Develop or sell?

willbon · Feb 27, 2010

Hi fellow domainers....

In need of some advice.....What shall I do?

Amongst others I have these domains.... ecoreview website domains and I was looking to develop these over a period... but I've not got the personal skills to do 'great' websites.. I can do something simple to increase traffic and ranking, but with my skills I'm not going to make these into 'retirement funds'... choices as I see them are:

1 Sedo - domain park and sell
2 Market domain names for sale to specific customers
3 Develop over a few years and hope market improves for my areas

Please take a peek at the domains and tell me your thoughts!

Many thanks... in advance

Will

WaftyCrank · Feb 27, 2010

Personally I'd say some aren't worth Reg fee unless they were developed for a purpose and got a lot of traffic. Some like the electric car charging etc I'd save and develop for future use. I think streetcharging or whatever it was will come in useful in the coming decade.

RSK3000 · Feb 27, 2010

Well, these are very speculative so you have decide how much you want to gamble. You clearly thought technological improvements would make these names worth good money eventually (your "retirement fund" as you put it.)

With any speculative investment you have to decide if the reasons you bought the names still apply - if they don't then forget the whole thing. If they do, explore ways of making them cover their costs - at least until you have money to develop. Perhaps you might think of letting some go - possibly the brandables - to save money to spend on the rest.

Alternatively, if you can develop one site profitably yourself then you could use the revenue to pay for a web developer to develop one or more of the others.

In my opinion, the way the internet is developing you cant be 100% sure that domain names will be the foundation of internet navigation even 10 or 20 years from now. If you agree then you might want to think about selling sooner rather than later.

willbon · Feb 27, 2010

Thanks guys...

Some good solid advice... just what i need right now!

I take your points - and it's nice to hear some clarity of thought!

Thanks...

accelerator · Feb 27, 2010

Having taken a very quick look, I'd say try and sell them. The type of domains you have bought aren't easy to monetise unless you run a real business in the sector, so selling them is probably going to be the most profitable decision IMO.

Rgds

rainbowjet · Mar 27, 2010

if after a year you think you'd still have the same question...save yourself from baby wrinkles and dispose of them ASAP.

Edwin · Mar 27, 2010

I'd let them all expire (or sell them on here to try on average to get your regfee back) and then buy yourself one or two decent domains (exact matches of products that people will actually buy online, with decent search numbers) and build those.

Having 100 near-worthless domains means you're starting at "less than zero" since they're not worth anything but you still have renewal fees to pay. It's like a hole in the ground when what you want is a nice solid foundation. Fill in the hole (drop or firesale the names) and buy yourself a solid foundation (one or two really nice names) and then build those out.

Of course, you could take one of your names and with a LOT of effort make it make some money (after all, you could do that with any domain name, even gfreuhfuefuyf.co.uk!) But 100% of the value will likely be from the site and the traffic.

Contrast that to starting with a decent exact-match descriptive domain name. That will have inherent value even before you build on it. Add a decent site, promote it well, and you can hope to make 2+2=5 (i.e. the value of the site with the traffic and income stream it produces, plus the inherent value of the domain name will be higher than the sum of just the traffic/income or just the domain would be taken alone) Why? Because if you play your cards right and put in the effort, you can start to turn the site into THE site for that particular niche product. And once you have a dominant position, that's worth more!

RSK3000 · Mar 27, 2010

In theory, there is nothing wrong with owning a small proportion of speculative domains, if they are part of a solid portfolio of decent domains. The problem here is that you own a lot of them and they they are not going to generate revenue for a long time to come.

Having said that, plenty of people have made a lot of money speculating in this way...............................

retired_member13 · Mar 27, 2010

I agree with Edwin. Let them expire or firesale them and use the money you would have spent renewing them to buy something better.

miked · Mar 27, 2010

Edwin makes a very good point about how it's much easier to develop one or two good domains than lots of no so good ones. However, I don't think the solution is as easy as 'buy a couple of good ones and develop them': others may disagree, but I think many domainers are being more unrealistic than ever in the prices they want to sell their names, and it'd probably be necessary to pay well over the odds for a decent domain to develop.

So maybe the only thing you can do is develop these. With lots of time and effort there's enough here to make money out of, but the question is whether you have the time and can summon up the will. Since you don't have any other domain options, I'd give it a shot.

Mike.

Edwin · Mar 27, 2010

Nonsense. If you look at a lot of the prices people are asking for recent drops that they're flipping the same day, they're often in the 50-200 pound range or thereabouts. On any given day there are many names going cheap in the for-sale threads that would be better to develop on than any in the original post. And with a bit of patience, it should be possible to find a real gem or two if you monitor the sales threads for a few days and jump in quickly when one rears its head.

There are also bargains to be had on DomainLore, amongst other places.

willbon · Mar 27, 2010

Thanks for the input guys...

The domains I have acquired are in the most part speculative and as I don't 'need' to make a living out of domaining, I'm hoping that a few of the more speculative domains do come up trumps. So I'll be hanging on to most of my 'ickle' portfolio - even if I don't make much money from it, I do have a selection of names I can use for any future businesses I have in mind.. or maybe something for my kids in the future!

From the beginning, my interest in domains has been not only the 'keyword' factor but something that seems to be missing from much of this forum which is branding potential and the use of a domain to represent a business for on and off line purposes.

I realise we all have our different opinions on what makes a good domain name, and at the end of the day the website content, SEO etc... is the key to ranking as well as the domain name.

Thanks for the comments, though, keep them coming!... It's great to hear the wide range of opinions expressed through Acorn.

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Will