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

 

[garptrader]

Every day one can see a huge list of flops by reviewing the expiring domains lists - thousands of domains which someone once thought were valuable which eventually they realized were not so valuable.

 

[SirDrago]

The feeling of buying a "premium" domain name then realising that it's not a "L"etter O but a "N"umber zero in the name.
Needless to say I should've showed more patience instead my greed for a quick great deal got me burnt.

 

[GoWebnames.com]

@SirDrago Was it you who bought 0il.com ??

 

[SirDrago]

@SirDrago Was it you who bought 0il.com ??

Haha, I struck mud instead!
But no, that wasn't me.

 

[DavidH]

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

 

[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.

 

[alexdon82]

I sold one nnnnn.com on namepros for $30 but forgot to remove it from 4.cn.
One month later got 15 000 RMB(~$2500) offer there, but name was not mine anymore...

 

[JyotiG]

I registered a .com and got an offer on that after 2 weeks for $150. I didn't sell it then thinking that it would sell for more and listed it on Flippa with No Reserve. I only got one bid on it and had to sell it for $1! Yes only $1. This was my biggest flop and I still curse myself sometime for not taking that offer.

 

[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

 

[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?

 

[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!

 

[kawalsukhi]

I am lucky that I have no FLOPs so far in 2 years.
some domains I am not able to renew makes some loss of $2-$10 roughly no major FLOP!!

E.g.

Few months back, I purchased 52 LLL.biz (in $6) which were nearly expiring within 1-2 months. I sold 40 of them in $565 and rest 12 got expired and I dont renew them and let them expired.

So this kind of flops sometime happened with me.

I invest very calmly and always with low investment though returns are always profitable and some are more profitable.

Those names which I think cant flip like new extensions I will not invest in them and stay focus on .com, .net, .org and .info only as research says its still much lovable than other extensions!!

 

[imadoer]

My biggest flop was spending $400 on hand regs that i paid full price for.
I think i ended up with 38 domains. a month later i figured out they were crap i sold them all for 2 bucks a peice so i lost 300 and change..... i wish i had some gd coupon codes at that time lol....

 

[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

 

[chloe321]

I sold one nnnnn.com on namepros for $30 but forgot to remove it from 4.cn.
One month later got 15 000 RMB(~$2500) offer there, but name was not mine anymore...

Yikes sorry to hear!

 

[chloe321]

I bought a bunch of expensive 1 word .asia domains (costing close to a thousand) when it first came out thinking I'm gonna land myself a big payday when I resell them. What I found myself landed on was huge renewal fees for domains that were doing nothing and eventually dropped all of them...

 

[JyotiG]

I bought a bunch of expensive 1 word .asia domains (costing close to a thousand) when it first came out thinking I'm gonna land myself a big payday when I resell them. What I found myself landed on was huge renewal fees for domains that were doing nothing and eventually dropped all of them...

I registered a .ninja domain which I thought was really cool. Guess what its not! We all learn from our mistakes.

 

[vickyhunter]

Hope this post has been a learning experience for some of us. Thank you for all who have contributed, but frankly we would like to hear more !

Cheers,
Vicky

 

[RogueWriter]

Early into my domaining hobby, I registered a bunch of .bz domains, figuring people would naturally buy these domains for their 'business'. Which always leads me warn new domainers to take their time, don't register a bunch of names until you have a few sales under your belt and have read through np extensively.

 

[Name Trader]

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

 

[awei]

didnt realize it was "layboybeauty.com" until i got the confirmation email
sucker!
i blame myself for being careless
and i feel bad for the guy who regged it
if he had regged a lousy name like this
very likely he regged more than one lousy name like this

 

[daj]

I sold ibackgammon (.com) for $146 in a namepros auction and the winning bidder ended up reselling it for $2500 months later. I still made a profit on it (it was a $1 domain I hand regged on GoDaddy) but I could of made a much bigger profit if I held on to the domain...

 

[gattoplano]

I registered an amazing (adult).IO name, paid a 349$ flippa auction without even thinking, and only then I realized that IO is banning all adult industry related names.

 

[21x20]

This is a helpful thread.

I've had times where I've been extremely hard on myself for not foreseeing one trend or another. I don't really want to disclose my specific flops, but let's just say, since I started in '99 if I had played everything correctly, I'd have a couple million extra off a basket of names that I either sold too early or just decided not to renew because budgets were tight at the time.

 

[Willox Perez]

Really great thread just read the stories and this is definitely great to see because we all deal with the flops at one point or another.

For me so far the biggest flop was a missed opportunity. There was a name my partner Omar and I were battling in an auction for, the auction was at $140 and we starting hesitating as to this domain being worth it. We really did want the domain but were not sure if we should continue bidding.

In the end the other person we were going against got it for $143. Forward about 1 month later and we come across the .com name on Flippa sold for $1800.

Can you believe that? So for hesitating we ended up losing out on making what ended up being over 1000% return on investment.

Definitely the biggest flop but also the biggest lesson learned.