One of the best developments in the last 10 or so years in the domain industry is the openness in which people share information. People have been more willing than ever to share their advice and experiences on domain forums, domain blogs, and on social media. This is a relatively new thing for the domain space, which was once much more hush hush.

Domain name investing is great because there are so many ways to find success. I may earn money doing one thing and someone else may earn money doing the opposite thing. Some people buy keyword .com domain names and spurn “brandables.” Others buy and sell brandables exclusively. Some buy domain names for parking revenue and others buy domain names that don’t earn any PPC revenue. Some people strictly buy .com domain names and others focus on ccTLDs or new gTLDs.

Put simply, domain investing is not a zero-sum game. Everyone can make money doing different things.

In addition to this, people have different

I want to flesh out some thoughts about ethical domain name acquisitions after an article I wrote generated some comments and a couple of emails asking about it. In the article I wrote last week, I wrote the following about ethics:

“I would never intentionally buy or register a brand name with the idea of selling the domain name to a specific company. That is legally and possibly ethically wrong, and it is also financially risky.”

When I buy domain names, I never want to be embarrassed about owning them when someone inquires to buy. I try to buy domain names with large appeal rather than specific domain names only one company or one person would ever want to buy. I feel like it is likely unethical to buy a domain name that only one other person or business would ever want to own (with that being the sole reason for buying it). This might change if I was going to use a particular domain name for a website – like a gripe site I suppose, but I don’t see that happening.

I will share some  examples to make what I am saying a bit  more clear.

Let’s say I wanted to start over from scratch in the domain investment space and I have just $10,000 to spend. I thought I would share how I would start over today without any domain names, $10,000 in cash, and the knowledge I already have.

I would spend as much time as it took reaching out privately to buy a single one word .com domain name. The domain name would need to be meaningful to many companies and/or people so my eggs aren’t in one basket hoping that the one prospect understands the value proposition. With this investment, I would need to be certain I could liquidate the name to another domain investor or at auction for at least the $10,000 I paid if I needed to get my cash back to start over because I overestimated the market interest.

Although this sounds simple, it really isn’t. It is very difficult to buy great, meaningful one word .com domain names for $10,000 or less. It takes a ton of time and research and a ton of dead ends. These types of deals are out there for those who are willing to go to the effort because most aren’t marked for sale and some are even developed websites.

Once my $10,000 name was acquired, I would try to find a buyer. Bear in mind that before I made my purchase, I would have done so with trademark risk mitigation and market research in mind to know that there is limited risk with the domain name from a TM perspective, there are many businesses that would want this domain name, and the domain name hasn’t been on the market or for sale before (or in a long time). I would also know how to contact prospective buyers, both from the approach and the actual contact person.

With my $10,000 investment, I would not try to get cute and buy