Domaining Forums – Time Well Spent or Time Wasted?

Forums are a concept that were popular in the early days of the Internet and have yet to change much. In fact forums look just about exactly the same now as they did when they were first created. I used to be a frequent forum poster about ten years ago, at that time I was mostly taking part in programming-related forums. When I started in the Domaining community back in 2007 I was fairly active on DNForum and occasionally used NamePros.

As my business took-off I found that my time was better spent developing and monetizing my names and researching and acquiring new domains. Quickly I went from a daily forum user to not visiting forums at all. Of course this was my own decision and a move I made to keep my focus where I make the most money. That being said, what’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for everyone so I thought now would be a good time to bring-up this topic.

The Domaining community has a few popular forums, DNForum is definitely the most popular followed by NamePros and DomainState which was acquired by Above.com in 2010. Our industry is also known for having one exclusive forum, DomainBoardRoom of which I am also a member but unfortunately haven’t had the time to contribute to. Of all the forums above I think DomainBoardRoom is the one I would contribute to the most if I had the time because it’s smaller and a bit more selective about who is allowed on. I have a bunch of friends on DBR and Donna who runs it is a really awesome person who I do hope to have a chance to get to know better in the future!

When I look at my time spent in the Domaining space I try to be very targeted, and like any business, focus on where the money is coming from. Right now most of my income comes from Domain Monetization but I’ve seen some nice sales lately so always looking for ways to increase liquidity as well. I also get emails at least weekly now asking me what I think about a particular discussion going on within a certain forum.

So this has caused me to ask myself the question that I am now asking all of you. Should I spent five minutes, ten minutes, maybe even thirty minutes a day on Domaining forums? I know I have a blast at conferences and really enjoy talking to people in the space, and heck if I can sell more domain names there’s nothing wrong with that either! Although my concern is that I’ll end-up wasting my time and taking-away from the activities that I do to make money in this industry.

Now it’s your turn! What do you think? Are Domaining forums a good way to spend your time or not? I’m sure there are varying viewpoints on this and I am very interested to hear from you. As always comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton