- Impact
- 439
My favorite antiquing show is Salvage Hunters, a U.K. reality show following modern-day treasure hunter Drew Pritchard. Pritchard travels the country in search of derelict gems and forgotten remnants of history. A lot of people get into antiquing, collecting what they believe to be valuable, resalable old items, but only a few actually make a living from antiquing. Pritchard, I believe, embodies the discipline and knowledge it takes to truly become a profitable professional in the tough business.
Much like successful antiquing, successful domaining requires this kind of resolute proficiency and control.
Profitable domaining requires a high level of expertise. In the show, Pritchard constantly surprises us with his rich knowledge of almost every old item he digs out of some shed, yard or garage he is visiting. He also surprises the owners with a lengthy teaching on where the item came from, what it was used for and a nearly spot-on price evaluation of the item. He also knows exactly what to pay in order to make quick money. If it’s just a few British pounds over, he wont buy. How many can say this of their domaining pursuits? Likely just the ones actually profitable.
In 2013 my personal losses in hand-registered domains (and a few won at auction) exceeded $3,000. I allowed over $3,000 worth of domains to expire that year, somewhere around 300 .com domain names. So far this year, that number stands at $1,000 worth of expired domains.
Had I had a deeper understanding, knowledge and discipline of domaining, I probably would have avoided a big chunk of this loss by not buying up most of these domains in the first place. Instead of having a scrap yard of domains, I should have been more like Pritchard and picked and chose my domains more carefully and with a better knowledge of my buyers.
The fewer (and stronger) domains that you buy, the more successful you will be in the brandable domain name industry. You’re paying less in renewal fees, selling more names and holding onto only a few that don’t sale. It’s true that occasionally a wild sale will come by and sweep a terrible domain off its feet, but this does not happen often enough to be sustainable. Getting your bad domains listed at marketplaces only hurts your profits in the long run. You’re more inclined to keep them, resulting in year-after-year renewal fees. This is ok for a handful of domains but it starts to eat at your income when you have hundreds (or thousands) of poor names listed everywhere .
Brandroot has one seller in particular that surprises me with his expertise in selecting domains.
The user has been listing with Brandroot for only 6 months (a BB defector) and seems to submit names very carefully, sometimes one or two at a time a couple times per week. Here are his current stats:
It’s very difficult, even for us, to determine a surefire selling potential name, but this guy seems to have a promising algorithm and shows that it’s not only possible to select a majority of great names, but it’s well worth it!
This is also better than my personal stats. This has helped school me more on the fact that this industry can be learned and isn’t just all about guessing, or hoping, what might sell.
In the show, we see Pritchard visit homes that have endless scrap yards of mostly junk that will likely never sell. These people are typically not the ones making the good money from antiquing; they are the ones collecting junk on the side and getting into more debt while selling to people like Pritchard who, on the other hand, exercises his expertise by picking only a few items from the junk, which he is certain he has buyers for.
I was buying almost any domain that sounded decent and was available to hand register. This was bad strategy and certainly not sustainable. I am finding it more profitable to purchase 1-5 domains per month, anywhere from $8-$5,000 than purchasing 100 domains a month for under $1,000. My profits have proven to come most often from names I personally love, and not from the ones I was “meh” and hopeful about.
@DomainVP made a very valuable point about the future of domains. People will catch on and they are already beginning to. They know that those junky domains can be found through hand registrations. It’s the ones that are truly intrinsically valuable that will be seen selling most often now and into the future. The ones they know they can’t register. Crappy domains are already a dime a dozen, soon they will be close to worthless and become only a continual expense to hold onto.
Brandroot gets several messages asking why their domains were rejected when they were all accepted at BrandBucket. We want you to be better and more profitable domainers and want you to make sales at our marketplace, rather than us building our market share. It is arguably better to have a smaller, prime selection then it is to have a bigger, second-rate selection. If you visit Pritchard’s website, which is where Pritchard sells the antiques he purchases from mostly big (and often impoverished scrap yards), you will see how few items they actually have available for sale. Almost every category of antiques on their website has only one page (or less) of items available. They can afford to pay employees and operate a successful business because of the vast understanding and discipline the company adheres to when making a single purchase. On the show we can see Pritchard selling many of his collections on the same day or within just a few days, turning profits very quickly.
More and more we are seeing premium names listed in the 5-figure range selling more often than second-rate domains selling in the low 4-figure range. We get a lot of sellers who want to list their “decent” names for 3k plus, but the fact of the matter is, we have sold almost none of these. And speaking with the founder of Namerific, we learned that they haven’t sold a single name above 5k. If you have been fortunate enough to sell one of these high-priced, inferior names at BB (as I have in the past) how many domains did it take for you to register, and of those, accepted, for that sale to happen, and what does your future in renewal fees look like for those names? You may be surprised to find that you made very little on that sale.
These extreme sales happened much more often in the past but they are slowly becoming nonexistent. Why? Because more and more we are seeing businesses starting up in the Internet sphere, increasing the overall knowledge of Internet related products. What was once a big mystery to most regular folk is now a commercialized and globally advertised trade, i.e. GoDaddy commercials during the super bowl. Domain names weren’t always an “advertiseable” product, but now almost everyone interested in the webosphere knows that a hand-registered domain is a search and $2.99 GoDaddy purchase away.
I encourage anyone in the brandable domaining sphere to treat each and every purchase like Pritchard treats his antique hunting, or risk failing hard in the business.
Only a few domainers will be standing in the coming years. It’s not a dying business, it’s becoming an established and understood one. As @DomainVP stated, “We profit on the lack of knowledge.”
Much like successful antiquing, successful domaining requires this kind of resolute proficiency and control.
Profitable domaining requires a high level of expertise. In the show, Pritchard constantly surprises us with his rich knowledge of almost every old item he digs out of some shed, yard or garage he is visiting. He also surprises the owners with a lengthy teaching on where the item came from, what it was used for and a nearly spot-on price evaluation of the item. He also knows exactly what to pay in order to make quick money. If it’s just a few British pounds over, he wont buy. How many can say this of their domaining pursuits? Likely just the ones actually profitable.
In 2013 my personal losses in hand-registered domains (and a few won at auction) exceeded $3,000. I allowed over $3,000 worth of domains to expire that year, somewhere around 300 .com domain names. So far this year, that number stands at $1,000 worth of expired domains.
Had I had a deeper understanding, knowledge and discipline of domaining, I probably would have avoided a big chunk of this loss by not buying up most of these domains in the first place. Instead of having a scrap yard of domains, I should have been more like Pritchard and picked and chose my domains more carefully and with a better knowledge of my buyers.
The fewer (and stronger) domains that you buy, the more successful you will be in the brandable domain name industry. You’re paying less in renewal fees, selling more names and holding onto only a few that don’t sale. It’s true that occasionally a wild sale will come by and sweep a terrible domain off its feet, but this does not happen often enough to be sustainable. Getting your bad domains listed at marketplaces only hurts your profits in the long run. You’re more inclined to keep them, resulting in year-after-year renewal fees. This is ok for a handful of domains but it starts to eat at your income when you have hundreds (or thousands) of poor names listed everywhere .
Brandroot has one seller in particular that surprises me with his expertise in selecting domains.
The user has been listing with Brandroot for only 6 months (a BB defector) and seems to submit names very carefully, sometimes one or two at a time a couple times per week. Here are his current stats:
- 69 domain submissions.
- 29 rejected / 40 accepted
- 42% acceptance rate
- 35% above our average acceptance rate
- 40 published / 10 sold
- 25% sales rate
- 20% above our average sales rate (very rough average)
It’s very difficult, even for us, to determine a surefire selling potential name, but this guy seems to have a promising algorithm and shows that it’s not only possible to select a majority of great names, but it’s well worth it!
This is also better than my personal stats. This has helped school me more on the fact that this industry can be learned and isn’t just all about guessing, or hoping, what might sell.
In the show, we see Pritchard visit homes that have endless scrap yards of mostly junk that will likely never sell. These people are typically not the ones making the good money from antiquing; they are the ones collecting junk on the side and getting into more debt while selling to people like Pritchard who, on the other hand, exercises his expertise by picking only a few items from the junk, which he is certain he has buyers for.
I was buying almost any domain that sounded decent and was available to hand register. This was bad strategy and certainly not sustainable. I am finding it more profitable to purchase 1-5 domains per month, anywhere from $8-$5,000 than purchasing 100 domains a month for under $1,000. My profits have proven to come most often from names I personally love, and not from the ones I was “meh” and hopeful about.
@DomainVP made a very valuable point about the future of domains. People will catch on and they are already beginning to. They know that those junky domains can be found through hand registrations. It’s the ones that are truly intrinsically valuable that will be seen selling most often now and into the future. The ones they know they can’t register. Crappy domains are already a dime a dozen, soon they will be close to worthless and become only a continual expense to hold onto.
Brandroot gets several messages asking why their domains were rejected when they were all accepted at BrandBucket. We want you to be better and more profitable domainers and want you to make sales at our marketplace, rather than us building our market share. It is arguably better to have a smaller, prime selection then it is to have a bigger, second-rate selection. If you visit Pritchard’s website, which is where Pritchard sells the antiques he purchases from mostly big (and often impoverished scrap yards), you will see how few items they actually have available for sale. Almost every category of antiques on their website has only one page (or less) of items available. They can afford to pay employees and operate a successful business because of the vast understanding and discipline the company adheres to when making a single purchase. On the show we can see Pritchard selling many of his collections on the same day or within just a few days, turning profits very quickly.
More and more we are seeing premium names listed in the 5-figure range selling more often than second-rate domains selling in the low 4-figure range. We get a lot of sellers who want to list their “decent” names for 3k plus, but the fact of the matter is, we have sold almost none of these. And speaking with the founder of Namerific, we learned that they haven’t sold a single name above 5k. If you have been fortunate enough to sell one of these high-priced, inferior names at BB (as I have in the past) how many domains did it take for you to register, and of those, accepted, for that sale to happen, and what does your future in renewal fees look like for those names? You may be surprised to find that you made very little on that sale.
These extreme sales happened much more often in the past but they are slowly becoming nonexistent. Why? Because more and more we are seeing businesses starting up in the Internet sphere, increasing the overall knowledge of Internet related products. What was once a big mystery to most regular folk is now a commercialized and globally advertised trade, i.e. GoDaddy commercials during the super bowl. Domain names weren’t always an “advertiseable” product, but now almost everyone interested in the webosphere knows that a hand-registered domain is a search and $2.99 GoDaddy purchase away.
I encourage anyone in the brandable domaining sphere to treat each and every purchase like Pritchard treats his antique hunting, or risk failing hard in the business.
Only a few domainers will be standing in the coming years. It’s not a dying business, it’s becoming an established and understood one. As @DomainVP stated, “We profit on the lack of knowledge.”
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