Why developing your domain names might be a bad idea.
From time to time I read excellent blog posts that explain aspects of domaining much better than I can.
Nat Cohen delivered yesterday with a post titled “The Dangers of Optimism -or- Don’t Develop“.
His point in a nutshell: just because you’re a good domainer or have good domains doesn’t mean you can build a web business.
It’s very true. They require very different skills. I’ve seen countless web business started by domainers fail, although many times they’re afraid to admit it.
I personally sunk over $20k into Lakeway.com, only to make critical design errors, underestimate the feet on the street sales effort required to sell listings on it, and rely too much on the promises of third parties to turn it into a viable business.
Other development efforts (such as this blog) have worked out well.
Does the problem lie with domainers? I think it has more to do with the false view that all web businesses are successful. I’m not sure that domainers are any more or less successful building web businesses than the typical person. The truth is that most web businesses fail.
RH says
Andrew who ever had the view all web businesses are successful ? I have never seen anyone saying that they all were successful.
Andrew Allemann says
@ RH – the problem is people see Facebook and Groupon and all these success stories. They don’t realize for every Facebook, thousands of similar businesses died.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
Developing domain names is a crap shoot. Unfortunately I always rolled snake eyes.
Clobert Rine says
I developed several hundred sites in the late 90’s, taking my eye off the domain market. It was one of the biggest mistakes I made, not so much that I went into development, but that development sucked up so much of my time I could not pursue buying domains correctly anymore.
The day I actually left a successful online business and went back to being a domain investor was a great day, and in retrospect, a great move. I now have a lot of fee time, if I chose to be free, not encumbered by the relentless detail needed to run online businesses, and have a lot of great domains.
My point is that if you go the development route, expect to stop being a real domain investor. Domain investing, if done correctly, takes lots of work, experience, and deeply thought out purchases. In my opinion, you really can’t do both with equal zeal and do each correctly, so if you go the development route expect to give up domain buying as a concentration anymore.
You simply have to figure out which is the best trade-off, and then follow through. Essentially, if you don’t give up the serious domaining, you’ll half-ass the development.
SF says
I’ve always thought this concept applied to Two different areas of the business.
The simplest way to say it is to borrow that famous refrain from Dr. McCoy:
1. Damn it Jim! I’m a Domainer, not a Developer!
2. Damn it Jim! I’m a Domainer, not a Broker!
Hal Meyer says
Where can you add the most value? That’s the question to ask.
Joseph Knight says
Most businesses fail, land, sea, sky or ether.