there’s always talk of whether it’s “too late” for new domain investors to enter the field.
“All the good domains are already taken”, “I’d only be able to buy the dregs if I entered now”, “It’s way too expensive”…
all I can say is wrong, wrong, and WRONG. (I’m starting to sound like Rick Schwartz)
don’t believe me?.. let me give you a personal example:
I un-officially started [truly] domaining in 2006. Playing the Snapnames & Pool game - heavily.
Being a part of Pool, I became exposed to the .mobi sunrise event - this was in October of 2006. It seemed like an interesting extension, so I brainstormed a list of possible names to consider - names that seemed to make sense for a mobile application:
fantastyfootball.mobi (play fantasy on your phone)
traffic.mobi (check traffic on your phone)
weather.mobi (check weather)
trivia.mobi (play trivia on your phone when you’re in the line at the DMV, or waiting for someone at the airport)
so I tossed all those names into my account, half-ass-edly expecting Pool to actually secure any of the names for me..
But they did.. FantasyFootball.mobi and Trivia.mobi - specifically.
Both went to auction. I was high on FantasyFootball, cause I could see a mobile application built around that name..
Trivia was an afterthought - I expected the name would bid too high..
FF was up first, and I ended up bidding it to around $10k….and lost..
defeated, and beat down, I darn near logged out…until I saw trivia.mobi still there; had about 20 mins left in it’s auction..
I quickly moved my attention to it’s corner.
The bid was cheap’ish..around $150.. So I upped it.. $200. Saw some slight competitor activity, so I upped the bid to $260..and all went quiet..
and that was it.. trivia.mobi was mine for $260. Here’s the screenshot:
The .mobi extension was new, untested, untrusted, but who knows, you know?
Fast forward to 1/22/2008. DOMAINfest auction in Hollywood California. (I shoulda gone, cause I need to meet all the neat people in this industry..)
I was well aware they had an auction planned, so I decided to drop a few of my big boys in, rentalcondos.com and rentalvillas.com. And at the last second, I threw in trivia.mobi as an afterthought, with about a day to spare.
Weeks later condos & villas were turned down cause the reserve was too high. But they accepted trivia.mobi. And it ended up being placed in their live auction. First day.
And you wanna know what? the thing sold.. what was my reserve?
$8,000
$260 to $8,000
“those are my kind of margins” my brother text messaged me.
And please don’t take this post as me gloating, cause that’s the last thing that would cross my mind.. cause I’m well aware I’m still on the lower rungs of the domaining business.
I feel it simply shows that new blood into the industry can survive.
I simply love this industry, though. Love the model. Love it’s direction. and love being a part of it.
and - assuming the trivia sale closes..
Guess where all that money’s gonna be re-invested?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Domaining. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Congrats on the sale!
Peter - You are SO right! One more (not gloating) example. Recently bought surfaholic.com for $60, just sold it two months later for…..$3,000!
So it just shows there’s ALWAYS room for more players, even a noob like me can get lucky once in a while!
Cheers, Bob
Congrats on your sale. I thought I had seen trivia.mobi mentioned somewhere before. I appreciate the time you put into your blog and I’m glad you have shared some of the details of your experiences.
Congrats on your sale!
As a matter of fact, domaining has just begun to pick up speed, just recently, IMHO. These are my toughts…..
1. More corporations are taking note of the value in domains and beginning to acquire them for the industries that they are in. Thus, prices is constantly on the upside.
2. Funding/financing is more available for domain purchases.
3. Simply, the internet population is growing and businesses need good addresses on the net to function. The growth is even more significant today, because of broadband and new markets in upcoming economies.
4. The parking & monetizing companies are competitive, launching new and innovative parking solutions and making parking domains easier and lucrative.
5. The world is changing so fast, with new technologies, services and products launching at an unbelievable pace. Imagine registering domains such as USBflashdrive.com or spyware.com or even ringtones.com years back. Those terms are practically unheard of at that time, but today they are worth millions.
Today, hundreds of new launches are going to be killer apps in the very near future. Opportunities are aplenty to hand-regg these now.
Who says it is too late for new domainers? Those who are going to regret it in years to come
Happy domaining!
Al.
Congratulations Peter! We missed you here.
/FM
You are absolutely correct! I look at the expired domain lists daily and try to pick out interesting, expired 2 word .com domains that may some day be worth something. Such as stereofacts.com and pcleases.com. About a year ago I sold activeguy.com on Sedo for $7500 after seeing it on a list of expired domains. Not bad for a $7.95 investment.
Definitely not too late to get into the game!
Steve B
I just returned from DOMAINfest and as a new guy I can tell you the opportunities are still there. I think the majority of the action will be in the aftermarket but you can still make huge returns and it’s a fun industry.
The experienced domainers were great people and always would share any knowledge (I tried to reciprocate with some SEO tips as much as possible). I’ll be ramping up my investing in this space very quickly!
Aaron
Congrats on your sale, what a return on investment!.
Yeah you are right there.
It is NEVER to late to be in it to win it.
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