The Different Types of Domainers
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Samit Madan May 26, 2008
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There are quite a few approaches to domains and domaining that domainers
take. Its like the stock market or real estate market to a certain extent,
everyone has their own strategy and most of them pay well for their proponents.
I've pretty much seen most of the types and will try and enumerate them to
enable you to follow what you'd rather be doing.
The Investor These are the sharpest of them all. Buy good
quality when prices are low, hold long term, sell high. These guys hold onto
assets, maybe even develop them, ensure that they’re hot and in demand when the
market is totally ripe, then sell them. The advantages of emulating this type is
that you can afford to sell 1% of your portfolio each year and still manage to
pull in the major bucks. The downside is renewals, unless your portfolio
generates enough revenue, this cost needs to be factored in. People like Frank
Schilling, Rick Schwartz, Sahar Sarid, Adam Dicker, Michael Goldman and probably
most of the other big ticket guys will be found in this group.
The Flipper These guys live to make a fast buck and
sometimes the ‘buck’ can be a hundred thousand dollars or more on great buys.
They know exactly which domain they can sell and to whom and for how much. If
they can buy domains that they can sell immediately (1hr to 3 months) for higher
valuation, they’re very liable to take the deal. This kind can be equated to the
floor traders of yore. They’re fast, nimble and never hold large portfolios, in
fact some only have the one domain they want to sell, right now, before moving
on the next big deal. There is a lot of money to be made this way too, however
its short term, here and now. So if you don’t sell, you don’t churn. I’ve seen
some huge success stories in this lot too, Derek Giordano and Reece Berg are top
of the mind here.
The Developer Theres one more breed of domainer who makes
money by doing something with their properties, hand regs, niche domains and the
type. They take the domain, develop it, add content, do seo, market it and
voila, eventually these low value domains become decent value properties. So $20
on a domain + $500 developing could easily lead to a sale, a few months down the
line, in the $5000 range. Guys who do this have substantial skills in
development, seo and promotion, without which this is just not possible. You
could outsource development but then that could also kill your profit margins
here. Guys who do this with some success include Adrian Allen and Lord Brar.
The Builder A lot of people build websites on domains for
their own selves. They are not looking to sell the sites or even would even with
good offers, simply because the sites normally create more opportunities than
can be equated into the bottomline as credit. These type of domainers are
actually a major credit and can be found among all the types listed above. Top
names that come to mind include Justin Allen and Tan Tran.
The Monetizer These guys are only interested in the
traffic revenues. They’re happiest buying domains that get traffic and make
money via parking or similar. In fact some of the biggest deals in the past have
included portfolios of well known monetizers. Now of course this particular
breed has been overrun by big time players with hundreds of millions of dollars
invested and go under the guise of ‘media companies’. This is probably the holy
grail of domaining, whats better than pointing a domain to an automatic page and
let clicks get you revenues? Kevin Ham, Yun Ye, NameMedia, DemandMedia and
others fit into this group, as they do elsewhere but a vast majority of their
revenues probably come from this.
To read the full article, you can follow the link: http://www.mwzd.com/2008/04/10/the-different-types-of-domainers/
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