Here's $2000. You're now a domainer. Go!

BANG

BANG

Joined
Aug 19, 2014
Messages
58
Likes
53
Degree
0
Here's an exercise that's relevant to my interests and I'm curious for everyone's opinions. Does anyone want to play along?

If I gave you $2000 to start from scratch and to build a small (Or medium?) portfolio of domains to hold, what would your move be? This is NOT for the purpose of building up a blog network, so don't worry about anything relating to that.

Let's assume $10 each for fresh regs.

Here are a few possibilities.
- Would you scour the recent drops and try to find 200 decent brandable names and just hope that you're able to sell a small handful of them each year?
- Keep an eye out on the dropping soon auctions (Snapnames etc, where you pay anywhere from $20-$80 to get into an auction...) and try to pick up some slightly better names?
- Brainstorm ideas for fresh regs? Maybe half-decent names in emerging niches and trends.
- Get a set of brandable domains and then have logos created to go along with them and sell them as a BRAND rather than just a domain? (Seeing more and more sites that do something like this... Generic name + logo included.)
- Just scope out a couple or a few premium domain names and put your efforts into marketing those?
- Put all your eggs into one basket? Maybe keep your ear to the ground until you find someone who's really desperate for a quick sale?
- Some combination of all of the above?
- What else might you consider doing?

Keep in mind that you'll need to keep some money in your budget for renewals if you're buying a bunch of domains to hold onto and wait for offers. For example if you started off with 200 fresh regs (or dropped names), you would need to sell enough to make enough for renewals within the first year.

Obviously I'm fishing here too, because investing in domains is something that interests me. I'm leaning towards putting in the leg work and getting a bunch (100-200?) fresh regs and just hoping that I can turn over even 5-10 a year to keep the portfolio growing. I know some of you are going to hate me for this because we've all had 100's of names we've looked up and found that they were already registered, jut sitting there unused. I'm not looking to squat on anyone's names although I bet there's money to be made if you find small businesses who don't own their domains but that doesn't interest me.

Personally I enjoy scouring the lists of recent drops (JustDropped.com) and I could even make logos for some of them, put them up on a portfolio site and try to market it. That's one idea... but...

So, BUSO... What would YOU do if I gave you a $2000 interest-free loan and said "Go make money with domains..."
 
What I would do is head over to domainer forums and find guys trying to liquidate their portfolio, and I'd cherry-pick the ones I thought had resale value and I'd negotiate very hard to get the best deals possible. I'd even pick up extra ones I didn't want if it meant I could drive the overall price down. Finding the desperate guys is the key, I'd think. The point being is that they've already done the leg-work and paid the premium prices and now they just need to recoup as much as they can as they exit the game.
 
I would mix things up.
  • I would start by thinking of 50 solid names that are available. ($500)
  • I would follow the drop sites and try to snag 5 decent names for ~$100 each. ($500)
  • I would buy 1-2 more names with the remaining $1000.
 
HMMmmmmmmm good question @BANG.

I don't know anything about appraising domains :( But I think I would go for the grand-slam and try to find one or two domains that someone is really anxious to sell and then take my time to flip them :smile: If 2k just landed on my lap I could be patient about the sale.
 
I think you are over thinking it tbh. Here's what I would do, step by step.

1 - Find a brandable domain name that will work within your chosen niche. Use a white board, sheet of paper, anything to brainstorm. Personally, EMD's simply don't hold much interest for me anymore now that I've seen what a little brandining can do. For me, my serendipitous moment was another member on another forum. From that encounter came my niche and my domain name.

2 - Head over to namepros.com and look at the Godaddy coupon thread. Fuck paying ten dollars for any name. I haven't payed full price in ages. Save yourself some money... adds to the bottom line throughout the process.

3 - Get some decent hosting! Don't get shared hosting. Somewhere down the line (especially if your site takes off), you are going to need to upgrade before the weight of visitors crushes that shared hosting plan. Do it now and save yourself some grief further down the line. I am currently using webair.com and I have to say that I absolutley love them. I'm on a managed VPS server with plenty of grunt, great storage and bandwidth allocation, along with sensationally kick-ass service and help. Using a good hosting solution also helps with factors such as page loading time in a lot of cases. How do I know? I have sites that regularly have over 10Mb of data to load and they all do it under a second. There is more to this, but I will get into that later.

So what's the tally so far? Reasonable hosting (for a year) and a cheap ass name = roughly around $545 dollars. I still have close to $1500 up my sleeve. WOOO HOOO!

4 - Find a theme that works for you niche. Believe it or not, that can cost you nothing. I use Wordpress because I am an absolute retard at anything to do with programing and code. All my themes are free. In a few cases, I have even bought a couple of "pro versions", but in reality, I've always used the free version because the little bit that I need to play with code seems to be easier on the free versions. I'd rather the flexiblility the free versions offer.

5 - Add some good content! Sounds like a no brainer but it isn't. I don't just mean three or four good bits of content, but a whole shitload.

6 - Brand that fucker! You need to plan ahead, so start preparing for the branding and the traffic leaks. In my case, the niche is very visual, so anything I plan to put on social media as part of the branding, traffic leaks, social backlinks, I watermark. If you don't have the money (remember, we are playing with 2k here), you can get Adobe photoshop 2 with Imageready2 for nothing, just google it. If that doesn't float your boat, try GIMP, which is open source and also free.

7 - Start to build a social prescence, but don't do it manually. I have numerous accounts on numerous sites to help build my social portfolio and drive traffic to that first niche site. I don't do any of it manually - except for Pintrest (I have to take care with my niche there) - and I do it with this plugin for Wordpress:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-networks-auto-poster-facebook-twitter-g/

The only real manual work is the creation of the accounts, after that it is on full auto. Oh, did I mention that the free version will kick-ass for you just as well as the paid version in the beginning. Upgrade at a later date to get the multiple accounts option, and it's only $47.
 
Last edited:
Okay, so you have your site up and running. You've added good content and started to build a social profile and getting those all important social signals. Make sure you are branding with your name in links or watermaks, or the whole idea of traffic leaks will be plugged. lol p)

You should be starting to get visitors pretty quickly from you profiles and a little link juice.

8 - Make sure your site is up to the task when it comes to load times on PC's, laptops and mobile devices. Go and make use of resources like these to increase you page load times:
http://gtmetrix.com/
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

Along with Google page speed insights. Use the free information to make the tweaks needed to make your site load quickly. Remember, a page that takes ages to load will drive traffic in the opposite direction.

9 - Now you can think about a little link building. Since I have started to build out a social profile I start with links from social bookmarking. I'm not saying this 100% correct, but it's the way I like to do it. It is my belief that once people see that other people have liked, shared etc. your stuff, that they are more inclined to do so as well. I always use one service for this and I only ever buy a small package to start with. You can find it here:
http://www.wickedfire.com/links-and...s-pins-tweets-mega-combo-v48.html#post2221934

If that is against the rules, let me know. I'm just trying to help, not piss anyone off.

Yes, I would only buy one of the two smaller packages to begin with. We'll say the second one which will round our total money spent to - $566. Not bad so far.

10 - Create a another niche site with your niche. Or if you will, a sub-niche. If you are going to be a brand and/or an authority, start building away. Luckily for me, the next niche within my niche already had a name. I was also lucky that the person that came up with it was happy enough for me register it (cheaply again) and build it out. I already have all the steps I have mentioned, so it's not hard to transfer this to the next project. So far the total for those keeping count is $571

11 - Work smarter, not harder. I'll be fucked if I'm going to spend hours, trawling through endless amounts a shit expired names to make my next step, which is building a small network of sites that link to each other (why not leak traffic from your own sites to another), and some serious link building. To that end I once again turned the the BST section of wickedfire, and in service called Lazarus links. For $50 dollars I got a great list of names that were free to register, had link juice, page rank (in some cases), plus authority in the serps. Now I'm not sure if he is still running this service, but there are similar services and programs like http://www.registercompass.org/ which will just save you a shit load of time, and time is money.

12 - Two parts - Build link juice and create your own little network of sub-niches within your niche. So... With the awesome list of domains from above, I started buying names for multiple purposes. Once again, I didn't pay full price for any of them, and won't when it comes renewal time either. In total, I have purchased around eight names from that list. One has been built out into another sub-niche site, with links to the other two sites, the rest have been 301'd to each individual site (some will be built out at a later date). At roughly $5 on average it means I have only added another $40 to my original start up money. For getting some life back into these old links, I use the dumbest and simplest free tool I can find, which is this one:
http://www.imtalk.org/cmps_index.php?pageid=IMT-Website-Submitter

Once again, remove it if need be.

At the end of the day, I'm still building out three sites and will be adding at least one or two more in the next six months. The money I've spent so far from the 2k you offered me at the beginning is a whopping $611 over the span of a year. :D

You may disagree with me, you may think some of my ideas are dumb, and that is all well and good. I just put this here to give people food for thought. :smile:
 
Last edited:
@learningcurve

Your post started out interesting but had a bit of a weak finish IMHO. The setup you describe is all well and good and is essentially building out a brand site along with a supporting PBN but I think what was being asked was how you would make money with buying $2000 worth of domains. Granted buying them and developing them is one way to go about doing it but I didn't see anything in your thread about monetisation.

So, how would you make teh monies in your given scenario? You've still got plenty of cash to play with....
 
RiverStyx said:
Your post started out interesting but had a bit of a weak finish IMHO.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your honest opinion, it is... appreciated.

RiverStyx said:
but I think what was being asked was how you would make money with buying $2000 worth of domains.
Click to expand...

Well, in the OP.

BANG said:
- What else might you consider doing?

So, BUSO... What would YOU do if I gave you a $2000 interest-free loan and said "Go make money with domains..."
Click to expand...

So once again, thank you for your valuable and honest opinion.

RiverStyx said:
but I didn't see anything in your thread about monetisation.

So, how would you make teh monies in your given scenario? You've still got plenty of cash to play with....
Click to expand...
If you need be told to test, split test and test again, then I'm sorry. If I need to tell you how to find an ad platform that suites your niche or audience, along with finding what type of ads to run, then I am once again sorry for being far too obtuse (obviously).

It was food for thought, and my take on what I would do with start up capitol if I was starting again. You can sit on your domains all you want (it's what I originally did close to ten years ago), but I prefer to be a little more pro-active these days.
 
@learningcurve Oh come on, you don't have to be a jerk to RiverStyx just because he pointed out that this thread isn't really about developing domains. Is someone having a grumpy night...?

(Maybe you aren't trying to be a jerk but "Thanks you sooo much for your honest and valuable opinion" definitely reads sarcastically, not to mention your response about monetization.. If I'm wrong, my apologies.)

Nothing wrong with developing domains :smile: I'd argue it's the BEST way to "make money with domains" if you want to take it that literally... But this thread is specifically about investing in domains, I could have been a bit more clear perhaps. :smile: Cheers!
 
I'm glad you got the sarcasm. It means he will get it too. My apologies for shitting in your thread though, if that's the way you see it. You did ask what you would do to make money with domains.

BTW, at least one of the resources would be a good addition to any pure domainer. I tried to add some value, not just an honest opinion.
 
Yeah definitely! I just don't think you really needed to jump down the guy's throat when he pointed out that you misunderstood the thread even though he wasn't very delicate about it, that's all... But I do appreciate you taking the time to share your advice (No sarcasm on my end, I mean that..)

4MIffFz.gif

^ that's us, @RiverStyx & @learningcurve
 
My apologies in advance to RiverStyx. I won't edit for what I wrote (an unmanly thing to do), but I will acknowledge that it was a little harsh and uncalled for. Yes, I have my cranky pants on today.
 
Last edited:
Hey @learningcurve no hard feelings. I was actually enjoying your post and it was very informative as to how you would go about starting a site with that amount of money. Granted not about domains but that's just one tiny point, and not the main one I wanted to make - thinking outside the box is always a good thing.

Its just as a lot of people on here are still learning it would have been nice to see a conclusion to your strategy. I'm afraid if someone new to the game reads it they'd get really excited and then be like.....???? Profit?

Do you see what I mean?
 
I get your point well enough. It simply is not as basic as saying "this is how you make money from it", as you probably well know though. :smile:

There's a lot of testing in between making money and true profit, and it is not the same everytime.

As for an end to my strategy, there is none, it's simply a case of continual evolution and testing, along with adding additional presence.
 
I guess you've already tried that domaining game... It's far from being a fast cashflow. Yes you can find great domains for regfee that you can later sell to somebody for a big buck. But the terms of your study task is not correct. If you give me 2k now, i just can't go and find 200 trade worthy domains out there. Even 20 worthy ones on auctions. Each such funding is really rare.

Lot of guys got the idea to try the domaining game, spent some grands on domains that seemed worthy, - and in a year they face the need to renew them and this is another few grands. Yes one good sale can pay all the investment off so that you can dump all the loser ones with no regret - but these sales are rare. In order to increase a chance for a good sale, you need to pick your portfolio super accurately and not just grab anything that stayed before your eyes. So here we came to the initial point - with this attitude, you may spend this $2k in like months, but spending it all at once in most cases would be not any smart.

Or you can park them or include to your PBN or to earn them in any other way - but this is outside your task terms.
 
The domaining ship sailed in the early 90's. Most of the largely successful guys just have old portfolios.
 
I would probably look for a decent names in the international area. Not long time ago I had a guy looking for a help with a .pl domain based site that has a very popular .com website up and running.
 
The domaining ship sailed in the early 90's. Most of the largely successful guys just have old portfolios.
Click to expand...

That seems a little steep time-wise. There wasn't even an official protocol for registering domains until the LATE '90s when ICANN came onto the scene, before then it was some dude and his computer doing all the assigning.... I would say you are off by about a decade in your estimation of the golden days of domaining.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back