I had a great day with Daina shopping in Beverly Hills and enjoying some beautiful Southern California sunshine. Of course even when I take a break I’m still working…or at least my businesses and auctions are working for me! That’s the great thing about Domaining and online businesses, you can go off and adventure while the gears are still turning behind-the-scenes. I bought a great one-word .COM name today in a Snapnames expired domain auction and was notified on my iPhone while we were looking at shoes…or at least I was advising Daina on shoes 🙂
We’ve decided to make tonight a movie night so I’m going to keep these musings short and sweet:
- I’m not sure how I could go through a single day without DomainTools – this is honestly one of the most useful tools out there when it comes to both buying and selling domain names. I know a lot of people think that it’s all about gut, and knowing which names are good, and while this might be true in some cases, I’m a data guy and the data I get from DomainTools is crucial to making many of my daily decisions. The WHOIS History feature is probably what I use the most, understanding who first registered a name and seeing how it has changed hands can absolutely influence both buying and selling decisions.
- It is more clear to me than ever that three years from now people will be kicking themselves for not picking-up good domain names and rock-bottom prices in 2010 and 2011. The opportunity for buying domains is incredible right now, everyone wasting their time hand-registering hundreds of names and trying to make $50-$100 here and there needs to focus on the real opportunity at hand. If you can spend $500 hand-registering 50 names, why not spend that buying one or two names in the $xxx-range? I’ve gotten a stream of emails from people with hundreds of domain names that they can’t move, if only they had put that money into just a few good names. I made the same mistake and am continuing to correct it, hindsight is always 20-20.
- On that note I think my domain portfolio will most likely shrink from ~1,000 domains down to ~300-400 domains. Right now my focus is on quality, not quantity. I have about 165 developed sites now and a lot of names that I’m dropping each month. I’d say for every 20 names I drop I buy 2-3 solid .COM names. I started 2011 with .COM being a small part of my portfolio, by the end of this year I expect it to be well over 50% of my investments.
- WebHostingTalk rocks! I setup a new VPS this week and have relied on WebHostingTalk as my main source of information and help in getting the server secured. Really great community and a lot of interest in Domaining on there as well which was surprising. I’ve learned a ton about how to setup, configure, and secure a Linux VPS and I’ll be sharing that with all of you once I get all my notes together!
- Building a brand is all about building a community. We’re getting ready to add some great interactive features to five of my top brands, most of these decisions have been made by polling our users and asking what they are looking for.
- This is the last week to get discounted rates on TRAFFIC and DNCruise – book now or you’ll miss-out on great deals on both of these excellent conferences.
- There are so many exciting things going on in the Startup space and lots of great positive energy! I love how everyone wants to help each other out and isn’t afraid to admit failure. This is what life is all about, being honest about your successes and your failures and not being afraid to ask for help, and of course always, always, always, keep learning!
That’s it for now, time for movie night and a nice bottle of wine from Eberly in Paso Robles (one of our favorite wines and wineries in Paso), I hope you are all enjoying your weekend! Don’t forget to watch me live on MorganLinton.tv tomorrow at 4:00PM PST!
