Your domain journey. Share your successes and failures.

[ian]

Inspired by "the other thread", I wondered if regulars (and newbies) would like to share their journey in the domain industry. How you came to enter this industry, how you've got on, when you started, successes, failures, thoughts for the future. There are so many of you that I still know little about.

I'll start...

Originally had my hand in affiliate marketing through a 'television' based website I owned/own, taking advantage of not only products I sold, but the same products sold by the big players to at least earn a commission from lost sales. Hence my entry to this forum (from affiliates4u) back in 2008. Didn't do much more on domains until 2014 when some of you will remember I struggled initially with how to make a success of it in a industry dominated by the few that were fortunate enough to be here from the start of the www. Almost gave up at that point. My reason for entry was I wanted inspiration for a new business, brand or otherwise, and found that domains gave that opportunity with the diverse number of domains for sale etc. Ironically domains because "the new business". I soon realised that buying to sell domains was harder than I thought, but to my own surprise, to date I'd say 5 of my top 10 sales are from acquisition and resale (some had accused me of having it easy with the backing of my company - fyi all my deals are done personally and I pay personal tax accordingly, the business link is in tag only). I've actually found catching expiring domains to be most fun, the sense of gambling most day without the risk, though has taken a lot of trial and error, continued development, and a significant amount of of time up (I'm a workaholic so dedicating additional hours to domains per day is fine providing it pays the bills). As a late starter in this industry, I'm surprised how many opportunities I've found, but I always regret not jumping in earlier, maybe back in 2008. Disclaimer - I enjoy domains more than my other businesses most of the time.

Anyone else care to share their journey...can't be as boring as mine!

 

[davedevelopment]

I'm a bit of a part timer, but here goes...

I read this classic post from Scott in May 2009 and a week later I had a few hand reges! Joined AD around the same time and I closed on my first sale of a hand reg for £125 in July 2009. I also sold a couple more that month, including the minisite I'd put up on one of them. I went through the summer picking up a few more hand reges and using a couple of the public dropcatching systems.

By the end of November I'd made enough profit to get nominet membership and access to the DAC, wrote my own catching software and have been picking up the odd domain ever since, including a few £xxxx domains. I've only ever made pocket money from it, but it's been fun all the same.

I don't think I've had any particular failures, paid over the odds a few times, but nothing disastrous.

On a side note, I also got in to my current job through Acorn. My boss posted a thread looking for a PHP developer, I started freelancing for him in my spare time (I was in full time employment elsewhere), then in 2011 I joined full time.

 

[Murray]

2010 I was out of work, no skills, no qualifications

My brother took pity on me and hired me to do SEO for his company website, I knew nothing about SEO so joined forums and learned as I went along

After 5 or so months managed to get his website in the first three results for a lot of keywords (pretty much 100% spam links, spun articles and crap)

I also learned more about SEO, basic HTML, photoshop etc to edit the website when needed

In 2011 my friend wanted to start a business drop shipping bodycon dresses from China, needed someone to help with the website and SEO, so we became partners, her and her husband doing the fashion and customer side, me doing the website stuff

Think we started about July, managed to #1 for "bodycon dresses" after 2 months and were selling £12,000 worth of dresses each month after that, I think that Christmas 2011 we sold about £18,000 worth

^ That was also through mostly unnatural links, paying fashion bloggers and "urban" type US blogs, some on the sidebar, others posts, keyword links, pretty blatant

In early 2012 we got a manual google penalty for unnatural links, cleaning them up wasn't hard, just had to ask the bloggers to remove them. We got the penalty removed not long after, as best I can remember they replied within a couple of weeks

After that we lost our rankings, but we still had decent return business, using adwords, gifting bloggers dresses to review and getting sales, but nowhere near the earlier heights, so we decided to try a PR agency, £2400 a month, they got us in national news papers and magazines, company, HEAT & we had some z list celebrities wear out dresses like the TOWIE lot

I was hoping they would get us good links too but that didn't much materialise, was more just in print

I tell you what, being in national publications does absolutely nothing for your sales, almost a total waste of money

The only piece that ever sold dresses was in HEAT where they had a picture of Lauren Pope wearing a dress and saying you could buy it from us. We sold 20 or so of that dress over the next few days

So after giving it 3 months and £7200 it was clear it was going to be a waste of money; It's nice to be able to put on your website you've been in all these news papers/magazine but it wasn't worth anywhere near like being #1 in google

Later in 2012 I started looking at using expired domains for their SEO value because of an old post on the SEO forum I frequented, that led me here

I booked SEO domains at the stroke of midnight as early as possible with public catchers and was lucky enough to have a few caught for me, which I sold and paid for my Nominet membership and a years hosting with Dale at dropsystem

Around this time, I got fed up of working with my partners selling dresses, they were forever bugging me to make minor changes to stuff on the website, I felt very henpecked, so after I could see the potential of domains I said I've had enough and let them buy me out

You know what was really funny was after I left the hired an SEO company, 2 months after hiring them they got a penalty from google and the SEO company blamed me....

So I looked into the links the new SEO company had built, all footer keyword links on expired domains

I rang the SEO company and asked how in the world they thought I gave the website a penalty and not themselves, they said "ooo we've got a list of links here you built!

The links they gave me were all dmoz clones lol (we had a listing in dmoz from a year before because I was friends with an editor)

Yeah.. defo not your keyword footer links but nofollow dmoz clones causing the problem

That still annoys me to think about now, as you can probably tell

All in all doing all this stuff was good though, learned as I went along, made mistakes of course

So yes that brings us to 2013 and this post has been long enough already

TL;DR was looking at expired domains for SEO value, led me into learning about domaining

 

[Edwin]

Some splendid posts! I got involved in the domain industry in 1996, when I set up a web page on a few MB of "free" hosting space at my ISP that soon morphed into a "proper" site at igoldrush.com (I sold that site in an earlier form to its current owner many moons ago, but it was originally my baby). There's a little bit more about that at http://www.igoldrush.com/about

On the .co.uk side of things, I think it was around 2002ish that I started to look at investing in the UK namespace, and a couple of years after that when I ramped things up.

I'd like to share this podcast I did a while back, covers a lot of ground...
http://www.ozdomainer.com/domain-names-podcast-episode-12-with-edwin-hayward-memorabledomains-co-uk/

Oh, and a bit of related trivia: I was briefly name-dropped in the book "The Domain Game: How People Get Rich from Internet Domain Names" by David Kesmodel. I think it's probably out of print now, but if you want to learn more about the early days of the domain industry (although from a .com and US-centric viewpoint) it's worth trying to track down a copy.

 

[Edwin]

One specific "success story". Sorry, but the domain name and the company in question shall remain nameless. I hope you don't feel that takes too much away from the tale. Not sure how much of it is replicable, but it just might give you a few ideas...

I'd been stalking a particular domain name (owned by a very large company) for a long time. So I noticed quite quickly after they rebranded and stopped using it except as a redirector to the new site.

Then I did some digging and found out from old press releases that every year the company conducted a Christmas charity drive, with employees helping to raise money for a different charity each time. So I called them up and had a brief chat with their switchboard operator to find out which charity was being supported that year, and who was coordinating the collection effort.

I then contacted that staff member, and gave them a bit of my background, and explained I'd be willing to make a meaningful charity contribution to their XYZ charity appeal (i.e. demonstrating that I'd bothered to do the research) if they'd be willing to coordinate things internally with the right people so that I could end up with the domain name the organisation was no longer using. I also said that I'd be happy to make a small contribution (from memory, I think it was somewhere around £50-100) to the appeal even if their internal efforts didn't come to anything.

Took a few back-and-forths and a bit of hand-holding but about two weeks later I had the domain and they had a cheque that pretty much doubled their previous Christmas' fundraising effort (it was worth every penny, and I believe the name would likely have cost more had it been on the open market).

A great result, with oodles of positive feeling all round.

 

[Edwin]

Failures? Well, over the years I've dropped over 5,000 domains, so those registration fees really add up. "Brandable" .com domains, loads of Japanese IDN, some .sg and .be domains, and a couple of thousand .co.uk have all gone by the wayside at one time or another.

But fortunately there wasn't a single huge failure, just death by a thousand cuts

(I don't really count "selling stuff too cheap" as a failure, as generally it's been at the right price at that time e.g. I sold some nice generic .com names when I was starting out in the late 1990s for prices that would seem ridiculously low today, but they weren't ridiculously low then - but that doesn't mean I can't also think about what "might have been" had I held onto the domains until now!)

 

[Murray]

I will share a bad story, soon after I got my nom membership and dropsystem script in early 2013 I caught materialise co uk

Got an email asking how much I wanted for it, I said £350, they said sure we can do that

Buyer was materialise dot com

Doing that again I would have asked for and probably got a lot more

 

[RobM]

Bought a domain for $35,000 - put it at sedo auction and it went for $29,000.
Once had to settle out of court damages for a domain that earned me less than 30 pounds for about 10,000.
Bought a domain for I think around 10k. Moniker never sent the renewal notice and it went to another moniker customer without going through a drop cycle - moved everything away from them after that.
That's 3 good failures

 

[keys]

Worthwhile?

I would say so - registered 1/1/2000. First day of the new millenium and beginning of my domain portfolio. A good omen for subsequent years in the uk domains resale market, and sole income since 2004.

No particular plan, more a case of right time and place. After a slow start I received a few enquiries and made some sales, which funded more registrations and use of dropcatching services.

Download and mint, provided a welcome boost. The best sale by far was atlantic - see where it is now. Many hundreds of smaller sales along the way.

Prices and sales are in decline, but remaining domains should be adequate to reach retirement in a few years time. Nominet's steep rise in registration costs was not welcome, and there is more to come. However, it has provided a timescale and forced a change of tack which I now regard as a helpful.

With hindsight, less effort could have yielded much better returns, but overall it was, and continues to be, a worthwhile venture.

 

[ian]

Bought a domain for $35,000 - put it at sedo auction and it went for $29,000.
Once had to settle out of court damages for a domain that earned me less than 30 pounds for about 10,000.
Bought a domain for I think around 10k. Moniker never sent the renewal notice and it went to another moniker customer without going through a drop cycle - moved everything away from them after that.
That's 3 good failures

Would love to hear your story of how you came to be involved in this industry, and subsequently having that idiot (me) hassle you on DV bugs haha. Similarly for so many of the long-term members on here.

 

[bonusmedia]

Interesting thread. I registered my first domain in 1999. Sadly had no clue of the significance. Started buying commercial domains around 2010-2011. My strategy has mainly been to go after the best keyword terms in the niche - with search volume and cpc being the biggest indicators.

We are a small team developing comparison and aggregator sites on .uk EMDs - 'ronseal' sites. The vast majority of our revenue is from affiliate deals.

I've had some very good buys in terms of returns from developed sites but I rarely sell any domains. I did sell a hand reg from 2011 a couple of years ago for £12k.

I have a small portfolio of undeveloped premium domains that I consider 'investment grade'. I've bought plenty that tick the boxes for development but are unlikely to ever be the priority. I've also wasted time and money on lots of crap domains I could never use because I liked the sound of them, I expect to drop most of these but maybe sell enough to cover costs.

Never done any drop-catching. I've bought probably 90%+ from domainers, the rest hand-regs.

I've spent more than ever this year and we have some super premiums now, so my focus is on developing those.

The future of the market is unclear but I suspect values at the low end will fall and at the high end keep rising. The pool of really premium undeveloped domains can only shrink. .co.uk will probably continue to be the best domain for uk focused sites for at least 5 years.

There are clearly opportunities out there for those who put the effort in and there will always be new commercially useful terms.

As far as I can see there are better returns on time spent at the higher end, but much more volume and faster turnover in the low £xxx range. If I was starting out in domaining I would try something like @Federer 's approach to build funds and maybe invest in a few £xxxx+ domains for the longer term.

I think everyone starting out has to go through wasting money on crap before they appreciate what's valuable - that does mean there is at least some barrier to entry. My advice for newbies (take with a pinch of salt since I haven't actually sold many!) is to remember that the real value is only added to a domain when it is used successfully, and try to think from the point of view of end users. The only domains really worth having are the ones that add value to their projects. It's easy to dream of potential uses for virtually any domain, much harder to make them commercially successful. Domains that give brand authority and help improve search visibility and recall are going to add the most value for users.

 

[martin-s]

I don't do more than about £2k in domain sales most years - I'm here to buy and develop rather than sell.

I did nearly hook a high £x,xxx sale a couple of weeks ago for a name I paid £50 for, but it fell apart during Escrow.

Edit: I registered my first domains for use in 1999, but completely missed seeing the investment potential at that stage.

 

[monaghan]

Feels like "Domainers Anonymous" reading this thread

I don't recall how I stumbled on Acorn, I'd had a few discussions with various people on forums here and there about why they were selling domains that had only a few months left on their registration for many more times the annual renewal costs and never really got my head round it, all seemed quite daft to me, I joined Nominet as it was just not working out for the few hosting customers to be on 123-reg or other providers, they were just too unreliable for me. It was a year or 2 later that I stumbled on this "drop catch" thing, a little reading and decided, "I could do that", added the DAC to my membership and dug out the C# compiler and tweaked my automaton code to work as a drop catch system on the back of a Windows hosting server and even caught a few domains, sold the odd one here and there and started responding with PM's to requests for free catch slots. I've caught from LLL.co.uk's to the odd special name and just about everything in between, not bad really when I only started out writing the system as people were saying it was hard to do so I fancied the technical challenge.

I wrote the DomainJunky system mostly for my own convenience so it could look after bookings by itself rather than me having to respond to PM's and add names to the database The system was re-written several times and the current DomainJunky is a different beast now, but is still regularly catching names for people.

Success & failures, nothing major either way... What I really need is the patience to research names and catch and sell them for myself! I've sold a few for a reasonable return, both personally and through the company, but nothing to make me rich. I did the newbie trick of registering a few celeb names, but fortunately never got burned. Never had a DRS, but did get a letter from a solicitor in the USA over a name a few years ago, but settled that at a small profit covering my costs.

 

[DLOE]

I have been involved in domains for close to 10 years and I initially started my company buying/selling caught domains.

After a couple of years I started to notice that there were less and less good domains available so I changed tactics and started offering domain (portfolio) management services to companies and started building websites on my own domains.

So for the last five years or so I have been managing domains for a few companies who are willing to to pay a premium for someone who takes care of their domain registrations, renewals, catches and domain protection. Next to this I have been using my own domains and new registrations for my own affiliate and lead gen websites.

 

[max99x]

I fell into domaining from affiliate marketing, started buying lots of domains for building on, i've nearly always bought to build rather than to sell.

Biggest successes: I built and sold several keyword domain sites such as footballboots , fridgefreezers, minibushire .co.uk and sold them for xx,xxx each, also last month sold the domain Comfy for £7k when it was purchased for £350 a couple years ago.

Biggest failures: investing in several .org.uk domains and losing a lot on them, i.e spending 4 figures on them and either still having them or selling them for 3 figures! Got in at the wrong time with them!

I generally now only buy domains for building sites on and go for domains I can build a brand on rather than keyword focused although if it's a short one word keyword domain then I love them as they can be brandable too

I'm not really an active domainer anymore, I run a few ecommerce sites now. I do miss the old days of domaining though

 

[timter51]

Back in the mid/late 00s I used to do a bit of web design for family and friends. Around 2012, I'm not entirely sure what sparked the interest, but I thought it'd be fun to look into building affiliate websites for myself to earn a bit on the side. That ultimately led to me searching for "exact match domains", which in turn led me on to domaining in general. I started with just booking at public drop-catchers, earnt enough to register for my own TAG and sign up with DropSystem, then earnt enough through that (insolvency .co.uk at £10k helped!) to develop my own script which is where I am now.

My biggest success now is a domain sale this year for £50k, I was all ready to go bleating off to DNJournal when the buyer slapped an NDA on me. The domain was forming part of a larger portfolio of his that he intended to sell on, and did not want potential buyers to know how much he paid for the main asset. Along with that and insolvency, I've had a good stream of £xxxx sales over the past few years. I'm currently negotiating with three potential buyers on a domain that was only recently caught at a public catcher, I think it will end up in £xx,xxx territory.

Failures.... in the early days, Warrior Forum saw me coming a mile off. I wasted so much money on abysmal PDF guides, software, backlink packages etc. I've tried to erase that from my memory! On a domaining level, I definitely used to jump the gun too quick. One of my first big sales was a domain I emailed out to potential end users with an asking price of £8k, a guy got back literally within minutes offering £6.5k which I accepted and invoiced for, only for someone else to come back within the hour and offer the £8k. £1.5k "lost" through noob excitement. I also made schoolboy mistakes with a few early auctions, for example tripods .co.uk went for peanuts. Someone here then posted in the sold thread that selling during school holidays is generally not a good idea... bloody obvious when you think about it. I also auctoned tennisrackets .co.uk which only fetched a couple of hundred, only to see it then sell on Sedo just a few months later for £2k.

Domaining has been very kind to me over the past few years, it has earnt me more money than my "proper" work in education. I think my portfolio might be creeping in to £xxx,xxx value (I appreciate that means nothing until it's realised). My goal is to pay off our mortgage within 5 years, which will make life very comfortable for my little family. Onwards and upwards!

 

[martin-s]

I think my portfolio might be creeping in to £xxx,xxx value (I appreciate that means nothing until it's realised). My goal is to pay off our mortgage within 5 years, which will make life very comfortable for my little family. Onwards and upwards!

If you've done that well in the past 4 years, credit to you.

 

[Murray]

Domaining has been very kind to me over the past few years, it has earnt me more money than my "proper" work in education. I think my portfolio might be creeping in to £xxx,xxx value !

Great post

Would it be fair to say you've turned the cost of your first public catches, xx, into xxx,xxx?

 

[domainscot]

Lots good storys to read thanks for posting

 

[timter51]

Great post

Would it be fair to say you've turned the cost of your first public catches, xx, into xxx,xxx?

Yes, fair to say that. Which is quite ridiculous really!