This morning I read Joe Davidson’s excellent piece on the crisis in domaining. I knew I’d enjoyed it as I also felt the need to post a comment in his thread highlighting my long standing belief in that domainers are inherently lazy. Before I attempt to mitigated any fevered replies i might invariably get here, allow me to set out my reasoning and back up a little.
I haven’t been writing much recently due to a new job – as mentioned before – and Ive been completely entrenched in the development, marketing and the business basics of a new internet start-up. All of which I have to say has been really good fun and very rewarding, if a little stressful and time consuming. Note to self – must begin leaving the office before 7pm and not continue working once I get back home.
Anyhow, for the first time in ages, I spun about the domain forums last night and was disappointed to read the same old “groundhog day” griping i was reading 6 months ago, “XYZ’s parking revenues suck”, “we’re getting ripped off”, “we should start our own parking company”, “I need a business partner for an exciting new venture” [read: Ive a 6 word dot net and want someone to do all the development work for me if i simply provide the domain], “check-out my mini site” [read: here's a page of adsense ads and some duplicate content] etc etc, you know the drill. All of which left me a little befuddled and somewhat disappointed.
Back-up some more. This week, it was confirmed that Johns Wu had sold his one-man-wordpress-blog, yes blog, Bankaholic.com for $15m to Bankrate. Wu is just a 22yr old guy with a domain which, Im sure, if he’d posted in the appraisals section of the domain forums, would have had valuations in the sub $1k region. If he had been a domainer, perhaps bankaholic would have been parked and Wu would also be spending his time whining about it not making any parking revenue, instead of getting off his backside and doing something about it. Neither of which he’s clearly done and, if i owned a hat, id at this point be taking it off to him.
As I posted in Joe’s blog, there are simply millions of domains parked and hundreds of thousands of people who regard themselves as “domainers”. Aside from me not knowing of any mainstream platform (outside of the domain channel) that has been created by domainers, the fact that in over 6yrs since domain forums have come to the fore, I’m also yet to be pleasantly surprised to hear of any domainer turn developer go on to achieve mainstream scale with something “new”. I find this all ironic because, without real sites that other people have taken the time and the imagination to create, there would be no “domaining”.
As ive posted previously, there are some shocking changes coming to the domain channel, one of which being the drying up of ad feeds to domains that receive very little in type-in traffic. Couple this with the fact that there are no low hanging domain fruits left to garner anymore (including from any of these crappy new TLD’s) plus the fact that development is a snitch nowadays and you need know nothing about PHP and HTML in order to make, as Google requires, a “unique and compelling website” – you would think that now would be the ideal time to do one, some or all of the following:
* Brainstorm a bunch of development plans and ideas. Choose ONE and stick with it
* Pick your best name in a subject you have an interest in and develop it. Make it into a blog perhaps. Caress it, care for it, promote it, add content and do this every day.
* Don’t start with the ad revenue and work backwards. Start with the purpose of the site, find a good CMS (content management system) like wordpress or Joomla (or custom), decide on a layout (there are some great templates available), get some hosting and get started.
* Dont pick a perceived high paying channel if you have no personal interest in it. Like exercise for terminally indolent, exercise like development only attains longevity if its something you like doing in the first place.
* Add lots of content long before you add any advertising. Get regular visitors before you piss everyone off (yes, regular web users understand the difference between content and blended adsense ads nowadays) with a maze of google adsense blocks on the homepage.
* Benchmark your plan and set targets and goals like: visitor numbers after X months, revenue after X years, pages indexed after X timescale. Remembering that an idea without a plan is just a dream.
Or, simply sit about and wait for a nice 6 figure offer to come in whilst your rent is overdue.
Great post!
Oh “domainers” are too lazy, but you are”too busy” to write an article for your blog once a week. Sorry, never realized that.
Like you, they have their priorities perhaps. For them socializing on forums may be as important as whatever you are doing is important to you.
Domainers should maybe set their priorities straight like you maybe should when you aspire to have a blog.
I would say 95 % of the domainers know all these tips you give, but do not feel like it as they prefer/hope to make money in another way, just like they did not choose for certain other professions/studies, their choice.
I know for example that I should do all this linkbuilding, but to me that and advertising my sites is like behaving “like a whore” in a certain way and choose not to do it and choose to make less money
You are correct that making the choices “they” make ends their right to complain about certain things.
Appreciate your blog by the way, even if I do not agree on certain things, now if you just would not be so lazy and make more posts on your own blog……………
But maybe writing once a month gets you where you really have something interesting to say and not just fill up pages or/and push services you get paid for.Being’lazy” has advantages as well.
But then again I should not be reading blogs but I should be doing all these things you mention as what does reading mostly”services/domains pushing ‘ blogs and “lazy,bitching domainer forums” bring you in the end.
Blogs and forums are much alike, you just hope to get a tip/idea now and then and spend a lot of time finding it.
Great post – i’ve got quite a few names and am putting up about 5 websites every 2 months – sure they aren’t the next Amazon, but they do contain useful content and are easy to update. I’ve also got plans to build 3 of my better names over the next 2 years into larger sites that will hopefuly gain a loyal customer base.
James
Julia,
As always – right on the money!!!!!!
You have hit the nail on the head really hard.
Have you though about what would make Domaining a (more) successful business model?
Fantastic post, Julia. Most will simply blow you off and still “simply sit about and wait for a nice 6 figure offer to come in,” but if you can just get one person to see the truth, it’s worth it — at least that’s what I tell myself.
@namerca: I define domaining as buying and holding domains — while depending on appreciation and parking revenue to make money. With parking revenue drying up and appreciation grinding to a halt on most domains, I don’t see a profitable business model for domaining. Instead, do what Julia says. It’s way easier to make money with domains by developing them: http://www.askshane.org/business-models/how-to-really-make-money-with-domain-names.php
The thing about the forums is that it may not be the same people who were complaining a month ago. I think that there is actually a lot of turnover. Domaining at first seems like a gold mine. You can buy an asset for $8.00 and sell it for $1000. (If only it were that easy.)
If you check back into the forums every 6 months you are going to see some old familiar faces along with hundreds of newbies asking the same questions that someone *else* asked 6 months ago. *That* person isn’t active anymore because he or she has given up on domaining or is too busy with their day job to check in as often now.
I am now beginging to understand the nature of domaining. Good idea about development.
Developing websites and blogs for many, like me is BORING as hell. Every body online has a two bit rubbish blog or website. I prefer to buy domains and and sit back and wait for a buyer or take a long term investment view. Ive owned a website, and i don’t care for it. Im happy with my day job, and happy to invest in domains. Lazy!, i prefer smart.
“This morning I read Joe Davidson’s excellent piece on the crisis in domaining. I knew … ”
While I’m not even sure that there actually is a “domaining” industry that article of Joe’s isn’t about domaining at all, really.
Which brings me to … recently I’ve been reading about these bloggers like John Wu and checking out PayPerPost companies.
Which led me to a whole bunch of these sort of “self – help” type sites where someone starts off as the “greatest salesman ever” and guess what? They’re having a “webinar” – there’s a surprise.
Oh wait – and then they get these people with blogs to “create a buzz” – for money of course, a small mention is $5 a post and the good bloggers can get up to $150. Which isn’t bad but still the article (the one this comment is attached to) looks exactly like what I’ve been looking at.
Sort of like domain auctions. The quality of some of the domains that they sell sets me to wondering how drunk someone must have been to register the name and how much of a con-game the auction must be to have picked that domain as worthy of auction.
The only thing I can figure out is that the whole domaining thing is somewhat of a “find a new mark” game – the auctions are to sell their own domains a lot of the time and then all the “domainers” start the cross-promotion and go on about how the “industry” is a safe-haven for money, etc and eventually they find a few marks who buy those domains at auction.
Now, I consider myself a “domainer” but I’ve never put a PPC ad on one of my sites ever and I don’t park them either. I make a quick mini-site just so that the site gets indexed by Google et al and doesn’t get banned for being parked, dupe content, etc.
I do appreciate that bloggers can sell their domains but they are bloggers. I also appreciate that some people had lots of domains and they got their income through PPC but that doesn’t make them domainers, it makes them “advertisers” or something like that – they just happen to need domains. I still suspect that most of the income came from fraud – paying people to click on the PPC ads.
Maybe I’m wrong, but my sites usually rank well in Google and I check the traffic and the claims of the “domainers” about how much income they get never rang true to me.
Much as this article seems like a paid shill for Joe’s webinar. You aren’t a “PayPerPost” member are you? No offense meant, I’m just wondering if I can spot them now that I know that they are out there. I read some of the $150 posts and they really are very good, I could quite easily never suspect that they were commissioned posts meant to create a buzz.
I think I’d make the following adjustments:
1. Domaining sometimes requires its own set of skills, for example intensive researching, pitching and negotiating… the ability to spot an opportunity, when something is undervalued. Some people can make a lot of money by simply doing this – and they are happy to do so. Fair enough I say.
2. Development is probably pretty sensible if you aren’t earning great money through domain trading or parking. But I disagree that it’s important to choose something you are hugely interested in. Actually I think it’s more sensible to target the high value verticals since they require equal effort – but ultimately will generate more income once you’re ready to plug in the advertising.
3. If you hope to make money, then making money must ultimately be much more important to you than building a beautiful, perfectly coded and well maintained website. However, both things are important.
4. If you aren’t involved in internet business for the purpose of funding other activities or interests, then you have much more incentive to make your online work somehow meaningful. But I wouldn’t expect to make money if this is the case.
Your right… we are lazy. Even the SEDO’s of the world are lazy. They don’t market your names, optimize or anything else. Everyone is lazy. Domains are a risk and too many people want to much.
Excellent post!
The only other viable model is end user domain sales. This requires a special dedication and skill set to pro actively reach out to end users. Passive methods don’t work.
Mark
Nice spot Greg, but as you can see there are actually no advertisements on this blog.. So, although i love a good conspiracy theory myself, this time its a little off the mark
There again, you may have spotted an affiliate link in the body text – but dont shoot me for that 
Interesting points Jamien as ever…
“Nice spot Greg, but as you can see there are actually no advertisements on this blog.. ”
…. well, you see, that is my point – bloggers get paid for ‘creating buzz’, not for being an affiliate (necessarily). They don’t even necessarily have links.
I went to check out John Wu’s Bankaholic – looked at some of the comments in this thread – http://www.bankaholic.com/653/financial-armageddon/ – and everyone is ‘wtf?, why would you say that?’ when John wants to bail out the banks and then a few days later comes the $15 million dollar buy …. oh, now I see why John said “bail them out”.
To me it isn’t necessarily that domainers are lazy they might just have some morality thing where click-fraud is OK but misleading your fellow citizens for filthy lucre goes beyond the pale.
Anyway, like I said, I mean no offense but the lack of advertisements and/or affiliate links means nothing. I still think that the point of your article is to get people to sign up for the webinar and I imagine there to be financial motive.
I see shadows everywhere.
You are spot on Julia – great read – developing domain names requires hard work – who wants to work hard these day’s ?
Keep up the great post – YOU ROCK
You have all the ingredients in this post to get someone started toward success. Lazy can a good thing if someone can achieve making the most money with the least time spent. There is not easy way to make millions but the internet offers the best recipe toward that logic. Johns Wu kept his costs down but succeeded my by utilizing what he had an abundance of; “his time” well spent.
You need to have a hat or something
Doug
Awesome insight and perspective- however your use of jargon and buzz words is a bit too much for me
I’s just saying 