I’ve been investing in domain names as a full time career since late 2007. I have bought my fair share of solid domain names, and I have also missed out on some good deals. Some seemed overpriced at the time, but looking back on things now, I wish I had pulled the trigger.
One strategy I try to employ is that I would rather pay a bit more than I think a domain name is worth wholesale rather than risk losing it to a colleague or competitor. If a domain name has such strong resale potential, the few hundred or few thousand dollars more it takes to buy it should not be an obstacle. In practice, it is very hard to do this without spending far too much money because it can be tough to determine where to draw the line.
Andy Booth started a Twitter thread asking people to list the one name that got away. Mine would probably be Values.com, which I previously wrote about Here’s Andy’s thread:
To fellow domain investors: what’s the one domain you look back on and kick yourself for not buying when you had the opportunity to? You can only pick 1. Mine would be https://t.co/S3t60VOl2C
— Andy Booth (@Chain) July 10, 2020
Earlier this morning, Peter Askew posted a separate tweet sharing his list of the highest priced NameJet losses spanning the last 10+ years:
Bidding on domain auctions since 2006. I’ve lost a lot of auctions : ) pic.twitter.com/l9KhtmbcFt
— Peter Askew (@searchbound) July 11, 2020
I looked at the losses, and here are some of the names I would love to have a second chance to buy based on their auction price:
- Trumpet.com
- Vida.com
- Rex.com
- TajMahal.com
- AloeVera.com
- Toot.com
- Badger.com
Of course I understand that had I participated at the time or been willing to pay more, the winning bidder may have also been willing to pay more. That means the sale price may not have been close to where it ended up selling.
I’ve made it a point to not ruminate on lost purchase opportunities (lost deals is another thing!). I continue to see good deals come on the market so I try to focus on the next deal rather than on the deal I missed. In looking at the list of lost auctions shared by Peter, I wish I could have a few mulligans!
The one thing I have learned about domaining and life in general is this: there is always another opportunity just around the corner just as good if not better.
My motto too–time, money, good health….and patience.
Opera.com
We were the winner of at least 3 of those names, 1 on the opening screen LOL
It’s interesting that they’re forwarding it “PassItOn,” which Namebio shows sold for $64k on Sedo in 2015. I bought Values dot TV off another investor years ago…which I realize could be considered a little problematic in the aftermath of Booking.com. But it is interesting that most of their site is video content.
Frontier.com. Could have pulled trigger at 50k, but passed (2007). It was owned by a small insurance company.
Crazy that GayPride.com was on auction just 8 years ago. Thanks this post!
Trumpet.com
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I think that name would be a on a few people’s lists. It was sold 2-3 times at fairly low prices, right before one word singular names really took off.
I had the chance to buy leo.com for 20k. At the time it wasn’t a great deal to me so I passed.