Domain Regrets & Mistakes

[LarryWentz]

Well I'm sure many of you who have been in the domain biz for a while have made mistakes/poor decisions that you regret.

Here a few of mine -

At one time I owned over 200 3 character .coms and have sold them all. If I had held on to them and sold them now I probably would have "netted" an additional $60,000-$100,000 ........ Oops. (one morning I actually registered around 120 3 character .coms on a big drop)

I rejected a $10,000 offer on a domain 8 years ago that realistically I can maybe sell for $5000 at the best now (unwilling to state name in case I get higher offer - HA!)

I failed to do proper domain management years ago and let about 10-15 quality domains like Torsk.com slip away.

I registered too many crappy domains earlier on and wasted money on 300 or so registrations which I have since let expire (good decison). Note - I see this mistake being done again and again by domain newbies.

I invested in New.net names.

I sold numerous names way too cheap (not in any big rush anymore). However - sometimes cleansing the domain portfolio is a good idea.

I failed to get in on the initial .info, .biz and .us domain rush because I was stubborn. I now like all of those extensions and have a number of these domains.

I failed to develop my domain names earlier on and missed out on masses of affiliate commissions and fairly easy top search engine rankings at that time. I still need to develop more sites so I haven't completely learned my lesson.

I should have purchased more names from others that were very reasonably priced. I'm sure I have bought over 200 names from other domainers but it should have been more.

I was lazy many times going after domain drops of quality names when their wasn't as much competition as currently now.


and your regrets?

 

[David G]

I can feel the pain Larry.

Many errrors including letting AEIOU.com and 7K.com expire because I did not want to pay the high NetSol renewal fees in the mid-90s.

 

[acesfull]

I talked to someone (not in the domain business) who said he passed registering the domain green.com in the 90s when it was unregistered, "because it cost too much." I talked to another (17-year old) who said he registered realestate.com in 1997, because his parents were in Real Estate, only to let the name expire in 1999.

I don't care to discuss my errors! (too painful)

 

[BELLC1]

My only regret was waiting until 1997 to get in the domain business. I couldn't afford all the $70 domains before then.

 

[stock_post]

Main regret: not knowing domaining when I started.
(Never cared to learn and it is too late)
Started in the appropriate time, but wasted lot of time.

Bought lot of names that not worth anything.

 

[fab]

At one time I owned over 200 3 character .coms and have sold them all. If I had held on to them and sold them now I probably would have "netted" an additional $60,000-$100,000 ........ Oops. (one morning I actually registered around 120 3 character .coms on a big drop)

Wow. Should have been there back then.

 

[Biggie]

i regret selling every name after it's been sold...

as they always seem like they could be worth more tomorrow.


i regret not buying everybody's "3 letter .com's" when they were selling for $300 > $500 as i regret selling the one's i did buy.

i regret not buying some of those "2 letter.com's" that were being sold here on the forum for $20k and under, some years ago.

but overall the regrets and mistakes are all a part of doing business

 

[DavidJames]

I've been in the game for a year now. So far my only mistakes is hand registering some of the most ridiculous domains you can imagine and not developing the good domains. The hand registered domains are coming up to expire soon and they will not be renewed...

 

[Bill Roy]

A few main regrets:

1) Having been affraid of developing domains for so long;
2) Paying people damned good money for what they could do (and they couldn't);
3) Parking domains for a pittance for so long (linked to '1' above I guess);

 

[Delton77]

Thanks for sharing these insights! I really do learn alot from other people's advice.

 

[thevirtual]

Main regret: not knowing domaining when I started.
(Never cared to learn and it is too late)
Started in the appropriate time, but wasted lot of time.

Bought lot of names that not worth anything.

It is never too late to "learn domaining".

The hand registered domains are coming up to expire soon and they will not be renewed...

Make sure the domains are not on Auto-renew. Speaking of regrets, I recently had some junk domains expiring at Moniker and they were on Auto=renew and were charged to my credit card.

 

[katherine]

My mistakes:

• being on the Internet at an early stage and not realizing the value of domain names... yet I used to trace domain owners on rs.internic.net
• letting a few valuable names drop years ago, because I hadn't developed them in 4 years. I was complacent, maybe I thought I could possibly grab them back later ! Eventually I bought them back, but one.
• selling a few good domains too cheap, just to offload portfolio
• being angry at domain owners when they quoted $,$$$ for decent domains
• like most of us, wasting money on fresh regs like pseudo-brandable names that I won't be developing anyway

 

[copper]

dropping realestate.com

 

[BELLC1]

Publishing my cool email addresses on websites before data mining for spam use came along.

 

[Poker]

Great idea for a thread Larry, it will definitely help others here. Couple of things come to mind that I have learned the hard way, that I believe are 100% true, and that always bear repeating. They are very applicable to domain trading/investing.

Mistakes -> Experience -> Success.
Mistakes lead to Experience and Experience leads to Success.

The above is true only when we learn from the mistakes however, and this leads to the other point.

The smartest people learn from other peoples mistakes.
Smart people learn from their own mistakes.
Ignorant people never learn from either.

One of the hardest things to do in business and in life is to take a good look at our mistakes because we often just want to forget about them and move on, but doing this only strips them of their value. Success is all about taking massive action, noticing whats working or not, and making adjustments based on what we've learned.

Often the main reason that someone is more successful than yourself comes down to the simple fact that they have made more mistakes than you have (because they have dedicated themselves more than you have to the pursuit) and they took the time necessary to learn from those mistakes.

Mistakes -> Success.
The beauty of all this is that, in the end, Mistakes actually lead to Success if you just commit yourself to the idea of making a lot of mistakes as cheaply as you can and learning from them as well as from the mistakes of others during your pursuits.

Also very important is that you never be hard on yourself for the mistakes that you make. A mistake is only a failure if/when you fail to learn from it.

 

[GAMEFINEST]

Great thread,

my biggest mistake? Not getting into this game earlier, people who make it big in the domain game are the ones who have their " head in the game " all the time..

 

[rajs1ngh]

Great idea for a thread Larry, it will definitely help others here. Couple of things come to mind that I have learned the hard way, that I believe are 100% true, and that always bear repeating. They are very applicable to domain trading/investing.

Mistakes -> Experience -> Success.
Mistakes lead to Experience and Experience leads to Success.

The above is true only when we learn from the mistakes however, and this leads to the other point.

The smartest people learn from other peoples mistakes.
Smart people learn from their own mistakes.
Ignorant people never learn from either.

One of the hardest things to do in business and in life is to take a good look at our mistakes because we often just want to forget about them and move on, but doing this only strips them of their value. Success is all about taking massive action, noticing whats working or not, and making adjustments based on what we've learned.

Often the main reason that someone is more successful than yourself comes down to the simple fact that they have made more mistakes than you have (because they have dedicated themselves more than you have to the pursuit) and they took the time necessary to learn from those mistakes.

Mistakes -> Success.
The beauty of all this is that, in the end, Mistakes actually lead to Success if you just commit yourself to the idea of making a lot of mistakes as cheaply as you can and learning from them as well as from the mistakes of others during your pursuits.

Also very important is that you never be hard on yourself for the mistakes that you make. A mistake is only a failure if/when you fail to learn from it.

100% agree with Poker comments.

mistake>experince>success

You never know untill you dont try urself.

Regretting just 2 things.

1. Getting into the business very late even after knowing about the business for last 2 yeares.

2. Hand regd. some useless domains (about 300+) which i'll let them drop.

Have learnt a lot of things from business in very short time and still learning till i die.

 

[katherine]

dropping realestate.com

You can't be serious

 

[tekz999]

I regret not buying all DNF domains 5 years ago.

 

[hugegrowth]

I got tuned in to domain investing for profit in Jan 2000, and regret not going after it harder, regging bad names, and not recognizing quality domains at the time. Also regret getting off domains and focusing on 'make money from home' type internet programs from 2001 to 2004.

But this year has been good, I've been able to get some quality .com's at what I consider cheap prices. There are good deals out there in the forums right now if you want to get into country codes, the economy has forced some people to drop prices, or some have taken on too many domains to renew over the last year and have to shed some portfolio. In two years we'll be talking about the missed opportunities in 2008.