Of course, it’s true that expecting decent development advice from someone who only has an impressive track record as a domainer wouldn’t be very smart and, the same way, expecting decent domain valuation advice from someone who has never spent more than 3 figures on a domain would also be pretty stupid.

My business model revolves around building businesses (I’ll even be selling my own product, nothing related to domaining/making money online: as I’ve promised, I’ll blog about that project as a case study) on amazing domains so in my case, listening to what domainers as well as developers have to say makes sense.

If you only want to buy and hold, reading domaining blogs will be more than enough.

If you want to hand reg domains and make money exclusively by chasing after organic traffic, reading SEO blogs will be more than enough.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on domains, don’t want to chase after organic traffic and, instead, want to generate lots of traffic through social media websites, checking out a few Internet Marketing blogs which focus on the social media side of things will be enough.

If you want to buy and hold but also develop some domains, it makes sense to check out domaining blogs as well as SEO/Internet Marketing blogs.

It all depends on how you make or want to make money but again: while reading blogs is a good thing IMO, this doesn’t mean that you should get carried away and spend the entire day doing that. I, for example, spend about 30 minutes per day reading and that’s about it. I’ve got so much stuff going on that I wouldn’t be able to find more time even if I wanted to. I follow quite a few blogs and if you know how to filter quality from noise, 30 minutes per day are more than enough in order to stay informed and tune in to what others are saying.

If, in one way or another, buying and selling domains has something to do with your business model, reading domaining blogs and finding out what people who do this for a living have to say is a good idea. I used to be against reading blogs/forums back in the day, just like Alan, but quickly changed my mind after (on more than one occasion) the information I came across via a blog or a forum DIRECTLY helped me make some decent coin.

I’m too busy to usually reply to these sarcastic comments which take away from the entire point of my articles and/or comments but for you I will make an exception,

I would be a fool – probably the biggest fool – to say I do not read blogs. Blogs have become one of the greatest sources of information online and to blanketly say or even recommend no one read blogs is the equivalent of saying no one should eat vegetables.

My point is to stop reading all the posts on DOMAINING blogs but rather branch out to blogs which carry targeted information for development, SEO, branding – any other blogs where the owners of these blogs have far more experience in actually putting other elements in place. Whether that means developing a website, success with viral marketing, mastering SEO (which I agree with Andrei also part art) or any thing that you have interest in for furthering the development of your website.

Essentially do not look within the industry – look outside.

Domaining may be a term used to incorporate all methods of monetizing a domain name but this term has not been braced by web designers, SEO experts, marketers and almost every other team except domain flippers and pure domain buyers and sellers.

The mistake most newbies make is to read domaining blogs and say hey – these guys own some great names so they must know what they are doing online.

Ownership of a domain and how to actually create a business, develop a website, market it, SEO it – all the elements used to get from A to Z online (recognizing that some just want to stay at A) – these are all different elements which can not be found simply by wasting your day away reading domaining blogs.

Would you read Matt Cutts blog to learn about Domain Values? No
Would you read Seth Godin’s blog to learn about Domain Appraisals?

There is no one blog to read for all domaining and my point was if you are interested in development then stop looking for any of the Rick’s or other popular – buy and hold em domainers – for advice.

For anybody not getting this point its ok. When I write its usually to provoke thought to those who want to listen – if nobody ever reads my blog again I’m actually totally ok with it. What I do not do is write to answer questions as I do not have all the answers either.

Andrei seemed to have a very interesting response to my article and thats the only reason I’m on this post as the discussion is worth it.