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How did the Ogre get into
domains and form DomainOgre.com? Unlike other people who
get in this business because it seems like easy money,
it all really started for me with a negative experience.
Oh I had bought a few names in the past, but nothing
serious. Furthermore, I had intended to develop each one
instead of planning to sell them.
My first real taste of
the actual domain name business came when I tried to
back-order (use a drop service to catch a name as it
expires) a better name for an already developed site
that I had just built. I was under the mistaken
impression that if I went to snapnames.com and took the
snapback (back-order) for that name that I would get
that name for sure. Well, it does not quite work that
way.
The negative experience
that I spoke of was not that I did not get the name, but
that I contacted the person that did. We have all heard
stories on TV of some person registering a name of a
company or a celebrity and then an wanting obscene
amount of money for those names in return. I had the
misfortune of dealing with a person like this. I won't
mention names or the domain name in this instance, but I
will say that the person wanted a cool $20,000 for the
domain. In reality, the name was not even worth 5
percent of that price because it was a long two word
name that had zero traffic and only moderate prospects.
For a person who was
unemployed at the time and just trying to get something
going online, that $20,000 price tag seemed insane. Over
a year later, that price tag seems even more nuts after
having bought and sold hundreds of domains. However,
that little episode spurred my interest in domain names
and has allowed enter a business that I would probably
have not gotten into otherwise.
That first taste of the
domain business also showed me one of the most common
misconceptions carried around by people not associated
with the domain business: Most properly spelled .com
domains are NOT worth thousands of dollars. This
illusion is further boosted by the fact that some
"appraisal" companies give paying customers
overly optimistic "appraisals" to make people
feel good about the domains they bought. For example, I
paid around $75 to get Delved.com appraised at one of
the "big" domain companies. Do you know how
much they appraised it for? $9000! Have I been able to
sell it for that much? No where near it. In fact, I put
it up for sale recently at dnforum.com for $50 and it
did not sell!
After first getting
into the business, I stumbled around for a few months
and bought over 100 domains. I did not think I would
sell any domains until December of last year when I made
two sales in a week for a total of $1500! The funny
thing is that the domain that I sold for $1000 came as a
result of reusing the backorder that had gotten me into
the business in the first place. That positive
experience significantly lifted my spirits and drove me
to learn even more about the business.
In March of 2003, I
opened domainogre.com and started spending all the time
I could at domain forums like the aforementioned
dnforums.com. I quickly learned that waiting around for
more sales like the ones in December was simply not
practical, so I started buying and selling domains from
other domainers on the forums. This method of buying and
selling leads to more transactions, but at usually
significantly lower prices.
Nevertheless, buying
and selling domains at a small profit is a good business
move while you wait on a consumer who is willing to pay
a premium price for one of your top domains. And that
folks is where the Ogre stands at today. Look for
upcoming articles that discuss some of the inner
workings of the domain business like expiring domains,
the different domain extensions, and much more.
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