reviews Your biggest FLOPS - Let's talk the other side too.

[vickyhunter]

There are two sides of a coin. It's amazing to discuss the FLIPS, but there will also be a few FLOPS in our lifetime. This thread is not to discourage - far from it - but to be aware of what kind of domains did not do well over the period of time - and what not to do when selling them - and so on. There is a lesson to be learnt from everything, even from the flops.

So, go ahead. Share your biggest FLOP over the time and add a small comment why that happened and share your advice with the fellow domainers.

Cheers !
- Vicky

 

[vickyhunter]

Ok, Its fair that I share my FLOP first.

$2250 --> $1500

I got this keyword rich dot com from a fellow domainer friend for $2250 and held it for over a year. Had few offers in the $3-5K range but did not sell. Then I decided to go for an auction with no reserve and it closed with $1500 in my pocket. I had an offer for $3k during the auction, but rejected it thinking it will surpass that.

Lessons learnt -
1) NEVER sell your LIQUID domains with No Reserve Auction
2) Do not ignore the advice of your fellows and brokers (@this_username_was_banned - Lol )
3) Do NOT be too Greedy. Don't change the numbers in your head every often.

Cheers!
Vicky

 

[Domainace]

- do not let them drop (that is just lame)
- and lastly, have faith in your names!

Dropping is good. You should drop names every year - or else you are going to waste money renewing flops.

Dropping is a form of ritual purification and humility - much better than wasting time and effort getting a couple dollars each on a fire sale. Dropping teaches you to recognize and acknowledge your mistakes. It teaches you that you can be wrong, no matter how much faith you had initially.

Dropping makes you a stronger domainer.

Drop away

 

[DT13]

beginning with no experience and buy 100 bad domains and drop them the next year.
The feeling of becoming a millionaire was the only good thing about thad

 

[yogiDomain]

I will share couple of mine. I have many of them but lets say they dint happen.
I was into parking before, when i started, and was very fascinated with revenue people used to make. Then i started regging domains without any research and study.. and end up buying TM's (Samsung Flipkart etc etc) which i release later and deleted all those handregs. then i started backordering domains at NJ and SN which had some backlinks( i had no idea that parking needs quality backlinks). Domains that i could reg even after 2-3 days they were deleted. . but i wasted 69$ for each domain. Those domain never got traffic nor they ever sold for 1$ here on NP. So i had huge bump there and wasted a lot money for parking domains.

Then i read a lot about selling domains and again i did the same mistake of not researching and just going by my gut feeling and buying or backordering domains. again waste of money. I had brought almost 5-8 BO domains for 69$ each which never sold, this BO includes some LLLL which i sold for 30-35 $
so overall i am still at loss by say 600-700$ (not much for some people here, but for me that is a huge amount) and i am still a newbie.

 

[NamePrime]

Back in 2010, I hand reg'd a .CM domain for $105. At that very moment, I was convinced that I got a gem, that it's going to get a lot of type-in traffic and that it would sell for thousands of dollars. I realized it was a pigeon shit when I woke the next day. I let it drop.

 

[mis_chiff]

owned Slots.im for a while when they first came out - yeah you'd think it was a good keyword
bahahahahahaha - not!!

that and every other domain I haven't sold yet and carry in my inventory

 

[Domainace]

My biggest flop was missing the renewal date for a NNNN.com

Ouch.

I have sold names for considerably less than they buyer might have paid. We all do, though. As long as the ROI is there, better not to dwell on such things.

For a flop with a moral, I bought a domain pertaining to ereaders for about $20 in an auction, just before ereaders took off. I made great money in an affiliate program for a few months, and turned down at least 2 mid-xxxx offers for the name. (I figured I could make that in a few months from the affiliate sales.)

Then Christmas ended, my name got axed by Google, then eventually by Bing and Yahoo. Meanwhile, tablets came along and ereaders suddenly seemed like yesterday's news. Now, I might be lucky to get a hundred bucks for the name. But I just can't bear to sell it now.

The morals?

1- When buying tech names (or any name that rides a trend), sell while they are hot - before the peak. If you miss the peak or a better technology comes along, value drops overnight.

2- If your income is based on being on Google's first page, sell it fast, while you are still there. One algorithm change at Google and your flow of cash will become a drip of pennies. Don't assume that income will continue.

Luckily, the margins are so high in domains that one flip can cover a lot of flops.

 

[Kate]

Not sure if it qualifies as a flop, but I sold one LLL.com for 14K, then while the sale was pending I got a 20K offer, then another 20K offer came though later. Should have been more patient

I also missed an opportunity to secure a nice 1992 domain for 10K.
In fact these are the flops: all those missed opportunities in the early days.
More flops: domains that I let drop a decade ago, because I didn't realize the value of the domains back then.
The good news: I have since recovered almost all of them

 

[NameFit]

I think we have to look at our successes and failures at another angle as well - are you profitable over the years. I believe in few things
- invest in only quality names, do your research
- do not expect to sell immediately or 'undersell'
- make your mind that you are ready to sell only when you get the right price
- stay away from trademarks, or 'hot' names (they are going to fizzle in few weeks if not earlier)
- it takes considerable time, may be decade, for someone to have the same thought as yours and come to you for buying
- do not let them drop (that is just lame)
- and lastly, have faith in your names!

 

[steelbangle]

I have not had a big loss but I have lost a lot of money backordering worthless LLLL coms on NJ, DC and SN. They cost me $69 each (minimum) but went for 20-30 only last year!

 

[KDN]

[Biggest flop so far]

I regged 800800800800.com hoping for a Chinese end user to contact me after 10 minutes and offer $100,000. What was I thinking?

 

[yogiDomain]

Ahhh!! nice topic..let me make a list of my flops (long list)...i will come back...

 

[DavidH]

My biggest flop was missing the renewal date for a NNNN.com

 

[Name Trader]

My biggest flops were offloading most of my premium letter LLLL.com portfolio too soon and dropping my entire LLL.net portfolio.

 

[Willox Perez]

You didn't Order Sushi, right?

Hahaha =-D That's right and to top it off I love sushi lol so every time I eat it I tend to remember the experience.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

pcpoker.com bought for $430 at Namejet and sold for $210 on Flippa.

 

[vickyhunter]

Are there no one with FLOPS? Or, its it that people do not want to discuss about them. It's no shame, it is part of the game. We win some, we lose some. What matters is that we keep learning and we keep moving ahead.

Share your stories and provide helpful insights to others.

Cheers!
Vicky

 

[TheFifty9Sound]

I tried to start a similar conversation a few weeks ago with no luck. I guess domainers just don't like to share their failures! I would LOVE to hear some failure stories from some of the more experienced members here. I feel like myself and others would learn more from those stories than from reported sales.

 

[Banezer]

bought a domains for $40 bcos of the fake traffic the seller presented to me here @ namepros. To bad not even a visitor. Lost my hard earn cash

 

[ramkumaritrvs]

In starting days of my domaining ,i lost few buyers due to my greedy BIN & Offer prices, it's not a lose(i sold for higher than i bought) but still it's my flop. now i realized those incoming offers are the maximum for those domains.

I learned a lesson from my flop.

 

[gdndd]

To me, Time is always a problem ... What should I do, sell or wait ? Did I ask too much for this domain ? Or should I have asked more ? ... And what about my approach .. Is it professional enough ? Why do I think these domains are worth 4 or 5 figures amounts ? Am I right ? Blablabla ....

I think that we all are experimenting flops in a way or another but it's part of the game ! It is what makes this business so exciting ...

 

[James Rodman]

my first big Acquisition was a domain i bought for mid 5 figures. i thought i would lose money on it and instead i made a 4 figure profit. You have to take risks sometimes to get a nice reward. flops will happen from time to time if you re a big risk taker but reward will be even bigger.

 

[NamePrime]

my first big Acquisition was a domain i bought for mid 5 figures. i thought i would lose money on it and instead i made a 4 figure profit. You have to take risks sometimes to get a nice reward. flops will happen from time to time if you re a big risk taker but reward will be even bigger.

So, basically, it's not a flop.

 

[SHINOJ G.S]

There will be more Flop stories than success. But people don't like to disclose their failures much
If we watch flippa auctions closely , many of the 'Big sales' can be found struggling to make a better deal.