What am I doing wrong?

[wdjt58]

Hi there,

My name's Stephen; I'm 16 years old and I've been "domaining" since 2006. The thing is, I haven't been too successful, that's why domaining is quoted. My biggest problem is cashflow; my yearly budget is a $50 AmEx giftcard from my grandfather that I get every Christmas, but that's going to stop soon because he died and his wife probably won't send anything this year. I've owned a few low value domains, mostly pertaining to TV shows and the like. More recently I built and sold a forum for $120, only to have it promptly pissed away from a person who I thought was my friend (I used his PayPal; at the time I thought you needed a credit card to join.) I sold off the vBulletin license I had, and now my total is $43 in the PayPal and $18 on the gift card. I'm hesitant about spending it because I don't know how to properly make buying decisions. I have a bank account, but that's off limits completely to use for web dev (it's set up so that no money gets out without the permission of my mom, and she's not big into web dev.) I desperately want to be a better domainer, but I don't know how.

Is there any way you guys can help me out?

Thanks.

 

[gray929]

It will be hard to make money with domaining by having such a tight budget. There are two ways I know of where you can make money off of buying or even registering low value domains.

A) End users. While the domain might not be of much value to domainers here, to an end user, it could be the name of their new company if they like it. But it is a lot of work to find an itnerested end user who would purchase your domain.
B) Flipping. You could purchase a domain, install a free script on it, build up content and sell it. Something I do is buy a domain, install phpLD, wait until it gets around 100UV per day with a decent # of links and I can sell it for around $50 ($41 profit. $9 for domain reg + I have free hosting )

Read up on tutorials and stuff and browse forums as often as you can so you can always be improving. Good luck.

 

[SoundTheAlarm]

I feel the same way you do. I feel as if there is an opportunity out there and I cannot yet reach it. The only domain I have ever sold, I sold for $9. LOL

 

[JayMay]

Gray has some good advice. Its not that you are doing anything 'wrong' it just takes time I think to really get into it.

 

[larrybn]

The point is that on that budget it is unlikely you will make much money back in fact you could blow it all very quickly. You say you have $18 and $43 that makes $61, therefore you have made a profit so don't be too downhearted. My advice personally is to find a new skill that could finance this hobby and I mean hobby, don't think of it like a job. If you enjoy it keep doing it, if not then stop. Cash out your paypal on something nice and don't worry about it.

I personally have probably made a loss (haven't really kept track) on my domaining and website flipping, but I have funded it by designing websites for people. So in the process I have learnt both and webdesign and domaining, without actually losing money.