Tell me about your worst domaining mistake... I just lost a domain I paid $600 for

[NameOffice.]

I bought a .com domain last year in a bidding war at Snapnames and won it for $600. During this mornings scrub of dropping domains I saw to my dismay this domain in the list. After some research I realized that I had allowed it expire from an obscure registrar, from where it was caught last year. I attempted to get it back with no luck. Guess I'll be taking a $600 loss on that one.

 

[Chris Wright]

That really sucks.

The only good thing is, you can write it off from your income.
It's like you sold the name for the same price you bought it for.

 

[leftfielder]

Oh, the irony...

Obscure registrar...had to have a chuckle with that one. I've done this more times than I'd like. I'm just curious why you let a $600 domain sit for a year?

 

[NameOffice.]

Obscure registrar...had to have a chuckle with that one. I've done this more times than I'd like. I'm just curious why you let a $600 domain sit for a year?

yeah obscure register, it's called ADomainOfYourOwn... guess it's just one of SnapNames working registrars to snap up dropping names. Also I hold tons of names over many years, some I paid thousands for. Do you always sell all of your names within a year?

 

[Bannen]

Don't know if it qualifies as a mistake; maybe just not looking ahead smartly enough...
But my quickest domain 'devaluation' was probably my biggest mistake (fortunately I don't have any over the top horror stories, this is the best one you'll get from me).
Won PinkDigitalCamera dot com a couple years back on Sedo auction for just over $1K. Minisites were hot, and this term got about 64K exact monthly searches - a stellar domain for a minisite or store. Literally a couple months later googs changed their keyword tool somehow and it altered all exact search results... this term according to their tool - and unfortunately emd's back then were valued almost entirely on their monthly searches - plummeted to about 4000 exact searches per month. A couple months more it was 2000... then 1000... now it's less than 800 monthly searches, minisites are mostly dead, Adsense has plummeted for everyone, and this kind of exact match domain is practically worthless. This has happened to a lot of people with 'previously-great' exact match domains. The extensions for this term used to be regged across the board, now they're almost all available and I'd be lucky to get 50 or 100 bucks for the domain, if anything.

There. Not too bad, but that's my 'worst' story. Few other minor mistakes and losses but no big hell