poll Making money out of domaining today compared with 2007?

[Fancy.domains]

A poll for you guys who have been doing is this for (more than) a decade:

How easy, or hard, is it to make domaining profitable today, compared with 2007, ten years ago?

 

[Dave]

Much much harder. Back then there were still tens of thousands of unregistered EMD domains and using the correct tools like overture and such one could find a lot of EMD domains with 10,000+ search volume still available to register for $8 and flip them the same week for hundreds if not low thousands. It was still an absolute goldmine back then. Either flip them or develop a minisite on them with adsense or affiliate products.

 

[ulasbbtr]

I have slightly different motto: work smarter and work harder. 2027 will be much harder than today and I don't want to look back and feel sorry for missing opportunities. Google and GTLDs etc. there will be always challenges, evils etc. but there will be always opportunities. No one predicted the rush for number domains before the hype had happened.

What I project about domains is that if there is such a crazy demand for a set of 0s and 1s as in the cryptocurrencies, there should be more demand for domain names. Wait and see.

 

[Commerce]

I guess ultimately it depends upon what you are trying to market and sell. There are fewer terrific domain names available out there. That said, a great domain is still a great domain and they still will sell for reasonable values.

Every week you'll see Ron Jackson doing a yeoman's job reporting them. While some individual weeks are clearly not as great as others, YTD this year features sales of 4 domains above 1 million dollars USD and many in the 6 figure range.

 

[Smiles76]

The vast majority of domains are sold between domainers not end users. That works as long as there is a constant flux of new domainers to sale to. Problem is, that model has artificially driven up prices to such a level that many are now stuck with overpriced domains end-users have no interest in buying.

 

[tonyk2000]

A few differences:

- less amateur domainers in 2007. Less activity from low GDP countries. Due to whatever reasons, newcomers with little or no experience in ecommerce in general and domaining in particular are coming in and actively, looking for quick $$$ and/or losing their initial investments pretty fast, which does not make the industry any better (and does not benefit these newcomers in a long run).

- no hugedomains.com (weren't they handregging tons of .nets and/or 2word coms at that time?)

- escrow.com was de-facto standard for domain aftermarket transactions, and it was usable

- when a crisis was announced in 2008, due to various reasons so many good domains were dropping and it was easier to acquire them

- parking was paying more, yahoo parking feeds were somewhat usable so ggl has at least some competition. Now they have no competition.

- Known domainer-servicing companies were not yet acquired and so were good and usable (DomainSponsor, Moniker... just to name a few)

- (not a business-related difference) Danica Patrick was a GoDaddy face Which is no more the case, and I personally do not like this change. Switching to dancing Jean-Claude Van Damme or some unknown guy advertising high quality dental services in his clinic was not the best decision imho

 

[Fancy.domains]

Still learning the ropes here after joining late last year. Which websites do you use to search the dropped domains?

Mainly Dropcatch.com and Dynadot.

 

[AndyM]

My personal opinion, If your coming into this industry today I think you need to have some serious good cash behind you, not just a couple hundred dollars. This way you can buy some liquid names and/or quality one and two word .coms. This way you'll always have domains that are desirable even among other domainers.

 

[dnk]

In 2017, the corruption, nepotism and interference of government officials, corporates is far more in the internet sector, so it is more difficult to make money compared to 2007. Corrupt NTRO, government employees in India are blocking payment in 2017 for some domain investors often with their complete lies , in 2007, there was almost no harassment in India.

 

[BaileyUK]

Much easier 10 years ago. Businesses were still looking to establish their own web presence. also a good-eye for 'decent' future technology domains reaped rewards back then. Drop catchers and internal holding of expired tld's (ie godaddy) was hardly in the frame. None of this dot anything/extension you can think of rubbish. and from a UK perspective - no threat from Nominets own greed by it's scheduled release of .UK (to undermine the always established .CO.UK)

 

[Mister Funsky]

Google is the #1 reason why it's harder today, they have a monopoly on search, which is bad for everybody.

Well said...it is not our friend...once a new top dog search engine comes to power I am hoping things get back on even ground again.

 

[baseballworld]

Much harder. Seems the newer trend is rebates and apps that pay people to do stuff. Something new needs to come along a new style of making the money.