Are you currently less than satisfied with your parking revenue? Do you think that domain development is the best thing since sliced bread? Are you excited and eager to make things happen? If so, get ready to fail MISERABLY!
I’ve received quite a few emails from domainers who are thinking about developing at least a handful of domains and most of them have told me that there’s TOO MUCH information out there. Well, they’re right and here’s the thing:
You ARE Going to Screw Up Royally!
Remember the first domain you bought or registered? Did it end up representing a great investment? Probably not! In fact, most if not all domainers have started out by buying or hand regging crappy domains.
What happened afterwards? Well, there are two main types of people:
1) Folks who get discouraged and give up
2) Folks who see failure as something that teaches them valuable lessons and motivates them to become better and better
Why would things be any different when it comes to development? Go ahead and ask anyone who is currently making bank how things were back when he or she started out. Was that person’s first business model brilliant? Yeah right!
Reading is great and everything but it can only get you so far. On the one hand, it makes sense to dedicate at least a few minutes each day to reading, even if you are making some decent coin. On the other hand, all of the books in the world won’t help if you’re not willing to work your ass of.
I LOVE Failure, Don’t You?
People who come up with all sorts of excuses because they are afraid of failure will also end up hiding from success. Your comfort zone = your biggest enemy. No matter how much you read, you will still fail when starting out as a developer and that’s NOT a bad thing.
Fail, learn a few lessons, fail some more, make bank: rinse and repeat 😉
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Bingo! Great post and absolutely true – it takes trial and error to get it right! When we started-out in 2007 it was hard to get as much money as we expected out of our sites…but we pushed onwards and kept developing making small changes along the way. By the end of 2008 we had built-up a strong recurring revenue source!
Learning from your failures is the best way to learn – putting too much focus on what others have done will also prevent you from coming-up with an idea or technique of your own!
As Frederick Douglass said, “Without a struggle there is no progress”
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:17 pm
haha I remember how it felt when I registered my first couple of domains. I had this feeling that if I don’t buy them now, someone will snag them and I’ll lose a great opportunity. Now I wouldn’t even take them if someone wanted to push them to my account for free, not even worth the effort 😛
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
My first sites didn’t cost me anything financilly but I put in probably more hours compared to anything else I did since then. Judging by how muchm y time is worth now, it would be a very good amount. Irony is I wouldn’t have been able to have enough experience to make as much as I’m making now without the lessons I learned as a beginner.
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Sorry for the sloppy writing. It should be ‘financially’ and ‘much my’… been a long day, so at least I have an excuse
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Content and inbound links, both take time….but that is about all you really need to know nowadays.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
“Are you currently less than satisfied with your parking revenue?”
////////////////////////
I think this is the major reason why the vast majority of domainer “development” projects won’t work out. Whereas successful developers are motivated to develop because they want to build a site in a prticular area domainers are motivated by something else not work out and development being the last resort. Except a very very low success rate even for those who do try multiple times. I think for most people it is throwing good money after bad.
December 24th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Nice post! I hope you give us more in the future.
August 22nd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
that post is most useful thx!