Why Domain Investment is NOT for Newbies

So in mid-2002, I built my very first website with FreeWebs. Later that year, I tried out Lycos.eu’s free hosting as they provided PHP and MySQL. On January 1st of 2003, I bought my first every domain, gamersfortress.net and my online adventure as a webmaster really began. Sometime midway through the year, I picked up the domain evee.net to ambitiously start a hosting company run by a kid. Anyways, obviously, it didn’t work out so well, so I pretty much gave the domain away for free. Now, that is one of the bigger regrets I have.

Why am I talking about this all of a sudden? Well first off, let me apologize for using the term “newbie” in the title as personally, I don’t think that is a great word. However, as I consider my days then as a “newbie newbie”, I just thought that I might as well put it there in the title. Second, well, it’s that time of the year. It’s the domain renewing season for most LLLL.net holders.

About a year or so ago, after a match of soccer, I was heading home when one of my closest friends sent me a text message saying that the quad-premium LLLL.net’s are nearly all registered. When I got home, as I had a pretty good .net TLD registration price with Moniker, I spent about $130 dollars investing in 20 quad-premium LLLL.net’s. Since then, I’ve sold three for a price of $5 per domain and I have 17 domains that I’m thinking whether I should or shouldn’t renew. It is not the money part that is bugging me. It’s the entire future of LLLL.net that I believe I don’t fully understand or see. At the moment, I’m feeling myself more and more leaning towards dropping this buying domains for investment purposes thing. Let me tell you why.

You Can’t Win, Win, Win

At least to me, this is what the domain industry has been. I guess you could say that the stock market is similar, but I would have to disagree. I personally believe that the domain industry is, in most parts, for those who were there from the early days. Unless you are planning on coming into the market with some money that you can afford to potentially lose, it is just not worth the risk. You need to learn the tricks, have the tools ready, and simply be ready to make this your living, which most people can’t. If you have a short domain or some premium domain, the chances of someone just knocking at your door asking for a quote with a blank check for you to write is just not possible. This takes me to my next point about time and how domaining as a newbie is definitely just not worth the time.

Too Much Time Consuming

For the amount of time you would need to expect, you probably won’t get a lot back. Chances are that you may just have to renew and renew and renew. I’m not just saying the domain names, but I’m saying the tools, the subscriptions, and a whole lot of other stuff to keep yourself updated. Forums just aren’t going to cut it. You need to spend that extra time to reach out even further to even make a slight impact on the sale of your domains.

I guess that could be the same with all things, but something I learned was that even if you do put in a lot of time into it, you won’t learn much. If you put your time into a field of science, a business, or even a blog, you actually find numerous opportunities to learn. As a domaining newbie (not anymore, but still) you won’t learn too much. The person that buys a domain from you at a reseller price isn’t too interested in you. They are interested in the price. Sad, but true.

No Real Exponential Growth

If you’re doing business, you want your revenue to rise per year. From what I see in domaining though, not many people see this increase per year. I think the problem lies in the fact that not much affects the price of domains except for time, which in this field is availability. Even if you decided to invest some time to seek out end buyers, there is just so much that you can do in regards to the revenue. I just don’t see an exponential growth, which is probably why most people I’ve talked to do this for a hobby (which then, you can pretty much forget exponential growth as you’re just hoping for some few pocket money) and not as a full-time thing. Anyways, the point is that exponential growth does not seem possible with domaining, especially for newbies and not so newbies.

I guess this could be considered one of my sore loser posts after not finding any good sales for my LLLL.net’s… or a post where I am sharing my not so pleasant all the time experience in domaining. You can choose, but personally, I think it’s the latter. Domaining is definitely cool and for those out there that are successful with it, props to you. However, I just feel that for someone without (or sometimes even with) a huge capitol and just a newbie in domaining, I just don’t see the market as being a profitable market.

Think differently? Hit me up with a comment as I’d love to try my skills in this industry again. However, at the moment, I think I’ll either give these domains away on this blog, just drop them, or renew only a few that I feel I could maybe turn into a website (as I have a few pretty nice ones).