Welcome to our new series “Part Time Perspective” a look some of the people who do domaining on a part time basis and juggle it with everything else. There are so many stories on the big time players that we thought it would be nice to shine some light on those that you would have never heard of. These stories for the most part will not be about six or seven figure sales, but they are stories that most can relate to since they are in the same boat.
Today we are profiling Dominic Belley who just completed his first year as apart time domainer.
Where are you from ?
I am from a small town called Sainte-Julie. It is located just 10 minutes on the south shore of Montreal island in Canada.
What do you do for a living ?
For the last 19 years, I’ve been working every weekday from 8 to 5 as an IT Software developer and project manager. I have been a part-time domainer for one year now and mostly as a hobby.
What is a domain sale that you completed that you can mention
One sale I can talk about occurred on eBay. I started buying 4L at the beginning of June 2015. On June 11th, after posting a “4L wanted” thread on NamePros, I acquired a lot of 8 domains for $630 ($78.75 each).
I made a small profit reselling 7 of them between $100 and $150. But the last one exploded. The domain was OWWQ.com.
I remember, the auction was going to end on eBay for a little over $100, similar to the previous 7. But the last seconds were magical. No better feeling than seeing two person fighting over one of your name in an auction.
In a span of 10 seconds, the $100 or so price was now $260. Final sale price!
That was on July 14th, only one month after purchasing the name. After the $34 in eBay/Paypal fees, I was left with a net profit of $147.25.
After 2 months as a domainer and 1 month as a 4L reseller, that was my first significant net profit and it is really the one 4L sale that motivated me to continue. Almost $150 in profit on a single flip, in one month? Yes, I wanted more like that.
My best profit on a 4L flip is $1,494. It was a chip.
I paid $1,106 and sold it two weeks after for $2,600 NET here on NP.
That sale occurred just at the right time, a few days later, chip prices started to drop.
*Dominic shared with us that he has sold some names for much higher prices but he did not get permission from the buyer to publish them in this story.
Dominic detailed his first year on Namepros:
Exactly one year ago, I was watching tons of videos on YouTube about ways to make money online as a secondary income. Then I came across the DomainSherpa video with Micheal Cyger and Michael Krell. That video is about brandable domains and BrandBucket. I immediately fell in love with the concept, so I decided to allocate myself a small budget of $200 and give it a try.
A week later, using plenty of GoDaddy coupons, I was already the proud owner of nearly a hundred domains. While watching TV, I was writting down all sorts of invented names that I thought sounded good and hand-registered the ones that were available.
Every newly registered name was instantly submitted to BrandBucket. At that time, there was around 10,000 domains on BB. Then one day I got my first one approved, and another, and another. Wow! I was so excited by those « We’ve reviewed your BrandBucket domain submissions » and « Congratulations! The following domains meet our criteria for listing. » emails.
But hand-registering that many invented words in such a small period of time right from the beginning of my journey was a huge mistake. I did not know it at the time.
It was taking around 6 to 8 weeks to have domains reviewed. That is a very long wait and it allowed me to register and submit so many domains before receiving a first feedback. In my mind, I thought they would mostly all be accepted and I thought I would make a lot of money with them. It did not turn out that way.
Months were passing and at one point I had around 75 published domains in my account and over 200 had been rejected. Luckily I published almost all of them with credits from the voting system. Preventing me from paying the $10 fees.
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At the same time I was submitting domains on BrandBucket, there was a lot of action going on with 4-letter domains. They were selling on NamePros for $65-$70. Of course I did not know anything about that sector. I was just observing an amazing amount of 4L being traded everyday and people seemed really optimistic to see prices go up.
Despite my lack of knowledge, I knew I could not let that wave pass without participating. I knew there was money to be made. The problem was that my initial $200 investment for BrandBucket was long gone without any return. For some reasons I have decided to trust my gut feeling and allocated myself a new extra budget of $2,000 to purchase 4Ls.
After buying a couple of domains here and there, I created a « 4L wanted » thread on NP and started buying in bulk to get a better unit price. I have been able to grab a few lots of 10 to 15 names that way and then the fun began.
I was flipping 4L like crazy on NamePros and eBay. It was very exciting and also quite profitable. It was all new for me, finally a bit of money was coming back. I was sometimes only making a net $20 on a flip but I was reselling so many that it was quickly adding up.
I was active on BrandBucket and on the 4L market at the same time. But deep inside I knew one of them was not right for me. I knew without a doubt.
I am not a long-term holder. I prefer liquid domains.
After 5-6 months on BrandBucket, I still had no sales. So I started to use my BB published names as liquid domains. I was selling them for 3% to 5% of their BB suggested price. Believe me, they were selling like hot cakes.
At that time, BrandBucket was really hot. An approved domain was instantly worth $40+, no matter what the name was. Again, I recognized the opportunity and took advantage of it and sold around 75 domains that way. I was submitting domains with the only intention of immediately flipping them to another seller. I was getting really good at choosing domains that would be approved. Any keyword with « sy », « zy », « zo » or « za » as a suffix was a sure shot.
After a while, I started to feel things slowing down and I decided to stop submitting names. I created auctions on eBay and NP to sell the 24 domains I had left all together. A buyer came along and that’s it. I was done with BrandBucket.
After that experience, I can say I did not make that much money by flipping BB domains, but it allowed me to dispose of all my published names and it also paid for the 250+ terrible domains I had hand-registered and that were rejected. All that hard earned money, us beginners are losing registering bad names was recovered for me.
New domainers beware. Do not try to do this today. It will not work. BrandBucket published names are nowhere as liquid as they were 5 months ago. You will not be able to resell them between $50-$100 as I was doing.
After that BB chapter, I have only been dealing with 4L domains, with the exception of a few closeouts domains here and there.
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My bad moves :
- Falling in love with BrandBucket and blindly invest my money and time into it.
- Hand-registering hundreds of domains without really knowing what I was doing.
My good moves :
- Recognize the opportunity in liquid BrandBucket domains.
- Recognize the opportunity in 4L.
- Watch tons of videos and read blogs. Be informed in the sector I invest in.
- Be professional and build relations.
What I want to improve :
- Build relations.
- Diversify
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Did I make a lot of money in my first year? NO !! I repaid myself my $2,200 investment plus an additionnal $3,300. That’s it. My first year profits reside in my current portfolio because I always reinvested my revenue into buying more domains.
My first year in numbers
My best profit on a 4L flip is $1,494. It was a chip.
I paid $1,106 and sold it two weeks after for $2,600 NET here on NP.
That sale occurred just at the right time, a few days later, chip prices started to drop.
My best profit on a brandable 2-keyword domain is $125.
I hand-registered a domain, had it published on BrandBucket and sold it on NP for $150.
My most rewarding sale came from my personal marketplace. I was on a 4L.
I paid $188 for a VCCC, Non-premium and sold it for $750.
Someone probably typed-in the domain name and was redirected to my landing page. Without contacting me first to negociate, the person clicked « Buy it now ». That was exciting! It happened on October 30th. I found the message I wrote on NP that day after my sale.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-345#post-5084196
I hand-registered over 300 domains. I don’t have the exact number.
I purchased a total of 182 4-letter domains and resold 152 of them.
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That is my review of my first year as a domainer. Wow I realize it is a very long text. Sorry for that. I hope it was not too boring.
Feel free to comment and share your thoughts.
Have a nice day.
Dominic.
Dominic’s website is at DominicBelley.com and he is selling 15 LLLL.com names at Namepros.
Thanks for reading.
T says
Love this give props to the little guy.
Congrats Dominic
Joseph Peterson says
@Dominic Belley,
Thanks for sharing your experience in such detail. That’s bound to help others.
Short-term opportunities for profitable flips come and go all the time. As opportunities are spotted, they’re almost immediately saturated. Maybe the most important thing people can learn from hearing about your first year is to keep their wits about them, remain resourceful, and be ready to change directions.
@Raymond Hackney,
Great idea for a series. Stories like these are far more relevant to most domainers than wild tales of success from investors who began in a different era. Also more useful than hearing from celebrities – who tend to slip in half-noticed sales pitches and who will always enjoy perks that their audience can’t replicate.
Most domainers do this part time, and that’s what I’ve always recommended people aim for. Anybody who does this solo full time is a masochist. I should know!
Dominic Belley says
Thank you Joseph.
I appreciate the comment.
Vivian says
As @Joseph Peterson said, great idea! @Dominic Belley, read it on NP but it’s still worth a second (or third) read-thanks!
Keith DeBoer says
In my mind there are four kinds of domainers: 1) Full-time making a living 2) Part-time earning a side income 3) Still learning and hoping to make some money 4) In the hole financially and about to give up. I have no stats but I think the successful full-time domainers comprise only about 2% of the domainers and yet they (and their sales) get 90% of the media coverage. This creates a lopsided view of the industry for newcomers and I’m happy to see this column attempting to make a dent in that incongruity.