Morning Folks!!
The first question I asked myself was how do I carry these great domains for 20 years? 20 years because that was the timeframe I believed it would take for all this "Information Superhighway" as it was called back then, to hit critical mass. Most concern themselves first with selling the golden goose they just acquired. I wanted EGGS!
My thought process was how do I AVOID being forced into selling a domain name? My GOAL was to have as much of my entire portfolio intact in 20 years and only selling when the goose was perfectly Golden Brown.
My GOAL was NOT to sell domain names but to acquire and collect them until TIME ran out on that. It was a race against time. I was filling up my shopping cart. I was filling up as many carts as I could as fast as I could. The thought of selling was NEVER even on my mind. What was on my mind was demand for what I owned. The rest would naturally fall in place without me doing a thing.
But that was all BEFORE I began the process of monetizing those domains. That gave it an entirely new dimension. A profitable dimension. One I never expected in the volume it did. PPC raked in about $30 million over the years. Why sell?? Those eggs were being laid faster than I could count them or eat them. It was a windfall far greater than anything I had ever imagined.
At the time I had no idea which direction things would go. There was no mainstream and adult had barely begun. But adult was the only game in town for the first few YEARS!
Adult was the only way to pay for the domains I had and allowed me to keep buying more and more and better and better domains. I will never apologize for following the only trail there was at the time. I could have made tens of millions more had I had adult content. But I did not want the liability. Laws are murky at best. Any politician can decide to make an example of you. Just ask Sahar.
So I sent the traffic to third parties. I decided if they tried to make me liable for a simple link, then the entire Internet would just collapse as the Internet is all about links. I still believe that. Mugshots.com may have a problem, but try and go after somebody just linking to them. That dog won't hunt on this medium.
Fast Forward to today. My portfolio is still almost all intact (my original goal). The Golden Geese I have sold all made the DNJournal top sales list. Many in the annual top 10 or 20. I sold when those birds were golden brown which was also my original goal.
Thru all the naysayers I never veered off the path that I envisioned nearly 23 years ago. So here I am on the other side of my 20 year plan. What a fantastic ride it has been! Time for me to get back to the Geese!
I always believed that getting domains was like musical chairs. Once the music stopped, the best domains would be gone and never available again. So the key I really had, was a SENSE OF URGENCY!
Now when I see folks using that same game plan with GTLD's, I can only shake my head. It's just not the same. It's not even close. It's a bad dish with a terrible recipe and it has nothing in common with .com. Different time, different era, different demand, different needs, different audience, different EVERYTHING but these GENIUSES expect the same result. Not happening.
And as I write this it is reported that the biggest GTLD player, Famous Four, may be heading to bankruptcy. How much EVIDENCE would you like? Need more? Stay tuned as these folks start to DIE ON THE VINE!
Maybe it is time to question your sanity? If you want to have a real gut check, look at the domains listed on my post for GTLD's for sale. These are THEIR BEST!? Even I was surprised about the quality! A couple were ok. But by the time anyone ever hears of those extensions many of us will be DEAD! I never even heard of a few of them! I mean a nine letter extension to replace a 3 letter one? Really?? Why are 3 letter .com initials going for so much? Why are 3 digit and 4 digit .com number domains going for so much?
This entire Clusterf*ck is ass backwards as are half the extensions. Sorry, but verbs and adjectives usually go BEFORE the noun not after the noun. English 101. .Best is one of my favorite upside down extensions. It's best this and best that. It's not this best and that best. DUH!
Here is the 20 year plan for new GTLD's for domain INVESTORS: You will all be broke and most of the registries will be as well.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
R P
Thank you for coming back and blogging. The DomainKing speaks his mind without worrying about ruffling feathers. My goal was never to sell as well.
In order to do that my mindset was that I didn’t even own the domains. On my books they were worth $0. Just ignore them, and ignore the offers. Along the way there was a massive crash in 2009 that brought .coms on the market that were never previously available for sale. There was 2012-13 new GLTD hype that scared a lot of domain investors into selling their top tier .coms for cheap. And finally there was the numeric Chips divergence that took the focus off of true fundamentals, ie words and keywords of the domain.
During each of these time frames there was significant opportunity. The music kept slowing each time as the best .coms (not already owned by large corps) moved into stronger and stronger hands. The advent and proliferation of crypto has now further illuminated the value of premium .coms, making the comparison of domains as “digital real estate” significantly more mainstream.
TERENCE WYCHE
Thanks for the information its very informative! Glad to have a True
Professional still around dominating the domain industry and teaching us how it should be done !
steve brady
Pulling a Shane here saying a flawless driving record has offset my domain expenses. State Farm just wrote me a 6 Month policy for $260.
If you’re carrying a lot of GTLD’s better drive the speed limit. What are you going to do if your car insurance rates spike to $2000 a year, work from home?
One of the redeeming factors of Twitter is it opens lanes on the highway. If it wasn’t for the Internet, I’d be out cruising, racking up the points.
Shane Cultra
A 20 year plan and a Sense of Urgency is a tough combo
John
The vast super majority of new TLDs and SLD + TLD combos simply suck, period. And I’m saying that as an end user who likes to use and buy domains for use, without any thought about occasional selling for this opinion.
If you think I don’t mean that or mean what I say and say what I mean, you’d be making a mistake.
Snoopy
“And as I write this it is reported that the biggest GTLD player, Famous Four, may be heading to bankruptcy. How much EVIDENCE would you like? Need more? Stay tuned as these folks start to DIE ON THE VINE!”
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Remarkable that this news gets almost no press with other bloggers aside from DomainIncite whilst a puff piece put out by a new tld registry would have several writing about it. Part of the problem is new tld registries trying to minimize negative commentary market with sponsorships of blogs.
They’ve ruined the conference scene as well by filling it up with their worthless sales pitches.
Rick Schwartz
They sure post all the press releases and carry their water.
This is about the worst news GTLD’s could get and total silence.
And it does not say much about the smarts of domainers as they keep going to shows that ONLY want to present the GTLD Kool-aid.
Is there a single show without .Club on stage pitching or Registrars that mean NOTHING! What happened to the REAL domain investors?? No room for REALITY! At this point they are advertisements. They are infomercials, no longer information. Total waste of time, money and energy and you get fooled too and domainers are clueless as they get RAPED!
TERENCE WYCHE
I feel the .com will be around for a very long time even with new GTLD’S!
Vinod Reghunathan
To make a plan and stick to it is a great thing. All of us makes plans but we are never tempted so much to stick to the plan. You just broke those chains hats off for that.
ADE
A 20 year plan and a Sense of Urgency is a tough combo