My educational background is in the field of direct marketing. Following my undergraduate degree, I went to NYU and earned a Master’s degree in Direct and Interactive Marketing. I then worked at a direct marketing agency called Wunderman, followed by a corporate direct marketing role at AIG.
One of the hallmarks of direct marketing is testing. I recall one of my professors telling the class about the “test everything” mantra in this field. Testing is the most important thing, and once you have a winning campaign or strategy, you keep testing to see if you can iterate and improve your results. All of this is to say that I am a big believer in testing.
I read a blog post about testing written by GoDaddy’s Adam Ramsdell. While I agree with the testing sentiment, I think it would be very difficult for most domain investors – myself included – to accurately test in a way that will create actionable results.
I have a relatively small domain name portfolio with fewer than 2,500 domain names. A little less than 2,200 are listed for sale on Afternic, and many are also listed on other platforms or use different landing pages. While I appreciate the importance of testing, I don’t believe I have the portfolio size to test in a way that produces statistically significant *actionable* results. A couple of sales after switching landing pages or pricing changes might feel like confirmation that something is working, but that could just as easily be coincidence or timing.
When you’re working with small sample sizes, the risk is that you’re reading too much into noise rather than something in which we can draw conclusions. What looks like a winning test result could actually be seasonal demand, a unique buyer need, or simply luck. If I start making portfolio-wide decisions based on the limited data from my portfolio, I could easily head in the wrong direction.
For larger portfolio holders with many thousands of domain names, testing can produce meaningful insights across a broader swath of inventory. In fact, Michael Sumner’s (NameBio) observations helped me with pricing some of my inventory-quality domain names I have listed on Afternic.
For someone like me, trying to draw conclusions from a handful of sales or inquiries may be unhelpful and potentially misleading.
That doesn’t mean I ignore testing altogether. I still experiment and keep track of results in my head. I try to temper my expectations and avoid treating anecdotal outcomes as proven strategies. I also tend to not share because people shouldn’t assume something that worked for me a couple of times is a good strategy.
I suspect many other investors with relatively small portfolios face the same challenge. It’s tempting to chase gains based on some data points, but without sufficient domain names, offers, and sales results, testing can sometimes feel more like guessing.
