Domainer from 2000 returning to the fold!

[Charles Sweeney]

Greetings one and all.

I got into domaining in 2000 (along with millions of others!) at the height of the dotcom boom. I registered 500 names, which at the time were very expensive. I paid £15,000 GBP for them.

I only sold a couple. Sold LondonToLet.com for £5,000 GBP. Even made it on to CNN with that sale!

CNN articles from 2000:

http://tinyurl.com/cm75suz

http://tinyurl.com/bojt5gz

I gave up domaining and worked on my own sites. I recently sold the sites that were making money. Sold them on Flippa and now have $88K showing beside my name, which I'm quite proud of!

Once you've been bitten by the domaining bug, you never lose it, like a gambler I suppose! Been turning my thoughts to domains again, hence finding this forum and registering.

Back in 2000 the big sites for domains were afternic.net and GreatDomains.com. Looks like dnforum is a big player now!

I like the look of this forum. No junk on it and run by pros for pros, it seems to me. I'm hoping maybe to make some sales (trade prices!) and I'm currently working on a script for bulk checking domains (I already have a script I made for this but I'm working on a retail version).

Best wishes.

Charles Sweeney

 

[silentg]

Welcome to DNF

 

[katherine]

Welcome to the fun

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Thanks silentg and katherine! What does the DNF$ mean?

 

[Blue Wren]

:welcome: Nice intro.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Thanks, Blue Wren!

 

[DN BROKER]

welcome

 

[Ulysses]

Welcome to DNF

 

[grcorp]

Thanks silentg and katherine! What does the DNF$ mean?

Welcome to the forum! Excellent to see a veteran domainer to provide insight to our community. Especially an evidently accomplished one such as yourself.

To answer your question re: DNF$ - don't worry about it. You accumulate this virtual currency as you make posts. There is a marketplace on the site where you can spend your DNF$ on things like colouring of your username, gifts for others, and username changes.

I can't remember the last time I used mine, so I wouldn't pay a great deal of mind to it if I were you.

What is your take on the new TLD's such as .xxx?

 

[DomainMagnate]

I only sold a couple. Sold LondonToLet.com for £5,000 GBP. Even made it on to CNN with that sale!

CNN articles from 2000:

http://tinyurl.com/cm75suz

http://tinyurl.com/bojt5gz

Charles Sweeney

Welcome here.

That CNN article is rather ironic heh. I'm surprised you regged those names back when you could get many good generics still.
Have you kept all the other names till now? Has the investment been profitable overall?
Good luck with your future purchases!

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Welcome to the forum! Excellent to see a veteran domainer to provide insight to our community. Especially an evidently accomplished one such as yourself.

To answer your question re: DNF$ - don't worry about it. You accumulate this virtual currency as you make posts. There is a marketplace on the site where you can spend your DNF$ on things like colouring of your username, gifts for others, and username changes.

I can't remember the last time I used mine, so I wouldn't pay a great deal of mind to it if I were you.

What is your take on the new TLD's such as .xxx?

Thanks CureCancer and Ulysses!

@Maxwell. Thank you very much for your kind words! I've got pretty good experience of losing money too! I'm also learning about today's domain market from this forum.

Thanks for the explanation about the DNF$...a different coloured username?...tempting!

About the new TLDs. As I see it, the more there are, the more their value is watered down and the more the value of the king .com!! I have only ever registered non .com names to make up sets with a .com and even at that, probably just .net, .info and .org. There's so many of them now, it would be a nightmare to register a name in all of them, particularly if you had variations of the name too.

Cheers.

---------- Post added at 05:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:09 PM ----------

Welcome here.

That CNN article is rather ironic heh. I'm surprised you regged those names back when you could get many good generics still.
Have you kept all the other names till now? Has the investment been profitable overall?
Good luck with your future purchases!

Thanks, DomainMagnate.

Even twelve years ago it was difficult to get *really* good names. I was jumping on the bandwagon like many others.

All those names are gone now. Most of them a couple of years after registering them. I let them expire. I lost quite a bit of money on them.

At the time, the WAP phones were becoming popular and I registered a stack of WAP names but WAP never took off...how many people do you hear today talking about their WAP phone?!

It was also the time when business.com sold for millions. I registered PurelyBusiness.com and thought it was worth a fortune, in the way that owners of domains do! I eventually let it lapse. That being said, I think it would have *some* value today!

Cheers and good luck to you too.

 

[hugegrowth]

Welcome back to the fold!

I wish I could go back 12 years and do some handregging (with what I know now).

 

[Theo]

Almost read it as LondonToilet.com Which, surprise, surprise, is a registered domain. It might be of use during the London 2012 Olympics

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Welcome back to the fold!

I wish I could go back 12 years and do some handregging (with what I know now).

Yes, that would be interesting!

---------- Post added at 07:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:10 PM ----------

Almost read it as LondonToilet.com Which, surprise, surprise, is a registered domain. It might be of use during the London 2012 Olympics

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen a "To Let" sign that someone added an "i" to! I'm from Scotland, now living in London, it's "all Olympics" now!

 

[sashas]

Almost read it as LondonToilet.com Which, surprise, surprise, is a registered domain. It might be of use during the London 2012 Olympics

Nothing less than a mobile app pointing to the nearest restroom on Google Maps would do. Maybe they can later sell it to Facebook for $1Bn

 

[RustyK]

Aloha Charles,

Welcome aboard DNF. A great article.

 

[Charles Sweeney]

Aloha RustyK! Thank you!

 

[CupOfTea]

We all wish we could go back in time but we should only look forward.

 

[south]

We all wish we could go back in time.

Apparently we have been going back quite a bit.