However there are some subtle differences in terms of domaining, keyword research, in that some domainers may buy a domain name and park it at a parking company, in other words they might put ads on it versus building it out into a website or a fully fledged business. There are some subtleties and things you’ll pick up along the way but that is essentially the difference.
This is our core business, we buy and develop domains. We’re full time and have people who do it for us, the development part. That’s all we do. We rarely sell domains. We only usually sell under exceptional circumstances but our core model is building out as many as we can.
So when you’re buying these domain names, if you’re not looking to sell, often when you sell something you get a big capital hit at that point in time. These businesses that we’re buying, or these domain names, we’re monetizing and it’s really about adding it to that portfolio, creating a cash flow and then building that cash flow, thanks to great search engine optimization strategies.
It’s literally about getting the domain name up to a certain point where it can sit by itself and you just get that passive income without us really doing anything to it.
I’ve been doing this since the dawn of time, starting on the internet way back when modems were around, dial up modems and BBSs and that type of thing. From domain name registering, we’re based here in Melbourne, Australia and before Melbourne IT, we were registering domain names through Melbourne Uni.
Melbourne University was actually the place to register domain names a very long time ago before ICANN and before any other industry bodies. You literally had to fax off your paper work or send it off in the post, sign your life away and eventually if, subject to their blessing, you may get the domain.
There’s been a huge evolution and we can see the way the market places change now.
There are quite a few stories because I’ve bought quite a lot of domains but a couple stand out. One of them was when we were bidding at an auction and it was a domain that I particularly wanted and I was very passionate about it. It was in a niche that we operate in. I happened to be on holidays with my family and kids at the Gold Coast and I ended up sneaking out of bed one morning because the auction was at 5am.
I’m sitting there in this big place looking over the sea belting away. At the time, there was only one other bidder and he was bidding against me at a really rapid pace. Literally the domain went from $60, which was the minimum bid, straight up into the thousands. I actually can’t remember the domain, it was a dot com but it was a generic keyword. It was one of those things at the time, now this was quite a few years back, there weren’t a lot of people around bidding in this particular auction platform. I won’t name it.
What ended up happening was the other bidder was bidding so much and at such a rapid pace I just thought, this is a robot, this is not some person who’s bidding, this can’t be real. So at 5am in the morning I ended up giving up on that, only to find later when I questioned the auction platform, the people who run the place, they said, oh, no, we can assure you it wasn’t. I checked into it and it was one of the world’s largest domain holders who operates out of the Cayman Islands who had a lot deeper pockets than I had.
Listen To This Simon Johnson Interview About Buying And Selling Domains.
Visit: http://www.davidjenyns.com
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