Report of My 1st year Domain Business

[HcDomains]

I came into the business from last Aug, learned a lot during one year. From a green hand of domaining, now I feel much confident to evaluate the potential of certain domains, and how to make bargins, biddings.. etc

Here are some memorable ponits for my 1st year domain business:
- My 1st "BIG" sale: PrettyDating.com sold at $590 on last Sept.
- My biggest sales till today: OnlineSlots.org sold at $2500 on this May

- To start my business, I invest USD4000 as my initiate funds ($1750 to update my Enom reseller account, others buy domains on after market), and I re-invest all money get back from my sales,

- I have sold 140 domains in the past year, which cost my $6K+ and total amount I got back is $16K+, so the average ROI is about 2.6 times

- Currently I have a portfolio of 256 domains, which I think the market value of my portfolio is about $20 - 25K

- I have dropped 18 domains (which costed about $280), and many another 50 names from my exsiting portfolio would be dropped without offers

- 75% of my domains are bought from dropped names market. New registration mainly for .Mobi and .TV


I am satisfied with my 1st year domaing perfomance though I don't get big money from it, and I am sure that things would be better in my 2nd year :music:

Hope you would share your experience here

 

[hey.co.uk]

Great insight to a new domainer - do you think the $10,000 profit is a good return for the time you put in?

 

[AussieDomainer]

You have done very well I think. I didn't have any big sales in my first year and was in the red (although I only had a budget of a few dollars here, a few dollars there to invest). Patience has been the major lesson for me with my domain investing. I have started to see a few good sales in my second year and am starting to make profits to reinvest in other names.

I look forward to the times ahead as I now have a portfolio of around 600-700 names and am confident that many will sell for a nice profit. Just gotta keep patient (and try to manage the renewal costs in the mean time)

 

[frank_view2008]

Nice job.

I started domaining business April 2006(pre-register .mobi domains), and got my first domain on September 2006. I have learned a lot in the year.

I totally invested about $15,000, have a portfilio of about 600 .mobi domains.

I have sold invest.mobi for $22,500, and another sale for $7,500 is pending(may finish early next week).

Some of my names have been offered $xxxx(check out my signature).

 

[Smiler]

Wow great work. I also think that you did really well in your first year. Did you registered any useless domains when you started?

 

[djmadfx]

Congrats on your first year. I'm a little over 30 days into domaining myself. I love the facts and figures. It's always nice to see stuff like this. It keeps me motivated.

 

[HcDomains]

Thanks for the warmly words from all of you!

do you think the $10,000 profit is a good return for the time you put in?

Frankly, not so good for the time I spend (I spend average 5 hours per day on checking expiring list, posting and learning). But since It is my 1st year, I am happy with myself

Did you registered any useless domains when you started?

Yes, I do bought some dead dog names. There are 18 domains have dropped already and more in near future... Most of them are bought / registered in the 1st half year of my domain business

 

[onewordonly]

good luck for your second year, I think you have done well considering you learn't as well in this time, in a normal business world you would have to spend several thousand in education & a few years training.

 

[Nattydomain]

Good job! I started this year (last day in Jan) and so far biggest domain sold is $1250 and also pending small adult portfolio for $1800.

I would like however some sort of method to caculate all the and each domain I buy in the future like cost...sold....where reg...exp dte..etc..I know i can type all this in excel but im an excel fool

Any good ideas on keeping stats and good solid records for your domains?

 

[Domainate.com]

Sounds like a good first year...you definitely hit the ground running. I didn't make a sale til month 9 of my first year, but back then I did everything on my own and didn't come to places like this and learn some things first, which would have been the wise thing to do.

If you ever feel like you need to cut back the time, or if other commitments force it (what happened to me), that's when you may want to consider starting to move up the ladder and start buying on the secondary market. I used to do what you do and granted back then I wasn't on NP or DNF unfortunately, thus only getting periodic good sales vs. lots of decent sales like you, it wound up getting to be too much work for not enough gain, and I've since mostly moved to getting names on the secondary market. I still feel that from an ROI standpoint, expired names and perhaps some dropcatching is the way to go, but the less names you have to deal with, the less work you'll have. I had been so busy over the last few months with other commitments that in that time, I've had maybe 4 or 5 sales threads here and DNF, all resulting in very few sales, and yet I managed to get a nice .info sale on Sedo, another sale recently of one of my traffic names, and now this Roundtable auction...with minimal time spent, I've done a lot better than I would have imagined back when I was spending 3-5 hours a day at this. With premium names, every single sale makes a huge difference. I made only 40% on that .info sale, but that 40% was $800, and overall it freed up $2,800 for me - enough to pay the mortgage and bills for a month and have some spending money.

Anyways, you're good at what you do, getting decent ROI on those expireds and going for quantity of sales and high turnover, so if you still have the time, I'd stick with what you're doing. Still, it's something to think about, even if just splashing a little bit of premium into your portfolio to cut back SOME of the time you have to spend.

 

[HcDomains]

To Nattydomain,
I also use Excel to mamage my portfolio. I think it is even easier than any "Domain Management Scripts" I can find. Just put all features you like to record in the colums and sort it

To Steve,
Really thanks for your sharing experience. As you suggested, I think that it is the time to "move up the ladder and start buying on the secondary market". I can not spend 3-5 hours per day on this business because of I have a busy dat time job, and spend all my rest time in domaing makes me too tired. I believe your strategy would help me move

Thx!

Julian