By: RH
Best Comment on a Domain Blog 2012 ?
Eric Borgos wrote a very detailed and honest piece on what his 2012 was like, if you have not read it you should. Eric is one of the most humble and straightforward people in the space in my opinion. Personally I think Eric is too hard on himself. The link to the article is here
The post contained a comment from Troy that I thought was the best I have read all year. I asked Troy if it could be presented in a post and he approved.
"Wow! You are so honest. I really respect that!
It sounds like you have been drinking the domainer “kool aid” that
says having a premium domains is one of the most important parts to
building a successful online business. This is bull. The most important
things in online business is passion.
Do you love watching movies? Do you have a deep abiding passion for
it? Do you LOVE sharing that passion with others? If no, then you have
no business building out “WatchMovies.com”. Trying to do so without a
passion will at best result in a website that is not embarrassing to
you, at worst it will result in thousands of wasted dollars and no
profit to be seen.
Do you love “Local Guides”? Is guiding a hobby of yours? Do you read
guide books in your spare time? Do you spend time on guide forums? If
not, then what business do you have building our LocalArea.com? Just
because you happen to own the domain and can pay people to write few
hundred mediocre articles at best does not mean doing so is a good idea.
You built a website at LocalArea.com that is a mile wide and a foot
deep. Why would anyone want to go there for information? There are a
hundred better resources for each area you have on LocalArea.com so what
value does LocalArea.com actually provide anyone? Why did LocalArea.com
turn out so shitty? Because you don’t care about local areas, you just
want to make some cash.
I am not making fun of you. You are VERY successful in many ways
online, but the cheese has moved and you haven’t seemed to adjust to
that change. You can’t make money online anymore with shitty websites on
good domains (don’t get the wrong idea, shitty websites can be very
expensive to build). On the other hand, you can make money (fistfulls of
it) with great websites on shitty domains. This is the way it should
be. Money should always follow passion and knowledge and never arbitrary
limited items grabbed by “investors” like domain names or real estate.
In the past, if you wanted to make money online you just had to show
up for the party. The internet was new then and the real business models
for websites were new and continually changing. People that were just
willing to jump in and try it could do very well. You showed this with
many of your websites. You made a lot of money in the past. But that is
changing.
The internet is evolving (as it should). Gone are the days of made
for adsense sites bringing in big money. Over the last 5 years the
internet entrepreneur has had to evolve to a legitimate businessman,
with a legitimate knowledge of a legitimate business. You cant be a
legitimate businessman that runs a hundred websites. If you try it they
will all gradually fail. You need to FOCUS on that thing that you most
enjoy and give it all your time. Build something that is powered by
passion, your passion. Remove the idea from your head that developing
domains is a business. It is not. It is a cash sucking nightmare when
done incorrectly, and a less than profitable option when done right.
Follow your passion and you will do fine. If you don’t have a passion
online then perhaps you should look somewhere else. At the very least
you will still have a ton of valuable domains to sell off one at a time.
This response is not just for you, it is for all of us “domainers” that have failed to evolve.
Troy"
I loved the comment because it was so many thoughts I have had myself with regards to developing my own domains. I have had some niches that got traffic that I was just not passionate about, but I kept trying to force myself to get passionate. It was not only passion that was missing, but it was also an expertise on the topics or access to content that would stand out.
Still I spent the last two years kidding myself because of the traffic. I felt like that if I developed something that it would make a lot more than parking. I had a built in audience with the traffic but that traffic was from all over the world.
I ended up selling the domains so that I can focus on developing domains where I am passionate and want to spend hours working on.
You also cannot develop 100 domains at once, was another point Troy made, I agree and have said that its about building a business and you cannot build 20 at one time. It really is about finding the focus and having a domain about a topic you have knowledge, passion and energy for.
Thank you Eric for such an excellent post and thank you Troy for such an excellent comment.
Check out Thorstonewell.com and explore Troy's passion
And thank you, Hybriddomainer.com for putting it all together, and for having the sense to recognize the importance of Eric’s contribution to our space.
If you take a closer look at the numbers posted by Eric, you come off with one damn conclusion: Google has the internet by the balls. Everything else is vanity. Long-tail, exact-match, premium domains, category killer, you name it, means nothing until something is done about Google’s strangle hold on search. Eric owns every type of name you can imagine, he employs original content, custom scripts, dedication, passion, smarts, yet he attains single digit visitors a day on his sites. That means somebody or company has deliberately used bots to undermine his enterprise. This, to me should be against the law! And I bet you it is against the law for one company to strangle innovations by others. Something has to be done about, I don’t care how large an organization is. We just can’t sit here and watch somebody steal the internet in broad day light!
Now, no matter what any other domainer says, if contradicts Borgos, that domainer is simply fibbing.
Thanks again.
yes, Troy is spot on
and you were right to highlight
Wow! Thanks Raymond.
Love It! …. so Ray what names are you passionate about besides this one my friend 🙂
Happy Holidays – Cate
Thought-provoking post. But you might want to remember that there’s a growing industry of technically talented people who may lack passion selling websites to people who do have the passion but lack the technical skills. That industry should continue to flourish even in the age of apps, a proliferation of new TLDs and search engine monopolies.