My first year as a domain investor is around the corner

[rvo]

Hola gente,

I just wanted to share a few things I've learned in my first year as a domain investor. I started reading NamePros on December 2015.

I remember I found the forum after searching the history behind Christian Chena's success as a domain investor. For those of you who don't know him, he's considered one of the best hispanic domain investors, having sold premium domain names like Juegos.com and Viajes.com for 7 figures, and he's from Paraguay, like myself.

So, almost a year later I can say that domain name investing is not easy, but that's OK, because it wouldn't be so rewarding otherwise and right know, for me, domain investing is 24 hours inside my head. I'm hooked.

If you're a newbie starting out I'll say what 99.5% of the old timers say: read this forum inside out first, resist the urge to hand register any domains in your first months, read, read, read and then read some more, because all of this advice is true. I've lived it.

Another thing that helped me tremendously is questioning and testing everything by myself.

For example, I remember when I first learned about parking I knew there were several parking companies, and I wanted to test my domains in all of them to see how they performed.

I used to do this manually, parking the name a month on each provider and then exporting the stats and manually comparing them.

Imagine doing that for 300 domains. That in itself was a full-time job, so that's when I discovered Above.com and I learned that they can automate that stuff. But the point here is that I had to hang in there to discover it, I had to look for answers, the same way I looked for answers when I didn't get any inquiries for months, or when I was not getting responses in my outbound marketing or when greed made me lose money.

I'd like to thank all of you guys, and the community in general for being supportive, engaging and awesome. Domaining would not be the same if NamePros didn't exist, so here's hoping for a great 2017 for everyone on here.

Salud,
Rodrigo.

 

[TERADOMAIN]

Thanks for sharing your story with all of Namepros friends. Best of Luck for future my friend.

 

[Pierre Barnard]

Good share and story. Same as you, I like to test everything myself and not listen to many "opinions",

 

[joro001]

Thanks for sharing OP.

It's funny I used to be in touch with Christian Chena by email and skype as I was looking to buy domains/sites in the gaming niche. Unfortunately he was quoting mid 5 figures I think which at that time was too much for me to pay for. Now I decided to check and see he has sold these names/sites on to someone else which hurts lol. I never realised he was a successful domainer and in truth I think he's long ago moved into other areas outside of domaining.

Back to the OP it is a different market to when he started out. It is now highly competitive with every decent name selling at auction for serious money and I would venture to suggest based on experience the sort of price domainers are paying are often what end users will go up to max so it's incredibly hard to make real ROI especially factoring in time and effort not just profit. Those that own real premium one word .coms and short domain are set up and in a solid position but 99% of others are up against it to make real money.

This is coming from someone who has had my best year ever in domains part time and have done serious money in sales, but it is not easy to make it starting out now especially with new GTLD's flooding the market with a ton of alternatives. For most the time, money, renewals and effort required to make it is best spent elsewhere outside of domaining IMO. Unlikely to be a popular view here but it's certainly not easy.

Anyway good luck!

 

[Michelle]

Thanks for sharing I wish you more success in 2017

 

[ksusha64]

Welcome to NP!

 

[Cdomains]

Thanks for sharing your experience as a new investor and good luck to you in your second year!

 

[rvo]

Thanks for sharing OP.

It's funny I used to be in touch with Christian Chena by email and skype as I was looking to buy domains/sites in the gaming niche. Unfortunately he was quoting mid 5 figures I think which at that time was too much for me to pay for. Now I decided to check and see he has sold these names/sites on to someone else which hurts lol. I never realised he was a successful domainer and in truth I think he's long ago moved into other areas outside of domaining.

Yeah, he sold his premium domains and bought a television channel in Paraguay. I don't know why though, if I owned the gem that Juegos.com is I'd develop it and live off that income alone. That domain is a huge money making asset.

Back to the OP it is a different market to when he started out. It is now highly competitive with every decent name selling at auction for serious money and I would venture to suggest based on experience the sort of price domainers are paying are often what end users will go up to max so it's incredibly hard to make real ROI especially factoring in time and effort not just profit. Those that own real premium one word .coms and short domain are set up and in a solid position but 99% of others are up against it to make real money.

This is coming from someone who has had my best year ever in domains part time and have done serious money in sales, but it is not easy to make it starting out now especially with new GTLD's flooding the market with a ton of alternatives. For most the time, money, renewals and effort required to make it is best spent elsewhere outside of domaining IMO. Unlikely to be a popular view here but it's certainly not easy.

Anyway good luck!

I agree. Domaining is not the same now. gTLDs are not really my cup of tea, I'm starting to venture into ccTLDs now (in just a few countries) and dropping pretty much 99% of my gTLDs.

Thanks for sharing.

Good luck to you too!

 

[NameAgency]

Viajes.com for 7 figures

I'm brokering this one now. Not for 7 figures tough.

 

[Templr]

Congrats on your first year Rodrigo, here's to your future