There is a saying that goes "The more things change the more they stay the same."
After 25 years of involvement in the domain name business I have to agree.
- Free domain appraisals are worth no more than what you pay for them. Their algorithms do not capture the many unreported high-end aftermarket sales, so their appraisals tend to skew lower
- Domain forums that are active skew, HEAVILY, towards posts of junk domains. The ratio of actionable posts to useless fluff runs about 1 in 500-1000
- The best domains sell themselves, without broker involvement and ESPECIALLY WITHOUT "telling the world" how great the domain is.
- Brokers DO play an important role in facilitating sales by educating their clients about the inherent value of certain domains AND the track record of reported and unreported sales that support the broker's analysis.
- Vast sums of money is wasted every year on speculative domain registrations, that is, those registered with the intent to resell them as a registrant, and purchased as if they may be winning lottery tickets. People simply do not do their homework before making a move.
- Noobs tend to follow the herd, failing to appreciate that once a herd has formed the domains that might stand a chance of selling in the aftermarket are long gone (registered alread).
- Even exceptional domains may not sell, to an end user, for years . . and years . . but when they do . .
- Culling the herd of registered domains that attract no interest is wise, especially if they're being held for purposes other than eventual development by the holder.
- When a long-held domain is dropped, which almost always should be viewed as an indication that the registration was perhaps misguided, invariable some excitable fool will come along and grab it on the drop, re-register it on expiration, etc. (I pause to sigh and lament for those who didn't learn the lesson of my improvidence)
- Holding a large quantity of domains "for eventual development" tends to be a fools errand, one that requires the fool to held some exceptional domains (that sell) in order to insulate the fool from their dubious plans or belief that they will ever get around to developing them
- Something always comes along, like lower cost hosting, WordPress websites, SEO tools, and now ChatGPT and all its variants, to bolster the fool's belief that domain development is possible and might even be profitable #Argh
- Reliance on search engines for a living, derived from traffic to websites, is forever a fool's errand, unless either a) you are selling people on the idea; or, b) you are prepared to endlessly invest in efforts to carve out a bit of search traffic . . in a world that has for decades been dominated by a search engine that appears determined to not have users click away (answer boxes, AI answers, etc)
- Some years in the domain market are golden. Some are enough to get by on. Other times one can hear crickets chirping. A good start to a year is no guarantee that the aftermarket will validate the depth of your genius.
- I somehow manage to continue to get older.;) :p
Well, it was nice to pay a visit. I have little new knowledge to add to the domain dialogue, other than I tend to be a bit suspicious of certain reported domain sales, which may serve only to excite interest and improvident "investments" in domains that, like so many, will prove a waste of money and time.
I hope y'all are having fun, making coin, and getting some decent payoffs on domain "investments" you made 25 years ago.
Amen.
