Supernatural Agency: Online business tales

I have about 20 blogs in my reader that are domaining-related. I read through them frequently and went from initial excitement about the potential of a domain market explosion to frustration at how primitive and out of touch this market is with much of the rest of the online world. We are search marketers and developers and have been for a relatively long time (ten years each). As such I’m mystified by the focus on parking as a business model and on the short-term perspective of many domain traders who are happy to sell for a multiple of what it costs them to register each year. The very short term, least effort approach in other words.

I know this has worked extremely well for some pioneers but, if you read between the lines, you’ll find that most of them are now focused on building businesses around their domains rather than parking. Parking is a holding strategy at best. My opinion of course

Selling Domains

We occasionally get an offer for one of our domains. Since we don’t register unless we can imagine how we would build a business around that domain, we don’t have a lot of things we want to part with. I’ve ranted about some of the silly names people tout but that is really an indicator of amateurs entering the market. If you own something good the only reason to sell is that you need the money- and that’s the worst reason possible (but understandable if you’ve been there). When I think about selling a domain I can’t help but think about what we would do with it if it was our primary focus. That makes it very hard to let them go. It’s like owning hundreds of potentially profitable business concepts.

Finally, I’ve come full circle and no longer consider our company to be domainers because we don’t park, we don’t sell and we develop. That’s no insult to the domain world and I’m going to keep contributing but my perspective has shifted to our core competencies- always a good business plan.

Just posted this and then went on to read Julia on the same subject of domaining and arbitrage. Couldn’t agree more.