop-catch or backorder services
But with millions of domains already registered, does it make sense to spend time and amount on so called stray domains which remain unregistered even after 20yrs of wake of industry.
People have made fortunes from hand regged domains in past. Can we do it even today?
If not, are the dropped names or aged domains are the only source to succeed here?

 

[Kate]

People have made fortunes from hand regged domains in past. Can we do it even today?

I would take that statement with a pinch of salt.
People have made a lot of money when they registered domains like sex.com back in 1994 and kept them for 15-20 years before cashing out.

In 2014 there are no handregs of that caliber. So you can still buy some semi-decent domains but even in 15 years I doubt they will sell for millions.

 

[Aparna Guin]

The dropped names are definitely valuable source for the beginners without much capital to invest. Available data on traffic, page rank and links surely helps to pick up the gems. Good softwares and sites are available to suggest the valuable dropped domains.
Investing on newly available TLDs with single word /2-3 L or N might be another option for beginners but that seems to very unpredictable business.
Following the internet search/ads market trends closely and picking the most relevant domains early can be highly profitable.