General Domain Information

Check out this funny You Tube video currently making the rounds called “Already Bought The Domain.”

Sometimes I think people in our business actually think like this… the domain name is generally a starting point. Sometimes it’s a great starting point, but there are many other factors that transform a great domain name into a business.

Thanks to KAP from  DBR  for sharing this with me.

I received a Google alert  notifying  me about and an article related to domain investing in The Spokesman Review, a Spokane, Washington based publication. I read it with interest, as I don’t often see a local publication covering domain investments.

The first anecdote was about a web developer and writer for the newspaper who tripled his investment on a domain name he and some associates bought in the 1990s – Steamteam.com. This gentleman hadn’t purchased the domain name as an investment, but sold it profitably.

The article also interviewed a local web designer, who seems to have a differing opinion about investing in domain names. The article stated (this is not a quote from the lady but is a quote from the article):

“But the good old days of getting big checks for a Web domain are long gone, Bracken said. By this point in the Information Age, most purchases of domains are for relatively inexpensive  sites.”

A few other people in the web development and design space were also interviewed, and they echoed this sentiment.

I think the writer should have done a bit more research on the topic of domain investing to see that domain names are still being sold for thousands of dollars on a weekly basis, and there are seven figure sales that occur sporadically throughout the year.

One can easily have a look at the DN Journal weekly and annual sales report to see that domain investing is live and well. Visitors to this website can look at the paid advertisements to show that companies are still investing marketing dollars in this business.

Domain values are generally down from the highs of 2006-2008, but much of that has to do with the economy rather than something specifically related to the domain industry. 2012 was the strongest year for my company, although many of my sales took considerably more effort than sales achieved a few years ago.

It’s good to see coverage of domain investing in a widely read publication, but it’s disappointing that it wasn’t reflective of what I see in the domain investment space. In my opinion, there is a lot of money being spent on great domain names, and the $1 million weekly sales reports from Sedo and Afternic back this up.

No, domaining is not going to end any time soon.

When I think of the business of domain name investing, I think of domain investors as people who have made the most of virtual real estate opportunities. We are capitalists who make speculative investments in a form of asset that many people don’t know much about.

To people that are not involved in domain investing, the perception is significantly different. I want to share a comment made by someone on Spiceworks.com, an IT-industry website:

“Ever get a great idea for a website and find that some greedy ass already bought the domain just to wait for a person with the idea to come along??”

Obviously, everybody is entitled to their own opinion about domain investing (and domain parking) but it’s interesting to read something like that these days. You don’t hear people get upset about property or land investments, but many people dislike domain investors for speculatively investing in and parking their domain name assets.

How often do you get labeled a cybersquatter or worse when receiving an inquiry to sell one of your domain names?

Thanks to KAP from DBR for sharing this.

I want to announce the winner of a contest that I held on my blog. You didn’t hear or know about this contest because I didn’t advertise it, but the winner will receive a $100 gift certificate to a domain registrar of his choice.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, it’s the reader comments and discussion that makes my blog enjoyable on a daily basis (from my perspective and hopefully yours, too).

There have been many comments made during the past 5+ years. In fact, today my blog saw its 40,000 comment since inception. That’s where the surprise contest comes in. The winner of the contest is the person who made the 40,000th comment this afternoon: Ohad Adi Weitzman.

Thank you all for your comments, and congratulations to Ohad on winning $100 to buy more domain names. I’ll send you an email shortly!

The beginning of January is the most difficult time of the year for my business. Each January 1, my P&L turns to $0, and I get an anxious feeling, no matter how exceptional the prior year was. I am usually on vacation until early January, making it a bit more challenging to get off to a fast start.

Coupled with the anxiety is a feeling of excitement. When I start the year, I have no idea how much income I am going to earn. The sky is the limit. For this reason, I have no interest in setting theoretical goals I could smash by the middle of the year with a few deals or struggle to meet if business sucks. Having no income ceiling is one of the greatest things about this business and is what motivates me to keep on making deals in an effort to smash personal income records.

Luckily, with advertising revenue, lease payments, and three deals that were just struck, the $0 on my P&L will quickly turn into a crooked number, but it’s always exciting when I set up the P&L for the new year.

Here’s hoping you have a lucrative 2013. I am motivated to make things happen this year starting right now.