What Is The Biggest Mistake You Did ?

[grigio]

Hey Everyone !

What mistakes you did when you enter the domaining industry ???

For all the newbies and the veteran's, please tell me your mistakes !

We can only learn from this...

Everybody made mistakes, Share it with us and don't let other newbies or people, to make the same mistakes.

I will start -

1. I did some cybersquatting when I just started, I registered a lot of trademarks and celebrity names.
Please consult a lawyer or find information about that issue, don't do the same mistakes i did.

Please put your mistakes, so we can all learn from them.

 

[Kate]

Registering too many catchy, brandable names that have little resale value (unless the buyer has the exact same vision), even though in the back of my mind I knew I didn't have the time to develop all of them.

I am guilty of that as well. One of the big mistakes is not understanding the importance of having a diversified and liquid portfolio. It is a mistake to register tons of more or less brandable domains that don't sell and don't make revenue.

 

[randomo]

Yup, registered a TON (hundreds) of worthless names, at inflated prices, through a bad registrar.

That was stupid. The smart thing was learning enough in the following year so that I let them expire instead of pouring more money into them!

(My other big blunder was failing to reg lots of valuable names that were available back in those days. As with reg'ing the worthless ones, that's a mistake that virtually all of us can kick ourselves for.)

 

[Semtex]

1. Regged my first 100+ names through 1and1.
2. Didn't find Namepros until 6 months into buying my first 100+

 

[armengrecotech]

Buying Mariah.info for $183, and knowing that I will not get my cash back for that if it ever sells.

 

[stewystarr]

1. Buying domains when tired.
2. Back in 2006, taking advice in the appraisel thread, and letting my one and only LLLL.com prounouncible drop.
3. Trying to flip hand regs, now I still reg them but am trying to develop.

 

[firefly]

Hmm...Mistakes...let me count the ways...lol.

I got into this about three years ago. I was looking for something to maybe add a little pocket money in the kitty on the side. I used to sign up for all those money making ideas, but thankfully never shelled any money out for them. I got one that interested me. It was about domains. The whole concept of buying and parking domains made sense to me...still does for the most part.

At the time I had no funds to persue it but I got lucky. An online poker room gave me one of those promotional $20 gifts they do sometimes. Within three nights I turned that into $600 and decided that this was my chance.

Therein lies my first two mistakes:
Getting involved with domains...lol
And not sticking with poker because I'm a far better poker player than domainer, just don't have the time for poker now except for on the social level.

So what did I do with that $600 dollars? I found Pool and the dutch auction section where I could find names for $8. I figured if I bought a heap...some would have to hit right? I did check with all the metrics I knew back then...page rank, back links, alexa. Guess what? Most didn't, although I did find some little gems in there, a few which I still have today and one that just about covers everything I do by itself.

Therein lies my next couple of mistakes:
Not having a clear idea or plan as to how I would attack it...just buy in bulk and hope.
Not fully understanding the real metrics that constitute a good domain name.

Thankfully about six months into this bizzare little trip into domaining, I found Namepros. If only I had found it sooner.

Mistake number five:
Not finding the proper learning tools before I got started.

Of course I have a litany of mistakes that follow these little gems.

I've regged names whilst drunk...lmao...and I hardly ever drink.
Registering crap names because I still didn't have a good handle on the metrics that might make a good domain.
Inncorrect spelling of some names I registered...we've all done it.
Not selling names when I had the chance becasue I thought I could get more.
Initially buying some TM or close to names...all have gone now.
Getting into it too late and with no idea how to develop.
No real plan of attack.
Treating it as a hobby when it should be approached as a proper business.
Not asking the right people the right questions...I think that this is important.

Funny thing is...I still make some of the same mistakes occasionally and will probably continue to do so. I'm still learning and one day might be able to count myself as a real domainer but until then I'll keep plugging away learning from the best fo the best here at namepros.

Anyway..hope you can relate to some of these...or just get a good laugh.

 

[abhinavjain84]

Listening to the guy interested in buying my domains and got scammed by allfordomains appraisal site...

 

[Smith]

Spent too much:

Time on message boards
Time playing solitaire
Time checking my stats
Time developing projects that were dead ends

 

[adinfinite]

not finding namepros earlier

 

[andrewsA]

randomo - I hear you. Same mistake here.
I also bought .mobi, worthless domains. Iphone proved no need for .mobi

 

[InsanerDomainer]

I haven't figured out what my worst mistake is yet. And that's the worst kind of mistake.

 

[Ms Domainer]

*

Buying BonusCasinoPlay [dot] com on the aftermarket.

Ouch!

I still have it because I can't bear to let it expire, which means I keep compounding my error.


*

 

[fatter]

I've put up a good domain for auction @Sedo no reserve, I was expecting it to sell for more than it did.
IMO, Auctioning @Sedo is not the way to go with good domain names. It's like selling cucumbers to the gardener.

I have made the same mistake a few times but now refuse to send a domain to auction unless it is at least the minimum price I will take, just as an example of one name I sent firsttimehomebuyertaxcredit.com to auction for 300.00 never got another bid(I had just turned down a 1k offer from mtge company 2 weeks earlier) so just one years revenue because i was averging 1.00 a day would have broought in more revenue. But on the flip side I sold a domain for more than i could imagine because of a bidding war the last 60 minutes of the auction.

 

[Domainace]

The biggest mistake, which I still make sometimes, is not being clear about whether any given domain is an investment or a business. It's easy to buy a great sounding name that you're sure will turn a huge profit in the future. But that ties up your money, and cuts into cash flow. If you find you have too many investments and not enough business domains (by this, I mean domains that can bring you money in the immediate future - either through flipping or developing) you're gonna run out of cash and get killed come renewal time.

So, I have had to learn to pass up on names that I want - simply because I know I can't sell them right away for a profit, and the purchase will leave me with less money to buy domains that I can flip. That, and too many investment domains are a great way to lie to yourself. At least when you are flipping, you are getting real-time feedback on your domain decisions. With "investment domains", it may take years of renewal fees to realize you are sitting on a pile of garbage.

That's why I think everyone should either flip or develop regularly.... if just to keep learning and stay on top of the market.

 

[dnpimping.com]

1. Spending Too Much Time On The Computer

2. Not Staying Focused

3. Registering Domains Only To Drop Them A Year Later

4. Giving Up Prematurely

5. Not Having A Solid Marketing Plan

6. Spending Too Much Time On Development

7. Not Having A Blog Directed At My Target Audience

8. Trying To Do Everything Myself

9. Underselling A Domain Name

10. Paying For Traffic

 

[DotSauce]

- Bought a few .WS long long time ago when it first launched. Ever since I invest strictly .COM
- Selling valuable names for too little on eBay and other places.
- Premium auction listing service at Sedo .. waste of money.
- Registered domains at crappy registrar cause they were cheap.

Probably many more I have blocked out of my mind! I know that negotiating sales has come a long way for me. Always learning

 

[Jaco]

Anyway, biggest mistakes I ever made:

Not reg'ing more in the late 1990's
Not buying aftermarket in the early 2000's
Letting some names drop in the early 2000's
Not developing certain names in the early 2000's
Not running with a couple ideas that other people ran with and eventually went on to become big.

No worries, though. There's still a TON of room.

 

[petrosc]

The biggest mistake I ever made is trusting a member I met on these boards too soon and partnering with him. I trusted him with $16k in cash and I ended up loosing it.

 

[Jaco]

The biggest mistake I ever made is trusting a member I met on these boards too soon and partnering with him. I trusted him with $16k in cash and I ended up loosing it.

Yeech...

 

[dag]

"Getting involved in domaining at all" springs to mind, as it's become an obsession that really has wasted far too much of my time and money in the close to 4 years I've been doing it.

But to be more specific, I think it was getting caught up in the LLLL.com (and .net!) thing -- I figured there was no way they were going down in value given what had been happening, so I pulled out the credit card and went hog-wild on the drops! And of course, I'm still trying to pay that debt off nearly two years later. Damn you, Reece!

 

[Smith]

The biggest mistake I ever made is trusting a member I met on these boards too soon and partnering with him. I trusted him with $16k in cash and I ended up loosing it.

Years ago I had a designer screw me out of 7.5k, and he scammed a bunch of other webmasters he knew from a message board by faking a sickness and then his eventual fake death.

Turns out he was also running scam ebay auctions and had ripped off in the area of 250k

Took me and a couple other guys a year but we tracked him down, but the local hick police wanting to be heroes messed up. They ended up inadvertently tipping him off about the police being on their way to arrest him and his wife after pounding on his door yelling that they had a warrant . . . then leaving when no one answered.

By the time out of state police had arrived he had killed himself (for real this time). :wave:

 

[MicroGuy]

Glad that I can provide some entertainment for the "Pros".

 

[kukgle]

Reg around 70 .tel

Since March until now, all of my .tel have not make any penny but there are going to drop in next 4 months.

 

[canswift]

Paying not once, but twice for Sedo domain appraisals. The first one sounded plausible enough. However, when I ordered a second one, it was word for word the same (including $ valuation)except the domain name was changed. They must have an all-purpose appraisal "insert name of domain here.."

---------- Post added at 10:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 AM ----------

*

Buying BonusCasinoPlay [dot] com on the aftermarket.

Ouch!

I still have it because I can't bear to let it expire, which means I keep compounding my error.


*

On the other hand, PokerBonus.com just sold on Sedo for $85,000 (according to today's DNW.com post), so maybe yours isn't such a mistake after all!

 

[telking]

my biggest mistake.. selling a name for 1,000 bux to a multi millionaire

DOH