There are many things essential to being successful in domaining, after we get past having the financial ability to purchase domains, one of the most important is consistency.
Domaining is a 365 days a year business, there are auctions on weekends and holidays. There are things going on in every timezone.
Consistency is important because you don’t want to have random luck in finding names and opportunities. If you don’t search names daily but every other day you may miss out on a name that is one you are looking for at a cheap price, or maybe for a development project.
There are times when I have not been and being busy with other things I missed a domain. I focus on certain kinds of names, one of them being domains ending in media. I have always tracked all the llmedia.com names, they are all registered and rarely drop. A couple years ago XLMedia.com dropped and was hand regged, it was sold for $6,000. Not bad for a less than a year hold on a hand reg.
I remember not keeping up with my lists and tracking names back then, I had seen XLMedia.com the day after it dropped and was regged, now I don’t know I would have gotten it, but I would have jumped through a lot of hoops to try if I had been doing the usual work I do for those kinds of names.
Of course you get busy and other things can take priority, you may not be able to scan everything but at least you a couple tools to consistently be on top of your favorite niches.
Consistency on Domain Forums
You never know what is going to show up on a domain forum sales thread, a lot of the times you are frustrated, asking who thinks this is premium ? It can be a boring day in and day out exercise. Then you find a name that someone either needs to move cheap or they don’t know what they own, you pick up a domain for $20 that you sell for $1000 within a week. You need to look everyday to find the gems that could appear on one particular day.
Being lazy can cost you money
I am talking to myself here, I have had a few episodes where being lazy or procrastinating has cost actual dollars.
MissionMark.com was a domain name list for sale in the bargain bin section of Namepros. The seller was unloading hundreds of brandable domains. He was lowering the price every couple days, $20, $18, $15, so I kept looking at MissionMark.com and I liked the name, but I was complacent thinking no one is really buying these names, there were a few sales, but no one is going to pick out the one I am eyeing.
I go back to writing and check the thread a couple days later and now the names are $5 if you will buy 50 in bulk. I think to myself cool, I will get MissionMark.com and some other names.
But, alas MissionMark.com was not on the list, it was not sold but removed. I buy 50 other names and that bulk buy has been successful, I have gotten some of the names approved on BrandBucket. I flipped 4 of them for $25 each, sold another for $300.
I am reading the chart on DNBolt.com last month and I see MissionMark.com sold for what I think was $2,195 I don’t remember the exact but that’s close. I thought damn, you lazy idiot, all you had to do was post sold at $15.
Texting.io was a domain I picked up for $58 on Name.com, I knew there was one place to sell it and that was Flippa. I kept saying I will get around to it and before you know it, the domain is getting ready to expired. Did I really procrastinate close to a year ? Yes ! So I put it on Namepros and get $100.
I see a few weeks later the buyer sold it for $500 on Flippa. Now it turns out the sale did not go through but there were other bidders over my sale price of $100. So again being lazy I believe cost me a much higher sale price.
Those are just a couple of examples of mine, I also see it on Namepros where people don’t run their auctions for maximum effectiveness.
I did write a guide to sell better on Namepros which you can read here.
Josh says
Great post I have been lazy myself and I know it has cost me.
Ps. Wtf was David Waljer talking about on namepros ? Did he read the article ? Np is just a dumpster fire so glad I left there.
Frank says
Great advice
YamadaMedia says
There are definitely domains I’ve missed out on… that I would have used for my own businesses. Sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Hey, sometimes you got to out and enjoy life. Not think about domains, web hosting, SEO, etc. 🙂
You can’t buy every single domain name Raymond. There are always more opportunities.
AbdulBasit Makrani says
Very well said and admitting our own mistakes is another way to polish ourselves and get better in future.
JZ says
i miss out on domain opportunities daily. you just can’t be everywhere at once. you can’t search all the lists, you can’t be there for all the auctions, etc. also most people don’t have the money to participate at such a level anyways.
one case for me, if i just would of bid up a certain name past 300 instead of letting it go, perhaps i could of got that 36k sale down the road that someone else got. in the end, its important to not spend our entire lives chasing success, domains or whatever it might be and realize our time here is limited and enjoy life as well.
George says
“you can’t search all the lists, you can’t be there for all the auctions, etc. also most people don’t have the money to participate at such a level anyways”.
For those without money, take your lunch from home rather then having lunch out.
And/or stop having coffee at Starbucks for few months and you’ll have money to buy domains.
For those with money, have a step by step procedure to follow the days and hours you want to work a follow it to a T.
Works every time … believe me.
JZ says
Yeah, I’m sure that 10 bucks a day saved will allow someone to spend four figures daily in the auctions. Good advice.
Debra says
Who has that kind of money in the first place? I bought some domain names and ended up spending way too much, but I had lots of fun. domain buying is a rich mans business, unfortunately, at it is addictive. Now I am working on selling them, and I have told myself that if I do not sell any of the domain names I already have, I will not buy anymore. And not only do you have to buy domain names, you also have to keep renewing them which can be expensive.
domain gamer says
Lets face it Domains are in the toilet.
It is a buyer’s market now.
Krishna says
Good post. Hard work with a little bit of luck….