“A sample size of one is an anecdote”

Last week, I kiddingly posted a tweet illustrating what happens when a domain investor shares a sale publicly. Many people reply with congratulatory messages, but there are almost always people who reply pitching their (typically less good) domain name they seem to think would be comparable to what sold:

On Sunday, SquadHelp founder Darpan Munjal posted a tweet with some good advice for investors who learn about one-off sales. They may either go through their portfolio to try and share something they believe is similar, or worse, they may begin registering or buying domain names that appear to be similar with the hope of replicating success:

A person or company bought a specific domain name for a specific reason, and “similar” domain names do not make sense for them – regardless of the price. Registering or buying a domain name simply because of one other comparable sale is probably not a foos strategy.

Another thing to really think about is whether a domain name actually makes sense. “knock it off” is a common phrase, but “it knock off” doesn’t really make any sense. Maybe a name spinning tool would recommend the alternative phrase because it is available to register in .com, but I think that domain name would be worthless.

Part of the job of a domain investor is to understand why a domain name sold and determine what insight can be gleaned from the sale. Sometimes, the intel can be helpful because it is part of a trend or it can help uncover an overlooked area of value, but sometimes it can be little more than an anomaly that was great for the seller but not really useful for someone else.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

7 COMMENTS

  1. I probably sound like a broken record already on this topic. It peeves me that a certain domain blogger continually passes these one-offs or anecdotes as domaining advice on his blog because he probably isn’t an active successful investor himself or just has nothing original to offer.

  2. @Tony— every damn domain blogger is a Domain Wh*&^ore…..all of them are hawking their domains and called themselves Domain Investor, Domain Professional, Domain whatever…

    It is in the human DNA.

    Regards,
    BullS
    MBA,PhD
    Magna cum laude
    Graduate of Domain King Academy

    MBA-My Big Ass(all of you have one)
    PHD-people having dickheads

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