discuss Is Hand Reg Really Dead?!?

[URL Stream]

Hello Everybody,

An oft repeated view is that the days of hand-registering a domain and subsequently turning a profit are done with. The purpose of this thread is to serve as a platform to explore this further.

Anyone who has hand registered a domain name and then successfully sold it, should please post it here. The more details, the better. For example; xxx.com, reg Nov 2023, sold May 2024, for $xxx. Points are being awarded for more recently registered dates, so if you regged in 2019 and sold it in 2024 that wouldn't help much with the stats for the current market trend. There is no specific cut-off date, but you get the point.

Again, this is specifically for completed transactions. Do not hijack this conversation to promote your fantasies. Also, please stick to factual statistics; short comments are reserved for any member who is actually posting his sale.

Hope to hear from you all!

 

[equity78]

The deadness or liveliness of turning profits with domains are not necessarily whether they are hand reg's but the names themselves. There is a lot of nuances in domaining, hand registrations have worked for me but maybe not for others. Just as aftermarket involvement is not for me but can work well for some others.

Exactly it's not simply about handreg or bad or over priced auction purchase.

 

[M Ashraf]

Only pro domainers can sell hand register domains even in 5fig.

 

[URL Stream]

thanks everyone!
to clarify; did things change with time in terms of the pool of good names getting smaller and harder to get your hands on, or did the actual strategy and style evolve to a different space / genre?

 

[URL Stream]

please elaborate; what are "pro-domainers doing different and better?

 

[M Ashraf]

please elaborate; what are "pro-domainers doing different and better?

Pro domainer like they are doing domaining since 19s

 

[M Ashraf]

please elaborate; what are "pro-domainers doing different and better?

They know what the demand in the market and then they bet on right time in right price.

 

[RyanEwen]

No hand regging is not dead. It's hard to attain consistent results. Anyone can hand reg and sell a domain name, it's not unique or special. It's about can I replicate this success on a consistent basis for the juice to be worth the squeeze?

A hand reg is generally not going to be a liquid domain name. Liquid domain names have a market just about any time of day, every day. I am writing this at 11:36 pm my time but I could get a hold of people from different parts of the world and drum up interest for a LL or LLL.com. A domain name registered an hour ago, not so much.

So hand registered domain names will probably result in a 0.5 to 1% sell through rate on a decent sized portfolio of hand registered domain names, provided the portfolio is names that make some sense or have successfully touched upon a new trend that's in vogue.

So most people starting out are hand registering 10 or 20 maybe 50 names. You might go years without ever selling one, so then the old adage of hand regs are dead starts up.

There are plenty of long time domainers who don't advertise it or tweet it out who still hand register domain names from time to time, that's balanced with liquid domain names, solid two word.coms and one word popular keywords in alt extensions.

They are not, and no one else should either, dependent on hand regs to attain financial success in domaining.

This is a lonely business, you can go years without a sale, you might have beginner's luck and sell 3 your first month. Domaining is a numbers game. Plenty of people you see posting sold this for $29,888 and this for $8,888 oh and then this for $10,000. Own thousands of domain names, they start each year with a renewal bill in the tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is not an easy business, the person who shared 20 sales in 2023 did not share the 9,000 names that never sold or maybe never got a decent offer.

You want to have a lot of things going on in this business, hand reg some, play the auctions, see if you can find someone who will let you work to sell one of their better names for a commission. 10% or 15% of an ultra premium domain name is probably better for many than a 100% of their strictly hand regged portfolio.

You need to have a budget and be diversified. Always have a safety net, if you have $1,000 do not blow that all at once, because unlike other collectibles because that's what your really doing, you are collecting hand regs like someone collects baseball cards or coins, you have to renew again the next year. Once you bought the card or the coin you don't have to worry about any of that. So have a safety net. And if you know how to truly build a real, modern website, that's a big plus.

Agree with all of this - also worth checking out https://dnrabbit.com/ - looks like this will help people find hand reg opportunities and its launch is imminent.

 

[alcy]

to increase chance to sell find names on expireddomains.net... all else lowers your odds.

 

[UnclaimedName]

Very much alive

 

[URL Stream]

please elaborate!

 

[UnclaimedName]

please elaborate!

Didn’t want to self-promote but we see many great expiring and expired domains. Some have been registered, and sold - we started the whole project in January, so that’s domains hand registered and sold within less than a year. FundPension .com, CheapHauls .com two domains that expired today, and were hand registered today. A domain that was hand registered and sold within less than 5 months, dirtypipes .com (source) just a few to elaborate.

Hand registering is ever more difficult than it maybe previously was, but you could argue the entire domain aftermarket is ever more difficult to navigate than it previously was.

 

[URL Stream]

good for you!

 

[william]

As someone who owned over 2,500 handregs I can tell you that:

1) Hand-regs will inherently have lower STR. Good names are taken. Whether registered in the 90's, 2000's, or will be picked up when dropping. But every now and then you'll stumble on a gem.
2) Hand-regs take years to ripen. What I mean is that with any name, you should expect to hold it within 3-5 years. It takes time to sell any name. Most people that do hand-regs, typically hold for 1-2, which is not enough to see the results. Additionally, if you register a decent name, you will see that people start buying the name in other extensions. This raises the chance of a sale and value of the name in wholesale market.
3) Hand-regs can be a smart investment for smaller budget investors. You can create a diverse portfolio. If your judgement is not the best, you can increase your luck by owning more names in more categories.
4) Hand-regs give you freedom. You can create names specifically tailored to something. Names that previously didn't exist. Names on new trends. You can play off of existing names.
5) BUYERS DON'T CARE WHEN THE NAME WAS REGISTERED. This is not and never will be a selling point to any buyer or business. This information is only relevant to us - domainers. Even then, domains are dropped, drop-catched, etc which resets the date.

I could list more information, but just know that when you're starting out, it's easy to get sucked into this game of spending all your time looking up and registering available domain names. It can be a tremendous waste of time and resources. Invest your time learning. Set limits on how many names you register per month. Focus on building a portfolio of 50-100 names. Keep optimizing and improving it. This includes dropping poor names.

Best of luck. If anyone wants to know more about hand-reg business, I can make a more detailed post in the future.

 

[Sully]

In my experience, hand regs require a heavy amount of outbound sales effort. Especially if you are looking for a faster turnaround.,

 

[URL Stream]

If anyone wants to know more about hand-reg business, I can make a more detailed post in the future.

your post was well articulated and full of insightful content! absolutely looking forward to a more detailed post in the future, ty!

 

[dirk]

As someone who owned over 2,500 handregs I can tell you that:

1) Hand-regs will inherently have lower STR. Good names are taken. Whether registered in the 90's, 2000's, or will be picked up when dropping. But every now and then you'll stumble on a gem.
2) Hand-regs take years to ripen. What I mean is that with any name, you should expect to hold it within 3-5 years. It takes time to sell any name. Most people that do hand-regs, typically hold for 1-2, which is not enough to see the results. Additionally, if you register a decent name, you will see that people start buying the name in other extensions. This raises the chance of a sale and value of the name in wholesale market.
3) Hand-regs can be a smart investment for smaller budget investors. You can create a diverse portfolio. If your judgement is not the best, you can increase your luck by owning more names in more categories.
4) Hand-regs give you freedom. You can create names specifically tailored to something. Names that previously didn't exist. Names on new trends. You can play off of existing names.
5) BUYERS DON'T CARE WHEN THE NAME WAS REGISTERED. This is not and never will be a selling point to any buyer or business. This information is only relevant to us - domainers. Even then, domains are dropped, drop-catched, etc which resets the date.

I could list more information, but just know that when you're starting out, it's easy to get sucked into this game of spending all your time looking up and registering available domain names. It can be a tremendous waste of time and resources. Invest your time learning. Set limits on how many names you register per month. Focus on building a portfolio of 50-100 names. Keep optimizing and improving it. This includes dropping poor names.

Best of luck. If anyone wants to know more about hand-reg business, I can make a more detailed post in the future.

Nice! Covering all angles. Thanks for sharing!

 

[URL Stream]

BUYERS DON'T CARE WHEN THE NAME WAS REGISTERED. This is not and never will be a selling point to any buyer or business. This information is only relevant to us - domainers

can you explain in what way is it relevant to domainers but not to buyers?

 

[Kyle Tully]

can you explain in what way is it relevant to domainers but not to buyers?

It matters to domain investors mostly as a filter/factor when looking at many names because generally speaking older names are “better”.

It doesn’t matter to buyers because they just want the name for the names sake.

 

[william]

can you explain in what way is it relevant to domainers but not to buyers?

Because for domainers, age can be a useful factor because typically a name that was held onto longer could indicate that it was of better quality or in demand. By itself, this information doesn't mean much even to a domainer. But it's just one of the factors.

For a regular buyer, this information is not available, nor is it relevant. It doesn't help them in any way.

 

[MarQos1986]

6 hand reg (regged okt 2023) sold in 2024. Sold in the 1500-2500 dollar range.

 

[tttt]

I built the website wee.domains to find short domains for hand-reg.

I don't think many people use it or know about it.

But I used it to register txse (dot) ai, which I recently received a $10k offer on.

 

[URL Stream]

post a write-up about your work. gl!

 

[dncafe]

Hearing domainers talk about sales is a lot like someone talking about gambling. They'll tell you about the big win they had at the casino last week, but not about the 20 other times they lost.

My advice on hand regs is to lower your prices and not try and go for the mid $X,XXX. Your hand reg domain is not that good, otherwise it would have been picked up at auction when it dropped.

If you can find a winning niche of domains that sell, then you can slowly start increasing your prices.

 

[DomainGist]

My advice on hand regs is to lower your prices and not try and go for the mid $X,XXX. Your hand reg domain is not that good, otherwise it would have been picked up at auction when it dropped.

The exception of course being new tech.

How many NFT domains existed in 2020?

Yet go and look at how many NFT domains have sold on Namebio.

Same with Bitcoin etc.

There are plenty of people who have speculated on brand new technology and ideas and remained ahead of the curve to snag the domains before this tech is mainstream.