Too often people confuse domain age with domain value

junk

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I was first getting started in Domaining was putting too much emphasis on the age of a domain name. I can remember finding domains for the late 90’s that were dropping, picking them up for $100 or less and thinking that I was building an incredibly strong portfolio.

As time went by I learned the hard way that there are lots of crappy domains that were registered in the late 90’s, and have been dropped, picked up, dropped again, and again. In reality these really aren’t “aged” domains at all, and I thought Theo from DomainGang made a good point in a comment string that I saw recently but now can’t remember the post. If Theo’s reading this, or someone who read that post feel free to include it in the comment section below.

It’s important to remember that when you’re investing in a domain name, you’re buying something that you want to be interesting to an end-user, not a Domainer. End-users are interested in the domain itself, they aren’t concerned with how old the domain is. Also, a domain from the 90’s that has dropped multiple times and you’re picking up now is probably just a really bad domain…in most cases.

That being said, yes – from time to time a real gem does drop, but you’re not getting it for $100. What I’m talking about in this post is that 23 year-old domain that you snagged for $60 that you think is going to be worth a fortune, only the domain is xxjflksdflka.com, “but it’s an aged domain!” you say.

Just to emphasize my point, here’s some “aged” domains dropping right now – all are 20+ years old.

aged-domains

Let’s look at Mauidiscounts.com, it was originally registered in 1998. So you might say, wow – a two-word .COM from 1998 with no bids, jackpot! In fact, as you can see, this whole list has no bids, you can buy them all and with little competition…why? Because they’re junk, and while you could get lucky some day and sell one of them to an end-user, the reality is you’ll waste your money buying names like these just because they are old.

So let’s put the whole idea of a domain being valuable because it’s old, that’s just not true. It is true that there are a lot of really valuable domain names that were registered a long time ago. Just don’t get these two statements confused or you’ll end up with a portfolio full of old junky domains.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton