Rick Schwartz made his triumphant comeback to domain commentary by getting on Twitter and filling up everyone’s timeline with domaining anecdotes, tips, and a few rants.
One of the takeaways from Rick’s tweets in March was that he believes people can replicate his success today. He believes for every advantage he had in the past there are just as many if not more advantages today.
For every advantage I had in 1996, there are equal or more advantages today. Was a complete gamble until 1997. I DISCOVERED things! #Domains
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) March 30, 2017
Konstantinos from OnlineDomain sees things a bit differently
@onlinedomaincom Not at $100 a pop & mortgage 2 pay & a reg business 2 run. No infrastructure. No earning power in mainstream. 10% of businesses online. etc.
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) March 30, 2017
@onlinedomaincom Where I come from, $100 to $5k is pretty damn good! REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT. Do that 4x a week for a year, you are a millionaire.
— Rick Schwartz (@DomainKing) March 30, 2017
So what do you think has domaining hit peak profitability for the masses (not just outliers) or can the Domain King’s success be replicated ?
First, in your mind, everything is possible, means nothing is impossible.
Second, it’s a thing of believe > will > work.
Third, no guaranteee
that a possibilityyy
will come into realityyy.
Interesting, if we compare Champs Elysees and people who bought business space there , can you say others can do the same ? , replicating … it’s difficult to replicate this space , only the street number of these addresses is unique.
No………move over Rick, once my selling technique is done im the new king! Trust me!
I’m replicating what rick has done, the names will not sell for millions but they are category killers for the ccTLD that I live in. Over 3million residents with over 40% registered cctld s being used, 7,000 domains.
Keywords
Pizza, poker, broadband, airport, car hire, etc etc
Leasing these and not selling.
.wales is a new gTLD, not a ccTLD. Big difference.
possible but very improbable.
domains are very pricey, competition is high and best domains have long gone.
not saying his method cannot be replicated today, just the opportunities are way much lesser and cost of entry much higher so the results will suffer.
I believe anything is possible on the Internet. We’ve seen great wealth achieved just by creating a single phone app that goes viral with tens of millions of users and a 20 year old techie founder becomes a Billionaire a couple years later selling it to Facebook.
But can Rick’s exact methods for success be replicated. No. He is unique as is his portfolio. He is one of the shrewdest business and investing minds I’ve ever met. His portfolio has the highest quality names in particular sectors of the Internet that formed the core means for his enormous wealth generation. He is also a master negotiator, especially in the ability to say NO to offers that others would jump at.
What separates Rick the most from the rest of the domaining elite is his greatest wealth accumulation wasn’t created by buying and selling names. He’s sold only a short list of domians over all these years. His greatest wealth was created by investing in incredibly powerful keywords that had no monetization means when acquired in the beginning years of the Net, but soon did when there became a way to sell direct navigation type-in traffic from names that generated gigantic levels of daily type-in traffic for 20 years that he monetized perfectly by selling that raw traffic in bulk.
Rick is the Domain King. Period. Yes others can make profits and a few will get wealthy from domains now and in the future, but not by the same technique as Rick did. I don’t see a means to replicate that technique because all the dynamic components that came together and enabled it have changed dramatically in that key marketplace sector now.
Perhaps another marketplace sector will evolve via the new technologies ahead where the same strategy can be deployed, but I don’t see it anywhere on the Internet right now, and it would most likely be with traffic involving phone apps, but they don’t require a great underlying domain name always, just a great brand name.
Rick promotes domains because he sells domains. This is the same as every promoter. Fact is, domains biggest Achilles heel is that mom & poo are sidelined as theybcannit compete with Centralized fascism. In my niche, my biggest competitors essentially get their $$$ for free from Street. Unless & until all the free money stops and the malinvestment is liquidated it makes little sense to deploy capital. The game is rigged !!!!!!! In 1995 there was a semblance of free markets. Today,…????…not so much.
Lot of what you say may be true. But there is no Achilles heel for true premium .com domains. Small bussinesses simply can’t afford best property online and most likely never will be. Same as physical real estate. Mom and pop can’t afford the prime real estate. Banks (and those connected to) won re TARP bailout and small business lost. Doesn’t negatively affect value of domains though, perhaps opposite.
Why do I feel like Donald Trump now controls two twitter accounts?
The Domain King
Everyone started talking about the World Wide Web,
so Rick thought he would give it a try,
young Rick bought up his first domains,
but wasn’t sure if they would fly?
He had a long term goal that looked out twenty years,
no foolish spending yet,
but it wasn’t long before his brother Les,
helped him up the domain bet!
He’s Gonna Be The Domain King
He’s Gonna Be The Domain King
Rick’s Gonna be The Domain King
All the other webmaster’s were laughing at him,
they said he had more money than brains,
but Rick explained that securing good names,
just might never happen again?
erealestate (dot.com) his portal of choice,
for his Billion dollar quest,
some of the finest quality domains that exist,
and he’s not even finished yet
Here he is: No Office, No Employees, No Nothing!
Except Millions Rolling In!
He’s The Domain King
He’s The Domain King
Rick Schwartz Is The Domain King!
I agree with Mr Schwartz but of course you have to look and be a bit creative. In our case we’ve turned to Chinese pinyin names. While NNN.com sell for a lot of money it’s almost overlooked that some pinyin names
re mingche.com ( “luxury car”) sold for over $2.5million . We own hualiche.com ( “gorgeous car”) and plan to hold it for a long time if need be but there are many other examples in the Chinese pinyin market of major sales so yes Mr Schwartz is correct and we can only hope he starts to buy pinyin .com names as well.
Since I own most denominations of LuxuryEV…had to buy The electric counterpart of Mingche or MingDianche.com (LuxuryElectricCar in chinese)
Actually if you go to Google translate you’ll see you probably wanted MingDianziChe.com or just
DianziChe.com but good luck.
You can still make good money, sure, but not at the same scale Rick and others like him did. Most of us didn’t get in at the ground floor, didn’t have the foresight or were even aware of domains back then. Meaning someone today will never build a list of hand regs with the value and traffic his list has. But can someone buy domains for xxxx and get to xxxxxx or more now, sure. Thats whats great about domaing.
There are always opportunities with domain names. The fact is, people retire. People die. Companies shutdown. There are many reasons a domain drops. You can still get fantastic deals on domains and make a huge profit. I think it’s important to follow whats happening in the world too and how that will influence the value/demand of domain names. Take a look at virtual reality. It’s still fairly new. A lot like how the Internet was in the 90’s. What should be the next best thing for marketing opens a lot of potential for domains. I think in 3-5 years from now, we will be looking back at thinking why we didn’t all buy a bunch of vr domains. my 2 cents.
Just going to be blunt because newbies deserve the truth. I’ve been domaining for years now. Yes I have the main search keywords. I know All about the domain business. Ok so let’s stop fooling ourselves. The domain business is over as we know it! Unless you own 3N 3L one word com’s forget it. Over saturation is true. So is inflation in domains. developement is where it’s at. You can open an e-Commerce store now without a domain name.
I have absolutely great domains that I can’t give away.
Well said Ziggy. And that is the truth.
Nowhere close to the truth. Hey ziggy post some of your “great” domains. Willing to bet they are not great.
Rick Schwartz said the next time property.com sells it will be in the 9 figures on DomainSherpa a few years back. if that were so why is he selling it for $2,850,000
Domaining at the very basic level is buy low sell high. The trick is recognize value before the mainstream buyers and build a pipeline so you don’t run out of good names to sell. Also think “skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been”, just look at LLLL .com names, they were dumped years ago as low as $9 each, then in late 2015 sold as high as $3000 for some random letters. I wish I had bought more.
I don’t have a large portfolio and domaining is still only a hobby for me. But I was able to make some money every year to help pay down mortgages. The future is still bright.
There will always be demand for the best domain name available for a great new idea, product, service or company. While “replicating” Rick’s success is obviously a tall hurdle, impressive sales & a great ROI are a certainty, and will be replicated for a long time to come. It’s when, not if.
Can the Domain King’s success be replicated in the future?
Sure it can. But not in domains. It will have to be in a new frontier. Like Bitcoin or the IPO of Google, you can still make some money in them but nowhere near the people who got in in the beginning. To pretend otherwise is just hype and Trumpism.
Serious question – how did JointVentures ever end up? He pushed that HARD day in and day out for a long time – guaranteed huge success.
dont forget Rick works hard on his rep, and it pays off. The only way to do 10000 to 1 on a domain, is usually say no to 1000 to 1, and 500 to 1.. and really say no, Not just can i have your best offer, let me talk to my partner, etc etc. So his reputation gets out there, and if your after one of his names, when you make the call you did your research and you know it going to cost you…. but the buyer also knows what their gong to get get. Same with many in our business.
So Rick helps us all by leading the price discovery process on the upside, as does Mike Mann. Im greateful.
Remember, they buyer is only paying it if he thinks its a 10-50-100% IRR on his number…
Sure buyers want a myopic self-serving view that what ever domain they want to buy, the seller should be happy to have any offer , and be desperate, and they may catch that often. And then they try the trademark route, the this is for an non profit, im a student. etc etc
Rick, please keep on tweeting, posting. Same with Frank.. i think were all do for a seven mile beach dinosaurs walked the early, money was invented, the next ten years will bring…………blog post… and not just about new tlds.
Thanks to everyone who contributes to the discussion of our wonderful industry.
Page Howe
Well said Page, I concur!
Truth be told, I think newbies are overypaying in the aftermarket.
You can’t buy a name for $20.000, and sell it for $1,000,000 today, you just can’t!
“You can’t buy a name for $20.000, and sell it for $1,000,000 today, you just can’t!”
there are a lot of buyers who are glad this feeling is out there.
there are three domain markets and i dont think you can generalize across them
1) trading liquid domains among wholesale exchanges and investors where a perceiving floor exists
2) buy and hold investors, buy, have events or timing change in your favor, sell.
3) liquidity and need to sell discounts, and and the reverse, scarcity and i dont care make me sell pricing
on exit.
all three have their advantages and falacies
page
“make me sell”
I love this!
Never!
Schwartz has made history.
Congratulations Rick, you are the King and we ….
long live the king
He was just the first who bought some domains. Can’t be repeated. He was the first one. All after rick can’t beat him.
Rick’s success is undeniable and there are certainly lessons in there that we should all learn but it can’t be done the way he did it anymore (and he is not saying we can or that we should try) … learning from him how to be successful with domains is like learning from Brad Pitt how to be successful with women.