Should you ever criticize the portfolio of another?

A bit of conversation today about critiquing another domain owners portfolio.

MapleDots started a post on Namepros giving a tip of the cap to Morgan Linton on his apology post to a .cx registrant.

Well I have looked at this from many angles for many years. Back when I started the .tv subforum when Namepros was not what it is today, when there was no such thing as a sub forum that focused on one extension, there would be some people who had differing opinions and then some people who just came to troll.

Now the community did not tolerate fools and it was dealt with every step of the way.

On the flipside, I never hyped or told one single person to ever register a .tv name. I don’t know your finances, business acumen, linguistics skills, risk tolerance, and last but not least, usually overlooked, your patience level. Many men and women can’t or don’t want to wait 3, 5, 10 years for a vision to come together.

I would always say, “why people who have no vested interest in another person’s money, try to tell them how to spend it, is funny.”

Now there are different discussion parameters, if you are investing and hyping you are going to get called out, doesn’t matter what anyone believes should be a professional decorum. If you are out regging .PW names for example and you are professing how great they are and how smart you are buying names in an extension with 18 recorded sales, there is going to be words of criticism coming in your direction.

If you just own them because you like them and believe they will sell, that’s a different story, no one should be talking smack to you.

I have always believed it depends if someone is asking for an opinion or hyping, well then there will be some words back.

Domaining doesn’t have a qualifying set of professional standards, if I was a Nascar driver, at a minimum I would know everyone on the racetrack with me in the upcoming event, knows how to drive, they might be better or worse as a driver but at least I know they can drive. In domaining everyone does not know how to drive. You need some currency and you can register a domain and BOOM you are a domainer, at least in your own eyes.

The other thing about domaining is it’s still a very solitary, sometimes lonely business and that also means you don’t know what someone else knows. They might have a deeper knowledge or even better a deeper reach in an industry where they have access to people who will listen to their pitch and might buy a name that if I owned, I would have no chance of getting heard.

The way I thought new gtlds could have any success was to pick an area or industry where you have above average knowledge or contacts, try to educate and actively sell to your network or industry.

There are some domainers that have great success selling Geo related names  and real estate based names because they were in those fields or locations. They had a leg up on other domain investors who did not come from real estate or have a family of realtors.

Many people in this world have interesting stories but if you have contacts in Hollywood, there is a greater chance of your story getting made into a movie, at the very least you will get a meeting to pitch your screenplay more often than someone with no ties but feels they have a knack for storytelling.

Domaining sometimes reminds me of Poker, where someone who is deemed a “fish” gets berated at a table when they suck out on someone. The person who believes they are a pro keeps berating the person until they leave. Others at the table get pissed not at the “fish” but at the loudmouth who chased the fish away. They have the belief the fish will eventually call off all their money, they don’t want them leaving the table.

Domain investors should be glad there are people doing things they would never invest in. It means less competition in whatever your strategy happens to be. If you have say 1000 people for hypothetical purposes, investing in alt extensions and you convince them they are fools, that only privately owned .coms and expiring auctions are the one true way, well now you just created 1000 new competitors for yourself. Why would you want that?

Commentary is important when someone is hyping and possibly misleading or rigging a market, where other new investors could be misled or scammed, then people should stand up and say something, point out the facts and let people decide for themselves before they follow the pied piper of alternative domain names.

Another component is that many don’t want your advice, they want you to validate their choices and if you don’t you are just a hater. So a lot of times the juice is not worth the squeeze and people need to find their own way in domaining. Those who want advice and are willing to learn will usually do better.