A New Domainer In Training
Been away from the laptop most of the day but sitting here now with a good friend of mine who happens to run the local cycling club. We will be taking over their website but in talking to me and following Twitter he has become very interested in domaining and also monetizing domain names. He comes from a tech and business background combined which I think gives him a leg up.
He will be a "project" for me and I am going to work with him each step of the way, we have already went down the initial things not to do:
1) Trademarks
2) Collecting with no plan
3) Buying 100 names your first month
I will be pointing him to a few posts I have done in the past that outline places to go to research domaining before he buys his first name (follow domaining.com, DNjournal.com, DNForum.com, etc, etc). And I plan on showing him how to use Estibot.com, Valuate.com and others to get data on sites (not for pricing but for DATA). This ought to be a fun little adventure and I will keep you updated on his progress.
All that said, if someone were to come up to you today and ask for advice on getting started in domain INVESTING (not development but investing) what advice would you give them? What sites would you send them too?
Please comment with your thoughts.
Great question Bruce and glad to see another interested soul in domaining….as I have stated in other blog posts, I am working to bridge the gap between the domain industry and mainstream business owners and entrepreneurs….
I am attempting to accomplish this via http://www.AllInternetIdeas.com and specific to your question, I have begun to put together resource sections like the one for domaining – http://www.AllInternetIdeas.com/domain-names.php
I am very curious to see other resources mentioned by fellow domainers…keep up the great work Bruce and Happy Holidays
Andrew Hazen
http://www.AndrewHazen.com
http://www.PrimeVisibility.com
Hi Bruce, I remembered when I was starting out, you were one of the first people that helped me out with the ins and outs of this industry.
One tip that’ll help I believe is to think about the End User when investing
@Andrew – Thanks much bud. I am pointing him to the resources you have above. Should be good to see him take it from scratch like this. Kurt is a very bright guy and what I like is that from day one he is focused on approaching it from a business standpoint rather than a collectors standpoint.
@TechFilipino – Thanks much for the comments. You are very correct, when buying for investment think about what the name would do for someone acquiring it, is it valuable at all?
Hi Bruce!
-Starting out I found the recent sales thread at namepros extremely helpful as it showed me what types of names people were flipping to endusers on a daily basis.
-Estibot is a great tool but I bought a lot of crappy names in the beginning because I relied on it too much. However, I do like how estibot quantifies the competition level for specific terms.
-One tip I would give is regardless of how many exact searches a term gets or what estibot says the value is, if endusers are competing heavily for the term then you will have a far far easier time flipping the domain sometime in the future.
Watch trends for new phrases or technologies that are likely to become future keywords.
1. Country codes, with the exception of .us are a good investment. In the U.S., .com has taken the place of the country code.
2. Stay away from .Org; this suffix has been mandated to be for non-profit organizations. If the rules for this suffx are enforced, you are in deep trouble.
3. Every category from A through Z needs a detailed directory to direct traffic quickly and efficiently to businesses and products, the .info suffix, a TLD, is neutral and is ideal for cementing all country codes and TLD’s together to make the internet truly universal in nature.