This train has probably left. Domaining... as in starting right now from scratch.

[twiki]

I think it's too late for someone to start domaining these days.

( Yeah, I know a few might eventually succeed - but that'll be quite rare, I think. )

I mean, what are the odds now for someone who has no skills but just the will to try it?

I started domaining just a few years ago. But then, it was still the real bonanza. Whatever you had, it sold. Price high, price low, nevertheless it sold. That's how I made it into profit in my third year, gradually improving.

Auctions were cheap, domains were cheaper, drops were full of juice. Closeouts, good stuff still falling through the net for us to grab.

Not anymore. 2022 came and passed.

Everything is overpriced now, people probably holding stuff waiting for better times OR for future plans, who knows. And yeah it's clear that you can't make a living when buying domains retail price from the market. You might recoup the monies in a few years, who knows, but it's too risky. And you'll have the money locked in it. And unless you have the $ to buy few high-value names, you are going to also burn money in renewals.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. This isn't about me. I'm alright, and at least in portfolio quality I'm definitely seeing betterment. And yeah, it's also not about the top investors who are still rolling cash although the numbers have diminished a little lately.

It's about someone new, willing to take the plunge and start today. I really don't see it to happen. The sales squeeze means that growing portfolio in the first place from $500 and some beginners luck ain't going to work anymore.

You need a serious budget to start with. And some itch to see it all spent soon...? And you need to make that budget triple at least; as for the next few years you're going to burn through it like there's no tomorrow. And after those years, maybe then, you're going to finally see the end of the tunnel that is the current market and if you have improved enough, then maybe, just maybe you'll see some return on all this hard work, money spent and risk taken.

I look at these guys and dunno if I should encourage them or tell them what they are getting into, and what are the odds.

Your thoughts?

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I think there’s a trend going on possibly, a

owning and having portfolio value feels nice in domains, but if there isn’t any liquidity and no one wants to buy it for the price it’s valued at it’s not really worth that much

I bought 5-6 domains in the last week which is the first attempt at this, looked good on GoDaddy appraisal
Later found out a few days ago that I was reading the seo value wrong so the 5-6 domains were actually worth alot less. Had good dr and ur but wasn’t ranking for any keywords and the backlinks weren’t really relevant more just seo sites. A few sites backlinks were entirely a different language then English which I feel like will make ranking for English keywords possibly difficult? Still going through a learning curve

Pretty much out those down to a loss apart from building a few out and hoping the dr ur by itself will rank for seo keywords

FieldCaster....if you're waiting for buyers to come to you, you shouldn't be in this business. Remember what I just said about a "can do" attitude and being "creative"? Well i haven't registered them yet but I plan to as soon as I finish keying my response:

CanDoDomains.com
and
CanDoWebsites.com

ironically these two domains happen to be available to "hand reg" and a little research tells me they were owned by a domainer not unlike yourself and most NamePro members who couldn't sell these names if they were given to them.

Regardless....it would be a crime for these domains to go undeveloped or unsold just because some greedy bastard can't see the forest for the trees.

Remember this; "It Ain't Over Til It's Over"

 

[FieldCaster07]

FieldCaster....if you're waiting for buyers to come to you, you shouldn't be in this business. Remember what I just said about a "can do" attitude and being "creative"? Well i haven't registered them yet but I plan to as soon as I finish keying my response:

CanDoDomains.com
and
CanDoWebsites.com

ironically these two domains happen to be available to "hand reg" and a little research tells me they were owned by a domainer not unlike yourself and most NamePro members who couldn't sell these names if they were given to them.

Regardless....it would be a crime for these domains to go undeveloped or unsold just because some greedy bastard can't see the forest for the trees.

Remember this; "It Ain't Over Til It's Over"

How exactly do you go about finding these buyers?
Do you just cold email people with similar domains that havn’t put privacy on their hosting and registar?

Am I little confused here, thought people were using ahrefs and software similar to find good domains, if it’s good and you have it for sale for a good price people should possibly buy it?

High dr high ur and also ranked keywords and all these are relevant to the related niche seems like they sell well, everytime I find one I want to buy like this they go for $500+ with people already bidding..

 

[ThatNameGuy]

How exactly do you go about finding these buyers?
Do you just cold email people with similar domains that havn’t put privacy on their hosting and registar?

Am I little confused here, thought people were using ahrefs and software similar to find good domains, if it’s good and you have it for sale for a good price people should possibly buy it?

High dr high ur and also ranked keywords and all these are relevant to the related niche seems like they sell well, everytime I find one I want to buy like this they go for $500+ with people already bidding..

With most domains I buy/hand reg i have an idea how they can be developed into a business. Take the domains I just registered. For;

CanDoDomains.com - what a great domain for a brokerage, and I may in fact use it for one of mine to market names like CanDoDeals.com which is also available to hand register.

or

CanDoWebsites.com - any idea how many people in the website business FieldCaster? ......Thousands You asked "how exactly do you go about finding these buyers?" While I haven't started researching it yet, there are hundreds of website developers just in my city of Virginia Beach, Virginia (population 460,000) alone. And while I was keying/typing this I had an epiphany where some developers might actually barter web services for use of my domain......any idea what I'm talking about?

As you can see I'm not your typical domainer, nor do I care to be. Just remember, it's a cold day in hell before a buyer will find your domains, but with a little creativity and a "can do" attitude you'll find a buyer.

 

[lovely4ever]

Regardless....it would be a crime for these domains to go undeveloped or unsold just because some greedy bastard can't see the forest for the trees.

Remember this; "It Ain't Over Til It's Over"

I think you are living in the desert and you cant see no forest no trees . ! lol

.

 

[FieldCaster07]

With most domains I buy/hand reg i have an idea how they can be developed into a business. Take the domains I just registered. For;

CanDoDomains.com - what a great domain for a brokerage, and I may in fact use it for one of mine to market names like CanDoDeals.com which is also available to hand register.

or

CanDoWebsites.com - any idea how many people in the website business FieldCaster? ......Thousands You asked "how exactly do you go about finding these buyers?" While I haven't started researching it yet, there are hundreds of website developers just in my city of Virginia Beach, Virginia (population 460,000) alone. And while I was keying/typing this I had an epiphany where some developers might actually barter web services for use of my domain......any idea what I'm talking about?

As you can see I'm not your typical domainer, nor do I care to be. Just remember, it's a cold day in hell before a buyer will find your domains, but with a little creativity and a "can do" attitude you'll find a buyer.

Ok, I'm a little confused now. What you're saying makes sense but putting it in practice and making a business out of it seems like a tough road. How is the results going for the hand registered domains and selling them? have you tried getting domains with DR UR and also keywords ranked and tried to sell those aswell and it didn't work?


I'm assuming you're an SEO guy who's going to do the backlink profiles and rank for keywords ect, because I checked both of those sites and they are blank on ahrefs. 0 DR 0 UR 0 Keywords

You're going to manually change that somehow? (You could be PBN guy? definatly those guys on this forum)

But to me this is just confusing, I'm unsure if you're talking from your own experience and results or you are just starting an idea that sounds solid. I just can't see someone paying for just a name when they could just register a similar name or use a thesaurus and save the money, different story if you have their business name as a domain and trying to sell it to them

I honestly think its the SEO value over the name that is valuable. Names like sell.com or something like that fair enough. keywords that whole industries sit on like car insurance ect but other names I think they'd just get something else, SEO value takes time effort and skill to build which makes sense that its valuable

 

[FastidiousCat]

The train has left the station but just wait for it to slow as it goes around a curve and jump into a car with the rest of us hobos!

Seriously, it's hard going but there is money to be made. I'm still green (and still haven't turned a profit overall) but I'm really starting to appreciate that it's mostly in the pricing. If you're going to sell domains for thousands of dollars, you may as well ask for tens of thousands of dollars because it's unlikely that you're going to sell the domain. Look for killer deals on decent domains and ask for tens or, if they're very good, hundreds of dollars when you resell them.

 

[bmugford]

How exactly do you go about finding these buyers?
Do you just cold email people with similar domains that havn’t put privacy on their hosting and registar?

You should really only listen to people who actually sell domains on a consistent basis.

@ThatNameGuy has not really sold that many domains. He mainly just talks about what he is going to do.
We are still waiting on those big ideas to happen.

He is wrong with this statement -

FieldCaster....if you're waiting for buyers to come to you, you shouldn't be in this business.

The vast majority of domain sales are inbound sales, not outbound sales.

I have been in the field for 15+ years now with the same business model.
I buy quality domains and passively sell them.

I don't do outbound sales.

The average end user sell-through rate is usually around 1% - 2%.

This assumes domains are of decent quality, priced in a reasonable range, and listed on popular venues.
This model works. It has worked year after year.

@ThatNameGuy needs to re-invent the wheel for his model of proactively selling .link or other oddball extensions to work.

Brad

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Ok, I'm a little confused now. What you're saying makes sense but putting it in practice and making a business out of it seems like a tough road. How is the results going for the hand registered domains and selling them? have you tried getting domains with DR UR and also keywords ranked and tried to sell those aswell and it didn't work?


I'm assuming you're an SEO guy who's going to do the backlink profiles and rank for keywords ect, because I checked both of those sites and they are blank on ahrefs. 0 DR 0 UR 0 Keywords

You're going to manually change that somehow? (You could be PBN guy? definatly those guys on this forum)

But to me this is just confusing, I'm unsure if you're talking from your own experience and results or you are just starting an idea that sounds solid. I just can't see someone paying for just a name when they could just register a similar name or use a thesaurus and save the money, different story if you have their business name as a domain and trying to sell it to them

I honestly think its the SEO value over the name that is valuable. Names like sell.com or something like that fair enough. keywords that whole industries sit on like car insurance ect but other names I think they'd just get something else, SEO value takes time effort and skill to build which makes sense that its valuable

"What you're saying makes sense but putting it into practice and making a business out of it seems like a tough road" FieldCaster, for 50 years now I've been starting, operating and oh yes NAMING businesses. Naming a business is actually the easy part.

"I'm assuming you're an SEO guy"......lol, i barely know what SEO stands for however I fancy myself somewhat of a "word guy" and do know about things like "keywords". btw, did you know "link" is a "keyword", and I'm currently negotiating with someone about the domain Bicycle.link.

Honestly, i don't know what the acronyms "ahrefs", "DR" or "UR" stand for, and I bet 80% of the NP members following this thread don't know either. However, they do know the words "domains" and "websites", and the idiom "CanDo" is a positive energy force.

Finally, even Verisign has told us that the "secondary market" of the domain industry is nothing more than a big shell game much like fake news. Thanks for sharing your thoughts FieldCaster

 

[Lox]

Ok, I'm a little confused now. What you're saying makes sense but putting it in practice and making a business out of it seems like a tough road.....

Those domains don't work. Stick with domain names (brand) able to earn long-term income.

With most domains I buy/hand reg i have an idea how they can be developed into a business. Take the domains I just registered. For;

CanDoDomains .com - what a great ? domain for a brokerage, and I may in fact use it for one of mine to market names like CanDoDeals .com which is also available to hand register.

or

CanDoWebsites.com -

Nowadays, you will hardly sell a CTA (call to action) domains.

Regards

 

[FieldCaster07]

You should really only listen to people who actually sell domains on a consistent basis.

@ThatNameGuy has not really sold that many domains. He mainly just talks about what he is going to do.
We are still waiting on those big ideas to happen.

He is wrong with this statement -

The vast majority of domain sales are inbound sales, not outbound sales.

I have been in the field for 15+ years now with the same business model.
I buy quality domains and passively sell them.

I don't do outbound sales.

The average end user sell-through rate is usually around 1% - 2%.

This assumes domains are of decent quality, priced in a reasonable range, and listed on popular venues.
This model works. It has worked year after year.

@ThatNameGuy needs to re-invent the wheel for his model of proactively selling .link or other oddball extensions to work.

Brad

I thought the same
I think he meant well but I don't think its the best advice.

Would you say I'm right with the seo val

Those domains don't work. Stick with domain names (brand) able to earn long-term income.

Nowadays, you will hardly sell a CTA (call to action) domains.

Regards

could you explain?
Why don’t seo domains work?

Could someone give me a rundown on domains ur dr and keywords/traffic. Or you saying they just don’t rank at all?
I’m pretty sure they do..

 

[FieldCaster07]

You should really only listen to people who actually sell domains on a consistent basis.

@ThatNameGuy has not really sold that many domains. He mainly just talks about what he is going to do.
We are still waiting on those big ideas to happen.

He is wrong with this statement -

The vast majority of domain sales are inbound sales, not outbound sales.

I have been in the field for 15+ years now with the same business model.
I buy quality domains and passively sell them.

I don't do outbound sales.

The average end user sell-through rate is usually around 1% - 2%.

This assumes domains are of decent quality, priced in a reasonable range, and listed on popular venues.
This model works. It has worked year after year.

@ThatNameGuy needs to re-invent the wheel for his model of proactively selling .link or other oddball extensions to work.

Brad

Hey
Thanks for the reply, makes sense what you said

One more thing, could you confirm that seo domains sell higher easier? also do you know if buying expired domains or auctioned seo domains with good backlinks, Ur, dr and ranked keywords/traffic will help you rank for keywords once you remake the site.

I’m literally in the process of trying this so would help a lot if I got some advice from someone experienced

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

I thought the same
I think he meant well but I don't think its the best advice.

Would you say I'm right with the seo val

could you explain?
Why don’t seo domains work?

Could someone give me a rundown on domains ur dr and keywords/traffic. Or you saying they just don’t rank at all?
I’m pretty sure they do..

That Named Guy is a shameless, notorious spammer who will shill the benefits of the .Link extension to anyone that gives him attention.

Best to ignore.

 

[FieldCaster07]

That Named Guy is a shameless, notorious spammer who will shill the benefits of the .Link extension to anyone that gives him attention.

Best to ignore.

I think he needs to work on his shilling
I got red flags when I read his reply about .link extensions and how he’s going about it lol(hand registering domains with 0 SEO value or domain age).
But then again I’m new to the whole thing, enjoying the learning curve so far, made a few mistakes but I can see where I went wrong I’m pretty sure

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I think he needs to work on his shilling
I got red flags when I read his reply about .link extensions and how he’s going about it lol(hand registering domains with 0 SEO value or domain age).
But then again I’m new to the whole thing, enjoying the learning curve so far, made a few mistakes but I can see where I went wrong I’m pretty sure

Since you're "new to this whole thing" maybe you should read this exact quote from Verisign about the game you're playing;

"There is also an unregulated secondary market – led by domain speculators – hiding in plain sight. There, some speculators buy domain names at regulated low prices, then sell them at a far higher price. This secondary market is as old as the domain name system itself. However, since the wholesale price cap was imposed on .com in 2012, the secondary market has expanded in ways that exploit consumers.

Look at the website HugeDomains.com – owned by registrar TurnCommerce – where nearly four million .com domain names are warehoused and offered for sale:

• None are offered below $195, and 90 percent of their names are priced above $1,000.
• The average price is roughly $2,500 per domain – a markup of more than thirty thousand percent (30,000%) over the regulated wholesale price of $7.85.
  • That’s a profit margin of over 99 percent on each sale
  • At these prices, the value of the HugeDomains’ inventory is nearly $10 billion
• Many of HugeDomains’ names have incredibly high price tags. Here are a few examples from their website, as of November 1, 2018:
  • NeighborhoodWatch.com for $1.25 million
  • Margin.com is $3.5 million
  • Glossary.com is offered at $7.5 million
  • Even the fluff in their inventory isn’t cheap – Fluff.com is listed at $325,000

And yet, TurnCommerce has been actively lobbying our government to freeze the wholesale price of .com domain names. When they can buy .com names at capped wholesale prices, and mark them up to $2,500, $50,000, $1 million, or even $7 million, does anyone believe they are lobbying for continued price caps in order to protect consumers?

Even traditional registrars like GoDaddy have become big players in the secondary market and hold large portfolios of domain names for resale. GoDaddy’s public filings show it has spent over $100 million buying domain names for resale purposes. GoDaddy holds these domain names and then offers them to consumers and small businesses at prices that are often thousands of times the wholesale price. There’s nothing in GoDaddy’s public filings about its profits from this practice, but GoDaddy claims its domain name portfolio is worth $2.5 billion."

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

These are great points.

I joined 10 backorder auctions over the last month or so on several auction platforms. The average winning bid was $1,800. I didn't win any but was always a top 5 bidder

Specifically, I was the 3rd runner-up in a NameJet auction 2 weeks ago, and the winner is a rumored shill bidder on NJ as reported here on Namepros by others. The winning bidder pushed it to $3K.

Mind you, I tapped out at $1K, and the 4th runner up bid $500. I'm glad I lost, because I never intended to bid above $500. Yet, this is the nature of auctions.

Not surprisingly, the NJ payment deadline has arrived but the domain remains unpaid. I kept great screenprint records too because the final price didn't make sense for wholesale.

I'm betting it will be relisted in a week or so because as I said, the winning bidder has a track record on NJ of not paying for NJ wins.

This is the environment that newcomers enter, not just unprecedented competition for dot-Coms of any value, but there are a lot of insider schemes and shill bidding exposed often as well.

Not to mention more end users are wisely joining auctions, see Medal *com $185K auction: https://www.namepros.com/threads/medal-com-sold-for-185-728-dreamboy-com-for-17-263.1281394/

Too many overlook the facts of retail end user sales based on mega sales announced by DN Journal. But the fact remains, the average domain sells for about $2,300 retail.

Yet, every auction I joined the last 4-6 weeks fetched a winning bid of nearly $2K.

So, the margin opportunity is shrinking on average.

I'm going on 7 years of domaining, and my portfolio is just under 200 assets.

There is no doubt being a rookie in 2023 is more expensive than ever with lower chance of success. But the gifted, prudent, and persistent will find ways to get to the $$$.

Huge Domains, Buy Domains and cash rich investors (including overexcited newbies) will ensure that aftermarket names remain super inflated. GoDaddy (and its shareholders) gets richer and celebrates by buying up more competitors like Sedo, Namecheap, BB, SH, HD and Buy Domains, becoming richer and fatter.

Also, quality closeouts are a thing of the past.

 

[forge]

When you have gems like jmszyyy.com, xzdrdz.com, ytthzz.com, dglyz.com, and hdxhzdx.com selling for $3,100, $2600 and $2050 respectively, then one has to ask is it easier than ever for newbies, or is the market messed up and dodgy?

And now the bonus round, try and figure out the logic to this pairing:

jlsldlzyxy.com	$1,804	DropCatch
jlsldlzyxycollege.com	$1,804	DropCatch

(Both sold 3/23/23)

 

[scithe]

Wait .link? What happened to .online?

 

[scithe]

And now the bonus round, try and figure out the logic to this pairing:

jlsldlzyxy.com	$1,804	DropCatch
jlsldlzyxycollege.com	$1,804	DropCatch

(Both sold 3/23/23)

Money Laundering scheme or do those names make sense to someone in crypto?

 

[forge]

Wait .link? What happened to .online?

jklolroflmaojk

 

[bmugford]

Wait .link? What happened to .online?

Or .realty before that.

I prefer business models that work in the real world and don't need a paradigm shift to work.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

And now the bonus round, try and figure out the logic to this pairing:

jlsldlzyxy.com	$1,804	DropCatch
jlsldlzyxycollege.com	$1,804	DropCatch

(Both sold 3/23/23)

They are highly brandable.

I tend to just ignore sales that don't make sense.

Brad

 

[Sjpals]

And now the bonus round, try and figure out the logic to this pairing:

jlsldlzyxy.com	$1,804	DropCatch
jlsldlzyxycollege.com	$1,804	DropCatch

(Both sold 3/23/23)

It’s a college, just look at the archives

 

[ThatNameGuy]

Wait .link? What happened to .online?

.LINK is the new .online with less characters but this thread led me to reg CanDoCrypto.com that was just dropped. How lucky can a guy be

 

[Mkt Sales Leads]

They are highly brandable.

I tend to just ignore sales that don't make sense.

Brad

The issues is, these sales are making their way onto DN journal of all places. Kinda makes the whole industry seem a bit dodgy.

 

[FieldCaster07]

.LINK is the new .online with less characters but this thread led me to reg CanDoCrypto.com that was just dropped. How lucky can a guy be

If you like the crypto niche

I own cryptogeishas.com if you wanna buy it. its on godaddy auctions right now. or should be soon

Comes with a lot of backlinks and high DR and UR and its in the crypto niche. Also a lot of relevant backlinks to do with crypto. I was going to build it up but not too sure if I'll do that..