It’s All About the Time You Put into It

A few years ago, my wife jokingly described my daily work lifestyle as leisurely. In some ways, I thought of that as a badge of honor. I built my business in a way that gave me ample time during the day to run, play tennis, ride my bike, drive the kids after school, run errands, go out for lunch, and basically set my own schedule. I have time to do the things that I want and the things that help my family.

I sometimes think about a 2009 John Chow article and video about the “.com lifestyle” and it was something I hoped to emulate. I don’t really take many walks in the park or trips to the playground anymore, but my days are flexible. Quick sidebar – I stopped checking in on Chow’s videos when he (wrongly) declared domain investing dead in 2011.

The flip side is that I don’t spend the additional time it would likely take to laser focus my business and grow it further. I know some of my colleagues spend considerably more time on domain investing day-to-day, and they’ve built larger portfolios that have strong sell through rates. They’re continuing to expand their portfolios while driving revenue growth. They do a better job of analyzing potential acquisition targets and are able to make better inventory acquisition decisions. This is from my vantage point, which has a limited visibility.

I think domain auction research is a good illustration of the difference. I receive 2-3 Dropping.pro daily emails with domain names matching certain filters I created. I also have several pre-set searches on ExpiredDomains.net that I check daily. All-in-all, each day, I spend upwards of an hour researching names coming up for sale in auction, deleting, or just put on the market.

By contrast, I know people who spend many hours a day doing similar but more extensive research. I may hone in on a handful of names I like each day and do some additional cursory research on each. Others cast a far wider net and amplify their searching to better understand what names could sell, to whom, and for how much. I could do that, too, but I am more on cruise control at this point.

Many people are rewarded for putting in this additional time researching domain names. In some ways, they’re probably better domain investors than I am. Some have managed to build tools to automate a great deal of this and they’re benefitting from the research and additional time to spend outside of domain investing.

Many domain investors have the luxury of spending as much or as little time as they would like on domain investing. In this business, I think the chance of success is far greater with more time spent researching domain names, trends, and the domain aftermarket.