debate Let's be real, most successful domainers are people who registered domains 15-30 years ago

[Siggy2500]

This is what nobody talks about.

Decades ago, lets say roughly 25 years ago, when the internet was in its golden age, domains were in abundance and many good names were available, the average person could usually register the domain he needed without it being taken.

Domaining is not futureproof, not sustainable, it's more of an early-internet thing, even now the internet is still very young if you think about it, BUT, as the internet gets older and more people are using it, computers are advancing, the demand increases and all the half-decent domains get sucked up, even with the new TLDs. The new TLDs are overpriced, and nothing will ever compare to when the internet was fairly new, when good domains were available & free and without having to pay thousands of dollars or even millions for them.

Now, today, more than 20 years after the dot-com bubble, realistically, no domains are available for registering, only the pickers are left and if you want to get a good domain in your collection, you have to buy it at a premium and pray someone is going to buy it, and I don't think people really profit much from that at all, because it's likely that the would-be buyer is another domainer or as the nerds call it, "domain investor" like you, and I guess if the domainer or would-be buyer is smart he wouldnt buy the domain at any higher price than you did yourself because then he would have to resell it even higher if he's trying to make a profit just like you did. Then the price continues to become so high that there isn't much room left to profit off the domain within the domaining industry, then again there are chances it gets purchased by a business or individual interested in it, and then that domain goes out of public circulation and gets used as a website, with only the trash pickers left within the domaining industry.

Nobody wants domains ending in, for example: .xyz and other ugly similarities, even if you get a good domain with such ugly endings it's still realistically worthless, be real. The only TLDs in which "good" domains are worth anything are .COM, .NET and .AI, etc and that only being said if your website has traffic, it's true if you are a logical person and not a trash hoarder. The only domains which have value are high traffic domains, and if you have an ugly TLD domain, for example .xyz with high traffic, good for you, your domain has physical people entering it, then I can make an exception and consider it "valuable".

And finally, domains are not property which means you do not own them, you only have the right to use them and that is only so if you pay the yearly fee. Domains aren't property, therefore they have no book value, no officially recognized value because as I said, it's not property. It's only speculation and it's up to the so called "domain investors" what the market value for it is.

Different can be said about high traffic domains, as I said above, they have physical backing behind them in the form of customers (humans), which are important for generating revenue for a website. The only way you can make a domain "valuable" nowadays is by developing it into a website with traffic.


Alright, that is enough. Now I will be stormed with shit, feel free to thumbs down this post and mass-report me, moderate me or or whatever. I don't care! Just stay mad. Stay edgy!


And feel free to correct any mistake I made in this post, I might take it as advice, it depends.

 

[bmugford]

Of course, everyone will say that you are lucky when you make some money on investments. But they just don't notice the hard work that should be put into the process before actually investing in something.
In the meantime, those early investors in crypto had higher risks because it was something brand-new, and no one had a clue how crypto would develop in the future.

And even then, people only think about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some others.

There are thousands of shitcoins and rugpulls that people lost money on.

So, even of the people in crypto many took losses buying the wrong things.

Everything comes with risk. All you tend to hear about are the success stories.

Brad

 

[DomainLift]

I’ve been in investing since 2017 but not consistently.

Not referencing OP just saying in general

You get what you put in

You get what your skills, productivity and creativity can produce

The most underrated skills are persistence and perseverance.

Also if you think you know more than you actually do then you can just be spinning your wheels not actually making progress on becoming a successful investor.

I put in minimal effort and even I sold close to 10k worth of names so I’d say it’s still very much a viable investment option.

 

[eyedomainous]

Personally, I think the premise is wrong.
The availability of names did not drive domain sales 30 years ago.

There are many more domains not registered than registered because the simple fact that 'a name' is available is not worth reg fee.

A market's perceived need for domains drives sales.

 

[karmaco]

I don’t agree with OP. Buying average to good domains in huge quantities and selling low the likes of HugeDomains and others has proven to be a successful model. The problem is most Domainers can’t afford to replicate that.

So you have two well known avenues: huge quantity or only top quality dictionary names in smaller quantity. Both provide results.

There are off shoots of the HugeDomains model:

selling independently very low price (below 1K) good quality names to other domainers.

Selling hand regs or cheaply obtained brandables at SH BB etc below market value. This model only provides consisent success with a very big portfolio.

There are multiple ways to turn a profit in this niche but very few will get independently wealthy from it or have financial windfall which might be the best point of the OP’s take.

For 98% of us this is an unpredictable side hustle at best. It should never be considered as a replacement for a job or other income unless you have the capital and skill to maintain a huge good portfolio.

 

[dnk]

Most young people are making a lot of money using social media, crypto and apps, they are not interested in legally purchasing domains, though some fake domain ownership and get great powers, monthly government salary at the expense of the real domain investor in some countries. Paying domain renewal fees can cause great losses.

 

[DomainNature]

Domaining is a gambling type of endeavour, no need to be shy, say as it is.
Invest more than 60K = profit 2K until today, let's hope for better results.
Many end users understand that the value of domains is it's hand reg and renewal fee, only some serious companies understand what they buy and need, they not have time for calculations when their biz depends on a great domain.

 

[manuelbroker89]

Yes especially post .com bubble (1998- 2017),
the top notch sale domain basically , all are long term holder with well-oiled portofolio..

ext .com are basically the "trademark" of TLD industry..

I can understand the pesimissm , but there's new extension boom comming like .xyz, .ai, .io

but the renewal price are so coking unlike .com

so Flipping from bin or auction for .com asset are realistic way to gain profit , if you have well access as brokerage agency and platform not as solopreneur (especially the novice like me)


it's all about observant the situation of market.
and waiting is the name of the game.

The "Big Dog of TLD industry" always have advantage than the new comer.

as example maybe in 1998, .com are free-to-registered asset, nearly free of charge but now the inflation and oversaturated market , cut throat competition industry are so greed state.


I can understand the thread starter point of perspective.


it's all about early catcher game.

 

[Damand]

Most young people are making a lot of money using social media, crypto and apps, they are not interested in legally purchasing domains, though some fake domain ownership and get great powers, monthly government salary at the expense of the real domain investor in some countries. Paying domain renewal fees can cause great losses.

Social media? If you talk about people who turned their Instagram and Facebook accounts into online stores, they make some money, but I'm sure it can work as a side hustle, not like a full-time job.
About those bloggers? Most of them must brag about having a careless life, but in reality, all they do is just lie. I have 3 so-called beauty bloggers in my neighborhood, and they just barely make the ends meet.

 

[Adrigan]

Some of what I was going to write has already been written by others, so I won’t repeat those aspects.

I could be regarded as one of those who bought domains 25-30 years ago (as I write this, just over 25 years have passed since I got onto the web proper) which was in the times of squawking modems, deep and heavy monitors (if you wanted a large colour one) and getting excited about seeing a photo of a nude woman on the screen, completed one swow line at a time, so it would take several minutes to appear in full.
If your baud rate was really slow, best to go have something to eat and come back later.

What the OP is saying is a person opinion/complaint. I don’t know if they are unhappy, or if they have lost money, or they “wish they were around when domain names were not seen as valuable”.
But this is true of all new things.

I remember my employer introducing email to us in 1997 and giving us training on how to use it and later, how to access the web generally (with all those horribly designed web pages in the 1990s and into the early 2000s). I didn’t give it all much notice or importance at the time because I didn’t know anyone with this new email thingy and everyone I needed to communicate with was on the same floor or below in the office, so I would just walk over to them or call them. Why sit there and type out all that I wanted to say, was my thought? Plus, phone shopping was working fine at the time, so using the web to buy something or to ask questions/get info wasn’t a thought either. The web and web pages were usually slow and clunky too, with tons of ads taking their sweet ass time to load.

Why tell you all this?

Because as some people reading this thread (and perhaps the OP too) were around in those times, but they may have forgotten how bad/slow/difficult/expensive the internet was like in those early years, and how some people thought it was a fad. For those reading this who are in their 20s to early 30s, you perhaps can’t understand this and so you probably can’t understand what making investment decisions on this new thing was actually like. I also remember how VR was going to change the world but it hasn’t and I don’t think it ever will, as it is currently offered (the general population are not going to strap some kind of glasses or screen over their eyes in order to try to experience something. Never going to happen (unless we start "living" like the people do in the film Virtual Revolution).

Does anyone remember all the mania, excitement and hype over any business that had a name starting with ‘e” or “e-“? Share prices for these businesses were going through the roof in the dotcom bubble. Those businesses are all dead now, with ebay and eharmony being the only ones I think are still going.

So early investors in anything face a huge risk, especially when investing in a whole new market/paradigm, with no real way of knowing what the future holds. Its mostly guesswork, gut feel and the like. Lots of people have lost money and some have lost their lives by gambling on the wrong area, business or invention. Yes, gambling, because that is almost entirely what investing in unknown ventures is.

The OP says that 25 years ago, domains were in abundance. Well, there were lots of names available when I started to get into this area (Feb 1998), but all the obvious ones were all taken by that point.
Real words were almost all taken, as were their plurals and so what you had to do is come up with names that were not brands which already existed nor real words, but names that could be made into a brand or business. Google is one such example, even though the real word is spelled differently. Twitter is another.There are many others of course.

At that time, I did not consider putting two words together to create a name, nor of inventing words that meant nothing but sounded good (those things came much later). Such domains would have ben available, but you had to think of that idea beforehand, which I did not until 1-2 years later.

One area I thought might take off is people using the web to post their career info on (resumes, samples of work, photos, video clips) as well as families who wanted to showcase their lives. So I registered many firstnamelastname names and some family names too. That hasn’t panned out as I thought it would although a few personal names I created did sell (in the $000’s) and which more than paid for all those that didn’t plus the annual renewal fees. I subsequently let 95% of personal names go.

If a person doesn’t have the creativity, or intelligence or the drive to pursue an opportunity, they won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunity, even if the opportunity is staring at them in the face. Plus, a person has to be able to recognise that an opportunity is an opportunity, first and foremost.

As internet use grew and grew, the value of domain names then began to rise but not before the number of people using it reached a certain point. The OP omits that aspect in his post, as indeed omits many other elements that are relevant and that played a role in how the domain name market/world exists as it does now.

The OP also claims that only domains with traffic are worth something and that the rest of worthless. I agree that there are a lot of names that are pure garbage and I see many such names put up for sale for $30-$100, etc, but I think he/she is being very simplistic as to the value of domain names. There are a great many names which have been registered but have yet to be developed. They will not have any/much traffic, but depending on the quality/usability of the name, some of those names could be worth a considerable sum. It only takes one person in the world to agree with the registrant that a name is good & valuable.

After failing to make much in the personal/family names area and also, losing a few thousand on registering generic .cn names (which were priced at $25-35 a pop for early buyers, once foreign people could register them), I stopped buying new names for several years and just held onto those I kept.

In recent years, I have begun to register names that would come into my mind, perhaps from something I would see or hear, sometimes omitting a letter or two, or switching letters around, or adding 1-2 letters, or some combo of these. I would add them to my list of name ideas, leave them for a couple of days and then go back and see if they still sounded good to me. If a name did, I would register the name after doing a few checks.

There are many examples of domain names that are in common use today that did not exist 10-15-20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, but which are not real words. Pinterest, Facebook, Bing, Sedo, GoDaddy, Groupon,, Spotify, Skype, Instacart, Door Dash, Air B n B, Zillow, and lots lots more. How did the people who came up with these names come up with them? They may have had a flash of inspiration, or they worked on names for weeks and weeks on end, or perhaps some combo of these. What they didn’t do is do nothing and then watched as others made businesses and money from their ideas, or sold their domains to those who wanted to,

The OP has made several black & white statements, but none of them are actually true. Where some people complain, or throw their hands up in frustration/despair and surrender, others ask “What can I do?”, “How can I make this work”? People with the idea, the energy and determination will be seen by others as having such and be drawn to them (like a moth to a flame). Such a person will thus often get support, tools and resources because other people want to be part of that person’s project/energy and be along for the ride. It’s much like why fans of pop stars want to touch the star, in order to somehow “get some of their magic” for themselves, that the star seems to possess.

Nobody alive now (and even babies if they could read), can tell you what will happen in the future.
For certain though, we will still be using letters and words, as we have done for thousands of years, so that aspect isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Therefore, whatever form the internet changes to, if indeed it does change, words will still be required. I suspect we may have a 2 or 3 tier internet within 10-15 years, with the top level commanding premium prices but which will be free of many of the downsides of the internet as it is now.

During the past 12-15 months, I have added over 250 names to my portfolio, which are mostly made up words that no-one has registered before and that do not have a trademark or any business connected to them. Since I started buying names in 1998, I have sold about 10 of them for a combined value of just over $70,000 (net of commissions). I had hoped for more sales but as I have said, things don't always work out the way a person imagines they will.

While the OP is spending time on forums writing frustration-based posts and arguing with people (the exact purpose of which eludes me), others are busy forming new domain names and business ideas and pursuing them. Others are buying domain names that they like and which are being offered for sale, price not being an obstacle.

I suggest to the OP to consider doing less of the former and more of the latter if he/she wants something better in this market and their life generally. The only person stopping them, is themselves, which is true of everyone.

In addition, I would like to refer to an old adage, which applies these days - The best time to invest is when there’s blood in the streets.

 

[Recons.Com]

Out of my 33500+ domains, 80% has been bought in the past 3 years (2021-2023). Another 19% bought in 2016-2020. That adds up to 99% in the past 8 years.

And I never had a single month where my revenue was less than my renewals.

So, a) no, you did not have to have started 30 years ago to be making money with domains b) no, it is not "gambling type of endeavour", as someone described it above.

Yes, there is some variability to the month to month sales or year to year sales, but it is mostly within +/- 20% range for large portfolios.

 

[Damand]

Some of what I was going to write has already been written by others, so I won’t repeat those aspects.

I could be regarded as one of those who bought domains 25-30 years ago (as I write this, just over 25 years have passed since I got onto the web proper) which was in the times of squawking modems, deep and heavy monitors (if you wanted a large colour one) and getting excited about seeing a photo of a nude woman on the screen, completed one swow line at a time, so it would take several minutes to appear in full.
If your baud rate was really slow, best to go have something to eat and come back later.

What the OP is saying is a person opinion/complaint. I don’t know if they are unhappy, or if they have lost money, or they “wish they were around when domain names were not seen as valuable”.
But this is true of all new things.

I remember my employer introducing email to us in 1997 and giving us training on how to use it and later, how to access the web generally (with all those horribly designed web pages in the 1990s and into the early 2000s). I didn’t give it all much notice or importance at the time because I didn’t know anyone with this new email thingy and everyone I needed to communicate with was on the same floor or below in the office, so I would just walk over to them or call them. Why sit there and type out all that I wanted to say, was my thought? Plus, phone shopping was working fine at the time, so using the web to buy something or to ask questions/get info wasn’t a thought either. The web and web pages were usually slow and clunky too, with tons of ads taking their sweet ass time to load.

Why tell you all this?

Because as some people reading this thread (and perhaps the OP too) were around in those times, but they may have forgotten how bad/slow/difficult/expensive the internet was like in those early years, and how some people thought it was a fad. For those reading this who are in their 20s to early 30s, you perhaps can’t understand this and so you probably can’t understand what making investment decisions on this new thing was actually like. I also remember how VR was going to change the world but it hasn’t and I don’t think it ever will, as it is currently offered (the general population are not going to strap some kind of glasses or screen over their eyes in order to try to experience something. Never going to happen (unless we start "living" like the people do in the film Virtual Revolution).

Does anyone remember all the mania, excitement and hype over any business that had a name starting with ‘e” or “e-“? Share prices for these businesses were going through the roof in the dotcom bubble. Those businesses are all dead now, with ebay and eharmony being the only ones I think are still going.

So early investors in anything face a huge risk, especially when investing in a whole new market/paradigm, with no real way of knowing what the future holds. Its mostly guesswork, gut feel and the like. Lots of people have lost money and some have lost their lives by gambling on the wrong area, business or invention. Yes, gambling, because that is almost entirely what investing in unknown ventures is.

The OP says that 25 years ago, domains were in abundance. Well, there were lots of names available when I started to get into this area (Feb 1998), but all the obvious ones were all taken by that point.
Real words were almost all taken, as were their plurals and so what you had to do is come up with names that were not brands which already existed nor real words, but names that could be made into a brand or business. Google is one such example, even though the real word is spelled differently. Twitter is another.There are many others of course.

At that time, I did not consider putting two words together to create a name, nor of inventing words that meant nothing but sounded good (those things came much later). Such domains would have ben available, but you had to think of that idea beforehand, which I did not until 1-2 years later.

One area I thought might take off is people using the web to post their career info on (resumes, samples of work, photos, video clips) as well as families who wanted to showcase their lives. So I registered many firstnamelastname names and some family names too. That hasn’t panned out as I thought it would although a few personal names I created did sell (in the $000’s) and which more than paid for all those that didn’t plus the annual renewal fees. I subsequently let 95% of personal names go.

If a person doesn’t have the creativity, or intelligence or the drive to pursue an opportunity, they won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunity, even if the opportunity is staring at them in the face. Plus, a person has to be able to recognise that an opportunity is an opportunity, first and foremost.

As internet use grew and grew, the value of domain names then began to rise but not before the number of people using it reached a certain point. The OP omits that aspect in his post, as indeed omits many other elements that are relevant and that played a role in how the domain name market/world exists as it does now.

The OP also claims that only domains with traffic are worth something and that the rest of worthless. I agree that there are a lot of names that are pure garbage and I see many such names put up for sale for $30-$100, etc, but I think he/she is being very simplistic as to the value of domain names. There are a great many names which have been registered but have yet to be developed. They will not have any/much traffic, but depending on the quality/usability of the name, some of those names could be worth a considerable sum. It only takes one person in the world to agree with the registrant that a name is good & valuable.

After failing to make much in the personal/family names area and also, losing a few thousand on registering generic .cn names (which were priced at $25-35 a pop for early buyers, once foreign people could register them), I stopped buying new names for several years and just held onto those I kept.

In recent years, I have begun to register names that would come into my mind, perhaps from something I would see or hear, sometimes omitting a letter or two, or switching letters around, or adding 1-2 letters, or some combo of these. I would add them to my list of name ideas, leave them for a couple of days and then go back and see if they still sounded good to me. If a name did, I would register the name after doing a few checks.

There are many examples of domain names that are in common use today that did not exist 10-15-20 years ago, or even 5 years ago, but which are not real words. Pinterest, Facebook, Bing, Sedo, GoDaddy, Groupon,, Spotify, Skype, Instacart, Door Dash, Air B n B, Zillow, and lots lots more. How did the people who came up with these names come up with them? They may have had a flash of inspiration, or they worked on names for weeks and weeks on end, or perhaps some combo of these. What they didn’t do is do nothing and then watched as others made businesses and money from their ideas, or sold their domains to those who wanted to,

The OP has made several black & white statements, but none of them are actually true. Where some people complain, or throw their hands up in frustration/despair and surrender, others ask “What can I do?”, “How can I make this work”? People with the idea, the energy and determination will be seen by others as having such and be drawn to them (like a moth to a flame). Such a person will thus often get support, tools and resources because other people want to be part of that person’s project/energy and be along for the ride. It’s much like why fans of pop stars want to touch the star, in order to somehow “get some of their magic” for themselves, that the star seems to possess.

Nobody alive now (and even babies if they could read), can tell you what will happen in the future.
For certain though, we will still be using letters and words, as we have done for thousands of years, so that aspect isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Therefore, whatever form the internet changes to, if indeed it does change, words will still be required. I suspect we may have a 2 or 3 tier internet within 10-15 years, with the top level commanding premium prices but which will be free of many of the downsides of the internet as it is now.

During the past 12-15 months, I have added over 250 names to my portfolio, which are mostly made up words that no-one has registered before and that do not have a trademark or any business connected to them. Since I started buying names in 1998, I have sold about 10 of them for a combined value of just over $70,000 (net of commissions). I had hoped for more sales but as I have said, things don't always work out the way a person imagines they will.

While the OP is spending time on forums writing frustration-based posts and arguing with people (the exact purpose of which eludes me), others are busy forming new domain names and business ideas and pursuing them. Others are buying domain names that they like and which are being offered for sale, price not being an obstacle.

I suggest to the OP to consider doing less of the former and more of the latter if he/she wants something better in this market and their life generally. The only person stopping them, is themselves, which is true of everyone.

In addition, I would like to refer to an old adage, which applies these days - The best time to invest is when there’s blood in the streets.

You have some good points, especially of how all this began.
Domains have changed a lot, and now the idea of the internet is different compared to what people had 30 years ago.