Domain Investing & Development - everyone read this article

[Cutter]

I posted this in the whois.net thread. r2d2 agreed that I should post this in a seperate thread for further discussion.

There is an article over at the Domain Name Journal about a young South American web developer & investor named Chris Chena right here: http://www.dnjournal.com/columns/cover070405.htm

Everyone here should read the article -- it is very good. This 27-year old spent $500,000 on domain names a few weeks ago. Read it!

To sum it up, he started out poor. His hardworking parents got him a computer, in 1999 he started his own 3D graphics company. After getting sick of the work hours he moved into the domain name game (and ended up working just as long and hard.) At first he was losing money but he turned around and started making it hand over fist.

He owns a lot of high quality Spanish domain names include the spanish word for games.

He buys domain names and develops them into full-fledge websites; thats quite a bit different than the 99% of domain investors that just buy and flip (arbitrage) or use them for PPC revenue.

Bottom line -- work your *** off and it pays off. Everyone in this forum is in a great position right now. In 10 - 15 years these oppurtunities won't exist anymore. Play by the rules and in 10 - 15 years all of us will be in very coveted positions.

I want to see myself and the other regular posters here become millionaires over the next decade -- or at the very least, be financially independant and own some killer websites.

In this article Chris Chena specifically states that the help from domain forums and other investors got him where he is today. I want to see everyone here succeed too.

1 year ago I was making nothing. Thanks in part largely to Website Publisher I now make over $1000 a month -- and its growing at about 20% a month.

The guys here, at blogs, and other boards have helped me out big time. I'm happy to help you guys out too. Because I'm out of school right now (I'll be a junior in college) I've been able to spend a bit of time on the boards. If you have any questions post them, or PM me directly.

Lets help each other out and make some money!

[r2d2]

It is an excellent and interesting article - and I'm pnly just about over half way through! Will have to read the rest tomorrow.

I dont quite get the way he contrasts developing a site against just putting PPC on it? Wouldnt you use PPC on a developed site? What is the PPC he refers to on a non developed site?

And yes, Web Pub is a large part of the reason for me making more money on the web now. All this stuff is very motivating and inspiring! I definitely need to work towards doing this full time, then I could really accelerate my earnings.

[James]

Everyone in this forum is in a great position right now.If you're thinking financially, then just say 'Post of the people'.


What is the PPC he refers to on a non developed site?http://www.google.com/domainpark/ I'm assuming something like this.

Thread sounds cool, Cutter. I'll take a look in a minute :)

[Cutter]

Meaning PPC by domain parking, an example would be a page like this: http://stockbroker.us/

This is what I see 90% of the time when searching for a domain to buy.

This is why domain parking sucks:
1) No one ever comes back to the site (unless they really don't know what they are doing)
2) No SE traffic
3) only type-in traffic, if any (type in traffic is a good thing, but really only works for generic words like game.com, etc.)

These guys may own a domain thats worth $20,000 but its only getting 200 uniques a month because they are parking it rather than developing it.

When I say everyone in this forum is in a great position right now I mean it.

You know that you can make money, and the resources are here to do it. People spend hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours to buy "work at home" jobs, multi-level marketing, all that crazy over-hyped self-employment stuff. This is the real deal. If you have a limited technical knowledge you can make money in this game.

[chromate]

A nice read. I like the bit about the domain that went from making $90 a day to $400 a day. That's what I really like about web publishing. You can make a small change and see amazing transformations overnight.

[Cutter]

I hear bossess refuse to give someone a 50 cent raise -- right now I'm getting a 20%-100% raise every month :D

[Bjorn_Iceland]

He buys domain names and develops them into full-fledge websites; thats quite a bit different than the 99% of domain investors that just buy and flip (arbitrage) or use them for PPC revenue.

Bottom line -- work your *** off and it pays off. Everyone in this forum is in a great position right now. In 10 - 15 years these oppurtunities won't exist anymore. Play by the rules and in 10 - 15 years all of us will be in very coveted positions.
This goes to show that the new economy allows people from every country to have an equal opportunity to prosper from hard work.

I myself know a very interesting guy who is a domain investor and who lives in the tropical paradise of Costa Rica.

The domain name system is not going away anytime soon, and new TLDs open up future possibilities.

Don't neglect to think about the existing domains that were taken by domainers, but that are released every day.

The good news is that the majority of these domains that drop are domains with good traffic, ripe for development.

The boom in expired domain firms the past couple of years hasn't exactly turned into a bust (see the latest article about Marchex: http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2006/september.htm ) but there are a lot of companies that relied on a vacuum cleaner-like aggressive acquisition of domains for Pay Per Click purposes before the current abusers who discovered the domain kiting loophole (http://www.bobparsons.com/DomainKiting.html ).

These companies had to pay full price domain registrations for their tasting experiments, and many of these companies are now realizing that you have to be selective about which domains with traffic you register, and that the quantity is not always good for the bottom line.

Their not renewing is our gain, and I can see this continuing to happen for the next couple of years at least as many such companies go bust and drop out of the market altogether, or sell their good domains to portfolio acquirers such as Marchex and Internet REIT to exit.

So, the future is bright, the future is still expired traffic... :)

[deronsizemore]

Thanks for the link Andrew. I'm definitely going to read it.

Even though I'm making nothing right now from web publishing and advertising, I really believe I'm getting started at the right time. Kinda like the technology boom of the 90's. It eventually phased out and slowed down. I'm looking at this like it's an internet boom that hopefully within 10-15 years will make me enough money that I wont need to work anymore (or close to it). Because I think in 10-15 years it will be to late and things will start to slow. So the time is now, and I'm glad I'm working to be a part of it.

Just hard for me to juggle sites and full time job.

[Kyle]

Amazing .coms are pretty much impossible to acquire anymore, even the ones expired and dropping. Expired domain drop catches like Pool.com and Snapnames.com have an auction system, so the people with the deepest pockets get the best domains (same people who already own many great names in the first place).

However, there are still excellent aftermarket prices on .nets, .orgs, and infos. All good investments.

There are LOTS of great deals to be found (non dot coms) for sale at Sedo.

[Cutter]

How nice to bump a thread over a year old!

[Kyle]

I didnt realize that until now.. funny.

[deronsizemore]

Yeah funny. Never noticed it either. Good post though Andrew! ;-)

[Cutter]

heheh, its interesting to read what I wrote a year ago. I'm just waiting for a the day someone can bump a thread that was started before they were born.

I'm happy to report I am making more than $1,000 a month right now :D

[New Media]

I never understood why people park their domain names. With just a little more effort people can make alot more. But I guess it's good for me.

Example
You have a travel domain name most people will just throw up a parked page and throw some type of ad's through google yahoo etc. Intead of finding sponsors for there website.

Lets say you get a dollar a click from an advertiser vs signing up with an affiliate that pays you 10% or more of the total package price.

What you will find is that the savvy internet marketer is the person buying the text ad through, let say adwords because in the long run they make more money.

Bottomline is to develop your domain names not only will you make more money per vistor but when you go to sell your website(s) You will be able to show much higher income that was generated from the site. This will be very valuble because good domains/website can sell for more than 3-10 times there annual revenue.

We have a network of real estate sites that has generated over 400K in real estate commissions so when that sells we will be asking for a lot more.

[Kyle]

Oh its real easy to explain.

The top domain holders making 6 figure incomes doing 0 work. They own property, deliver advertising, make $500k/year, and have truly 0 work to do.

They are satisfied, happy.

That is one reason.. the other is many just didn't know how. Creating content sites with great advertising solutions wasn't always an option. This is all changing... many top domain holders are developing now.

But there will always be that % who just don't give a damn, and happy with their 0 hour work weeks.

[paul]

It's pretty funny to read some of the domainer blogs and realize some of them are almost completely clueless about what it takes to develop a site. I think it's a matter of focus. It would not be hard to spend all day, every day, researching, negotiating, to buy/sell domains. Website development is a different animal.

[Cutter]

Geez, this thread just keeps getting bumped. ....Hmm, $1000 a month :)

[BertBagshaw]

another day another dollar

at the rate the $ is dropping it had better pull up its socks

[Marshal]

Its interesting to read.That's what I really like about web publishing.
Thanks for information.:)
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