I notice that you didnt address the "Something smells in this "industry." " comment. Its fascinating to see how many people brush aside things they do not wish to address. This same brushing aside of 'the industry smells' comes when you ask where the parking data can be looked at and scrutinized....where the traffic is coming from, and, why do the numbers not add up much of the time. Dont ask Godaddy, Sedo, ESPECIALLY AFTERNIC and other places why their numbers just dont add up. You will get brushed off so fast, even banned. Or....... funnier yet - you suddent dont even receive those few pennies per day PPC you WERE getting. Too much "Hmm..." going in with domains. Not enough transparency. In fact very little if any.

"I notice that you didnt address the "Something smells in this "industry." " comment."

Mike: I assumed that comment was reflective of his overall frustrations but you are right about the issues with domain parking. But with saying that - there are plenty of alternatives.

After reading this, I thought I might address a couple issues: One is the lack of available hand-reg name in the .com TLD; while many of the super-solid, single-word names are pretty much gone, there are plenty of alternative two- and three-word names available.

I hand-registered turnpikeinfo.com in November 2008 ... carefully developing the site, it gets about 4,500 - 5,000 visits per month.

As for something "smelling" in the industry, there is no doubt there are scammers and scavengers in every industry. Domaining is not immune to this trend because it is one of those industries where people see easy money. There was nothing easy about generating the solid traffic on TurnpikeInfo.com.

Another group of domains is centered around americanlotteryresults.com, which domain network gets about 2,500 visitors per month, but it took about 15 months to get the traffic built to that level. It's still growing, obviously.

I started my online career in January 2001 (I think Tia started on this racket before I did), and I was only a website builder at the time. I made a fair living, but there are times of famine peppered with moments of gorging feast. Then in 2007 I began registering names like crazy. Almost none of the names I have today were those domains I originally snagged in 2007.

Give yourself time to learn from the so-called "old timers" in the industry. Make your own mistakes, and don't fret about it. Humans make mistakes. It's what we do. Learn from them. Permit a moment of frustration, but don't capitulate to self-pity or bellicose accusation. These things do nothing to help you find your niche.

And the most important thing you can do - it is the very first thing you should consider when you start your journey as a domainer, a developer or as a hybrid model - ask yourself, "What is my vision and my goal?"

~dtp

there are tons of opportunities to hand reg valuable .com domains with no dashes that will get offers of at least 4 figures each. if his 300 names havent received any offers maybe the names he registered were not any good. hand regging good names is a skill that not a lot of people are able to do.

Stop hand registering domains. Your better off finding a generic domain in the aftermarket for 3k to 5k.

Lazy, impulsive $10 purchases add up quickly and are a liability instead of and asset.

Thank you Tia for your constructive comments in answering my clumbsy questions. Thank you to the 5 people who took the time to comment on the post. I have the skills to create viable domains and I an not lazy, however I do tend to be impatient.

I have a feeling that the owners of the auction houses and those deciding what domains are "good enough" to be placed at auction are owners of the domains that are placed at auction. I was told by a SEDO representative, when inquiring why ETHANAL.PL was declined to be placed at auction, that .pl was a very "minor tld" and that only .com are considered, with perhaps very very good .de or .net domains.

Robert McLean

There are plenty of good key word .com's left and new opportunities are being created constantly.. You just have to be ahead of the curve in researching what key words people are actually searching for instead of just thinking up clever names and slogans. For example, the registration of the singular versus the plural version of a key word can make all the difference. There are also a lot of opportunities in other TLDs. Like any other business being successful at domaining requires smart research and hard work. 30% of my new ccTLD registrations within the past 60 days have been valued at over $3000 (as high as $10,000) by the Sedo key word suggestion tool, which is very conservative in its valuations. Setting up parking pages correctly also requires a lot of time and work to make it pay.

ETHANAL is an obscure manufacturing liquid. The global monthly query popularity for Ethanal on Google is 14,800. In Poland the monthly query popularity is 28 (probably chemistry students).

No one searches for the term ethanal in English speaking countries much less in Poland. Where you going for Ethanol? A name is only valuable if people are searching for it. For marketing, an ethanal company might be interested in ethanal.com, but .pl?

woops, mispelled ethanol
ETHANOL.PL was what I had for sale on sedo
I am confident that it still makes sense.
Thank you again for your construct comments.
Thanks Tia

Hey Tia,
My compliments on this website. Fantastic! Well done.

Hey, what do you think of the domain "confide.in"

Vanity or what?

Robert McLean

"The joyous pigs of the late 1990's and early 2000's have gutted .com hand regs."

Umm, wern't you trying to do exactly that?