I wrote a post recently about Why Most Domainers Give-Up where I discussed a common trend I’ve seen among new Domainers – fear of failure. I received an excellent comment on this post asking me for my greatest failures and what I’ve learned from them. So here is that post!
While I could certainly make a list of the best 100 mistakes I’ve made there are three mistakes I’ve made over the last two years that have greatly enabled my success. You should wear your mistakes like a badge of honor because if you aren’t making mistakes – you probably aren’t learning as much as you could. Remember, part of business is taking risks, calculated risks, but risks nonetheless – if you never try it – you may never find the success you are looking for!
So here are the three best mistakes I’ve made so far – definitely more to come over the years!
1) Buying hundreds of terrible domain names in the summer of 2007
Without a shadow of a doubt – this is the best mistake I have EVER made. I went on a domain buying spree in the summer of 2007 only to find-out that many of the domains I had registered were worthless. This taught me a few things – first it taught me to take more time on research and analysis before buying a domain. Second, this taught me to become comfortable with dropping domains, and third this taught me to focus my efforts on my very best domains since they would provide the best return. 2) Reading only 2-3 Domaining Blogs
When I first started-out I only read 2-3 Domaining blogs. I felt that I should be spending 95% of my time working on my domain investments and 5% of my time reading about what others were doing. Big mistake – and a great one to make! As I began to read more and more blogs I found people discussing the exact issues I was encountering in my own business. Now I read just about every single Domaining blog out there. Even if I don’t agree with someone, there is always something I can learn from the experience of others!3) Not networking with other Domainers
For my first year in the industry I didn’t reach-out to any other Domainers or bloggers. While I was reading blogs I wasn’t directly connecting with other Domainers. At a certain point I realized that I was missing-out on some excellent networking opportunities so I started contacting other Domainers. I found-out quickly how rewarding this was as there is nothing more inspirational than talking to other people passionate about domain investing. Those are my top three – please feel free to share yours – and whatever you do, don’t stop making mistakes!
