A couple of years ago, the .XYZ registry had a special promotion where unregistered .XYZ domain names could be registered for $.01 for the first year. I remember thinking (and writing) about registering a huge swath of them with the hopes of selling just a couple to break even and make a profit. I did not do this, but Darryl Lopes did and shared his story on NamePros today.
Unfortunately for Darryl, a year went by and he did not sell a single domain name, despite having a $300 buy it now asking price for each name. He said he received a couple of inquiries, but neither produced a sale for him:
“I mean I did pay around $200 for all 20,000 domain names so I really just wanted to sell one and make a profit. That never happened, almost a year went by and I had to make sure all the .xyz were on auto renew off as the renewal price for around $12.88 USD each, I knew this going into this and a few clicks and sorting out bulk domain edits I was going to let them all lapse.”
On one hand, Daryl lost a couple hundred dollars and a couple of days of effort. On the other hand, Darryl seems to have avoided any legal consequences such as a UDRP or URS that could have lived on and impacted his business for a long time. He was also able to say he gave this a try, and I applaud his effort and his sharing. I am sure there were quite a few people who did what Darryl did, and I don’t recall seeing anyone else share their results.
There are a couple of takeaways from this.
Steve Jurvetson is a well-known venture capitalist and was a co-founder of the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ). Apparently, Jurvetson left DFJ last year, and 
When I checked into NamesCon yesterday, I received a metal coin with a $100 credit for shopping at