Over the last few weeks I had some interesting conversations. They were with friends who flip domains, they have no real development plans, no little to nothing about SEO or branding. One of the funny things was these were separate,unrelated conversations and all three expressed their disapproval of certain blogs or bloggers in the domain industry.
They did not like posts about branding, Facebook and one got on me about my posts from time to time about Twitter. I thought it was interesting that these three guys all had the same opinion about this. I never mentioned the topics to them and they don't know one another.
They asked me why some call themselves domainers and in their opinions they were not domainers. One asked me, "What is a domainer today ?"
The name of this blog is Hybrid Domainer for the very reason that imo you need to learn a lot of different skills and have yourself participating in development, social media and other areas. If you don't have budget to compete with the big pure play domainers I think this makes sense.
I am not saying my philosophy is fact, its not its just my opinion and the basis for this blog. So with that I found these conversations all the more interesting. I pointed out in a joking way that you can block blogs on Domaining.com. These guys are friends so I am sure they read this blog as more of a favor and I am appreciative of that. It was other blogs that were the topic of the conversation and it seemed to be something that really upset them. One guy said that blocking the blog was not enough. It disgusted him it was out there.
The second thing that made me think about the business moving forward was a post by Michael Berkens and thedomains.com.
Michael posted how there were no domainers participating as speakers or experts.
For an event called "Domain Fest" it is odd that there are no domainers speaking and sharing their expertise. Now to be fair T.R.A.F.F.I.C. put on by Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu does not take this approach and is domainers for domainers.
It seems like an industry that was just domainers has matured, with maturity some industry participants want to steer in a more broad based direction and others want to stay old school, buy, park, flip.
I think both ways are fine, its the beauty of this industry, you can go a lot of different ways and have success, there is no wrong answer. You just have to see which way the wind is blowing, for many parking has fallen out of favor, but for those with Internet Traffic .com it has not it has bounced back. Some tlds move in and out of favor with resellers, the same can be said about certain types of names. The whole key is knowing why you are regging domains and sticking to it, many have succeeded and many have failed trying everything there is to try. Just keep trying til you find what works.
Again IMO
Written By: RH
Great post,thanks for a post on domaining instead of who you find entertaining.
the biz is moving past pure play domainers. development is where its at.
Maybe you should do a post what we discuss offline. That most people worshipped at the top of the domainer food chain are outside the mainstream internet. The only thing that brings them into mainstream of internet culture is developing a site that gets alot of traffic or advertisers and makes alot of money. I reference people (or sites) that are well-known in the domainer community – and 99.9% of internet executives I take to have never heard of these people. Now that PPC revenue is declining, most domainers who have great names are trying to enter the mainstream thru development and business building.
One of the best blog posts by you Ray! Awesome job imo. I am thrilled I didnt spend 1 dollar at domainfest this year. I do picture attending a domainer conference one year but if future domain conferences are going be “building a brand” seo, mobile seo, rely on google traffic you will never see me in one of those conferences. If I wanted this-I would attend the vegas conference and how great these developers. There the gods IMO(well in there eyes) and any top domainer can crush there business with the amount of direct navigation they have. IMO.
I want a conference about how to bootstrap domaining, here the various successes of how people started small and look at there business model now. Elliot started with 500 bucks and look where he is now. Not bad being 30 years old or so. He bootstrapped his operation. The amazing return and guess what its in flipping domain names. Thats what got him where he is at now. Now he realizes he needs cashflow and diversify his revenue model besides buying and selling domain names. Makes sense. Perfect business sense. Same goes with Frank Schilling. Or a Rick. Everyone has different models. Everyone has different measures of success.
We have seen the “brand” type people hype the shit out of there developments and been done before at domainer conferences. That simple.
The Geo.com guys get it. Fred is amazing and his talents speak for himself on the geo.com platform. The newspapers dont get it one bit. There fucked. The geo.com developers get it and geo.com guys get it. Congrats. There the only group of people I truly respect in the “domainer world” when it comes to developing things out. Plus there brand is guess what? The geo.com domain name. Thats the brand. Brings credit to there customer base. Brings direct navigation to there site. Direct navigation + search engine traffic is pretty fucking amazing. Powerful.
I am a proud domainer and I learn each day. I am not a big player but I am beginning to make a living off domain names and will continue to do so as I grow. Direct navigation, generic domains and speculation investments. I am still a part timer but one day I will be at this full time and when I scrolling through the drops on my laptop during the day, up late watching drops, on a beach with a laptop tahts when I will say fuck yeah- I am doing it. But in the meantime I am not there yet and thankfully I am profitable. Feels great paying off a 16k credit card off. Fuck yeah. Feels great paying down on the house credit line(still a ways to go). Fuck yeah. Feels great going out to a high end hotel for drinks and good food. Fuck yeah. Feels great knowing I am making progress. And best of all, its off being a pure domainer who buys and sells domain names. Now having said this are all my names going to sell. NO. Am I an old timer domainer. NO. I bust my ass being a part timer and need to work 100 times harder then everyone else. Have I made bad domain picks. Yep. Sure have. Is every name going to sell. No. Domaining is speculation and investments.
Now the twist to things and getting out of comfort zone. I am learning wordpress and I do like websites for one thing one. 1. CASH FLOW. I dont care how a website looks. I dont care if I dont have a twitter account to go with a website. All I care about is traffic and cash flow. Fresh content. Commissions hopefully. I will say I do the powers of this but again I am not an expert in development or wordpress. Again learning as I go. WIll goofs happen happen? You bet. Just like my first 2 years bad domains. Losses. Bought I kept focused and I was determined to be a profitable part time domainer.
My next train of thought this week been when will these affilate guys get domain names and actually get what domainers do. Vice versa. Conclusion was it will never happen on a good portion of them getting the powers of a generic.com domain name with direct navigation. End users and the mom and pop places are beginning to take notice on domains.
So we shall see what happens. Its one crazy business we are inn. Everyone has different models. Different experiences. What works. What fails. But I am proud domainer and learning wordpress. I will always remember where I came from. Climbing up a mountain. Challenges. If things were so fucking easy every househould would be doing it. Heck 90 percent of people entering the domain space will not be profitable. Fuck yeah- I stuck with it and guess what im that 10 percent thats making some cash. Guess what I am not relying on google right now.
I surly hope future “domain conferences” will not be what domainfest is like. Networking cool. Drinks cool. Good food and nice hotel. Cool. But at 2k and to have mobile seo people on board, no domain speakers or domain flippers speaking is not a domainer conference. I call this the wish washy conference. This conference will get a lot of people side tracked. The people who know whats a good domain name. The people who buy and sell domain names. Again nothing wrong in trying things. Test things out.
The brand is the generic domain name. Brings credit to that end user with generic domain name. Domainers have the domain names. The traffic. The end users are going have to open up there wallets and if they want the brand(the domain name) like how Rick keeps mentioning.
Sorry for long post but this is my 2 cents. And guess what you can still enter the domain space today and work hard and learn. You will get there! To good health and fortunes everyone!
Regards,
Fuck Yeah
And also if I am going hear people how they own 1,000 domain names or 2,000 domains who buy and sell domain names, watch drops and they have a couple websites they are domainers in my eyes.
Dont give me a speech how there developers. Ran across 4 people like this. Not every domain name you own is going be developed. You spend more time on drops then on updating websites or gain advertisers.
Regards,
Fuck YEAH
That’s some comment FY. I think the business of the Internet is moving forward without the domainer, there are apps and new tlds and a lot more.
There were a lot of bonafide “domainers” who saw value in what was discussed at Domainfest. I won’t refer to him by name, but I spoke to one old-school guy who was from NY – he doesn’t own thousands of names, but he owns one amazingly premium .com.
His name has been developed for quite some time, but not at the level he’d like. He readily admitted he knew nothing about coding, and was probably leaving money on the table by not building out some of the aspects of the site that could be most profitable (from a direct advertising and PPC perspective).
He now has a plan of attack to do just that, based on some of the PPC and SEO panels at the conference, and a meeting with one of the new players in the industry specializing in premium development.
The beauty of domaining is that everyone has different models, and FY, your buy and flip model works very well for you. There are others who believe they’ll always be able to earn the same amounts by doing nothing but parking, and…this is changing. No matter how you slice it, Google changes their algorithm roughly 550x/year, and a lot of that has to do with eliminating low-quality sites.
Nobody is proposing that domain investors HAVE to do things one way or the other. We’re just acknowledging that there are different ways forging.ahead, and that for most people who don’t own 100k+ domains, it’s beneficial to evolve and test new revenue streams.
I would say domainers with Frank still do great parking, he does not take small fish, the smallest fish would make the domainers at Namepros jump and down if that was them.
FY flipping is good if you can do it.
George Pickering, I am in advertising at a brick and mortar that spends 7 figures a year, no one I speak to has ever heard of a domainer.
I was on wordpress for like 4 hours last night, flippa and “cash flow” buying and selling online websites. I see the powers of the cash flow issues.
Time for some diversification and learning curve. Outside my comfort zone. But just like domaining for me in my first 2 years, I will be ok on “cashflow” websites in the coming year. Determined to do well on this. Been doing this in domains by me. Hire the smarter people then me on this learning curve. Outsource the proper channels.
@George we may not agree on much or have different views. Hope all is well. Happy new year!
Regards,
Fuck Yeah
@fy you are delusional to think that domainers rank above developers, you know the people who actually create anything on the web.
There are far more domainers that fail then succeed its not close to being even.
Rick Schwartz and Frank Schilling and what 25 other guys ?
How many failed domainers ? >5000