Example of the Perception of Domain Investors

When I think of the business of domain name investing, I think of domain investors as people who have made the most of virtual real estate opportunities. We are capitalists who make speculative investments in a form of asset that many people don’t know much about.

To people that are not involved in domain investing, the perception is significantly different. I want to share a comment made by someone on Spiceworks.com, an IT-industry website:

“Ever get a great idea for a website and find that some greedy ass already bought the domain just to wait for a person with the idea to come along??”

Obviously, everybody is entitled to their own opinion about domain investing (and domain parking) but it’s interesting to read something like that these days. You don’t hear people get upset about property or land investments, but many people dislike domain investors for speculatively investing in and parking their domain name assets.

How often do you get labeled a cybersquatter or worse when receiving an inquiry to sell one of your domain names?

Thanks to KAP from DBR for sharing this.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

17 COMMENTS

  1. Hello Elliot

    This is an interesting subject somewhat on the line of What came first the chicken or the egg?

    In my opinion The first to market holder of a .COM URL Controls the hen that laid the egg. All things manifest from the fertile FOUNDATION of creation on which they are built.

    .COM foundations are the Backbone or central nervous system of most all the top corporations on the Web, and garner the largest repeat traffic patterns of all extensions along with funneling a huge lion share of revenue transactions of all extensions. To go where the largest flow of money exists you need to own a .COM money machine.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  2. @ Elliot,

    When you frame the haters’ concerns around a real world real estate model, you can (sometimes) change their mindset, e.g., “How dare those dastardly real estate developers buy up land and put parking lots on it!” or “I guess Donald Trump is a squatter of New York real estate…”, etc.

    Everyone’s entitled to their wrong opinion, as the saying goes. ;+)

    • To carry on with your analogy, it must be nice to get all the prime “foreclosures” that your customers “leave behind” . Imagine if anyone who sold the lumber to build your house could take over the ownership of the home once you didn’t pay your property taxes. . . . yea

  3. Have received this many times, and here is the thing, do they actually think that if say big domainers had not registered these names, they would be sitting idly by for them, perched on a golden pedestal, exclusively for them to register.

    I remember when the iphone 4s came out, people were selling apple store appointment bookings on craigslist.

    The real estate theory has been explained to death to these haters, How many high end condos, beach homes, vacation properties, sit empty for months on end, why? Because the owners buy, pay, and maintain their properties, and are free to do as they wish with their assets.

    Best thing to do is when this topic comes up, is end the discussion, or you will waste days going back, and forth with a dead deal.

  4. If you registered the domain before someone else, you had the same idea before they ever did.

    And in an economy where ideas rule the revenues – patents, trademarks, ipr – domain names are a natural investment when someone does have an idea.

    And as long as you’re paying the lease for a keyword that doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s ip, you have the rights to monetize it as you best see fit.

  5. Unfortunately many people look down on ambition and enterprise. They don’t appreciate the hard work that most of us do or the money and time we put it in. We operate sites that strive to help others find the information, product,or assistance that they seek. I think that is a noble cause. The burden is on us to change that perception.

  6. Liberals think everything should be free so if you have something they want, then you are an evil, greedy Capitalist.

    Seriously, your domains are “proprietary intellectual property”. Tell people this and people will either understand and agree or they will not know what you mean.

    Either way, this will shut most people up 🙂

  7. @ Rob,

    RE: “Liberals think everything should be free so if you have something they want, then you are an evil, greedy Capitalist.

    We know you have this Bass Ackwards!

    Its Right wing extremists that dont want to share anything including their fair share of taxes. Its right wingers that form Cartels, and on and on and on.

    We think you should clean your glasses to see what is really going on. I serviced the richest of the richest and I know them far better than you.

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  8. Look a the data where most money is made by biggest names you trust and respect. They making their money by picking up names on the drop that companies forget to renew then sell them back to them. True the company should be on top of its assets, but credit cards expire or get lost and the register is not updated. The guy in charge of the function leaves and doesn’t inform the new guy in the transition. The company may think they bought it for life or their agency has it handled. I can see how some liken this to kidnapping and ransom. It’s up to the government to take notice and clean up. Until they do it’s legit, doesn’t mean that victims won’t hate their domain saviors and label them crooks rather than accept their role in causing the drop and the need to spend to correct it. Big registries like GoDaddy who benefit from this should have consumer advocacy programs or ICANN- but instead they just spend their money partying around the world so I guess they are why we are maligned the way we are.

  9. I think domain speculation is just like RE speculation. How many times does a RE speculator sell a piece of property below market value because they don’t have the staying power OR have a place the money needs to go.

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