Domain Sushi: A Personal Take on the World of Buying and Selling Domain Names

This blog is intended to chart my progress (and failed experiments, which are inevitable) in the world of domain investment. Although I’ve worked as a freelance web designer and developer in the past, I’ve only recently started reading about domaining, and although I know good domain names are not as easy to come by as they were in, say, 2002, I think there are opportunities for new investors. It will take a lot of perseverance, but my plan is to sell some of the industry-specific names to end users, develop and monetize a few others, and hold onto the ones with long term potential.

I’ve read countless lists of the common pitfalls and mistakes made by newbie domainers, and there are two rules that have stuck out, that I’m basing all of my decisions on:

1. Diversify your holdings, and don’t put all your eggs in one basket (in other words, don’t just own one type of name or use a single affiliate or PPC program on all your sites—test everything, and keep what works)
2. Don’t register anything unpronouncable.

The second one is my own rule, which I’ve stuck by. I’ve seen a lot of newbie domainers register things “xzbcc.com” and think it’s a great 5-L name with branding potential. Unless the letters can be used as a company acronym or mean something to a particular end user, it’s never going to sell. I own a small handful of shorter, brandable names, but I like the fact that they’re pronouncable. It makes more sense to me.