As someone who has recently moved to a new home and went through an extensive home decoration process (due to which I still haven’t managed to email the portfolio opinions to those who subscribed to my newsletter recently and contacted me… sorry for making you wait guys), I’m in a strangely good position to write this post.

In my opinion, the first and perhaps most important similarity is the fact that you should adopt an “out-with-the-bad” mindset. For example, the electric wiring installation of the home I bought was severely outdated. If I wanted to save a buck, I could’ve simply left it as it was but in the mid to long-term, that decision would have come back to haunt me. Instead, since I was renovating everything anyway, I simply replaced the entire electric installation with a brand spanking new one. The same principle is valid when you’re let’s say building a new home on a plot of land on which there is currently an old property that isn’t exactly in great shape.

If you desperately wanted to save a dollar, you could for example use the foundation of the property in question but that is hardly a recommended approach. Instead, you’re better off eliminating the old property from the equation altogether and building the new one on a solid foundation. What does this have to do with domaining, you might ask? It has everything to do with investing in domains.

If you are genuinely serious about doing well, perhaps the most important thing is abandoning old habits which have been proven not to work and embracing new ones. As Albert Einstein used to say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. If a certain domain investing business model hasn’t workout worked out for you, for example investing in new extensions or let’s say future trend domains, it might be a wise idea to eliminate it altogether. As painful and difficult as it may seem and be at the beginning, I assure you it will be more than worth it in the long run.

The second similarity is represented by the fact that a “quality over quantity” approach represents a good idea. What I’m trying to say is that as my grandfather used to tell me when I was a child, we are too poor to buy cheap things. At first, the expression seems strange to put it mildly but I ended up understanding just how true it was. As far as your home is concerned, if you buy the cheapest materials, you will be exhilarated at the beginning at the thought of how much money you saved. But you get what you pay for, this is something you have to understand and your decision to save a buck will probably come back to bite you at one point in the future. The same way, as a domain investor, you feel great right after buying lots and lots of low-quality domains. Why? Because our brain is strangely wired to interpret owning a large number of domains as being a successful domain investor. That’s just plain wrong, a successful domain investor is not someone who owns a lot of domains. A successful domain investor, quite frankly, is simply someone who makes money.

For example, I assure you that someone who bought just ten three number dot coms let’s say five years ago is far *far* happier with his decision and successful than someone who invested the same amount of money in let’s say a thousand mediocre domains. At this point and beyond, I strongly recommend embracing a quality-oriented mindset.

Another similarity is represented by the fact that things rarely go as planned. As domain investors, just like when renovating a home, we make lots and lots of plans and on paper, everything seems to make perfect sense. But then, domains you wouldn’t have expected to do well start receiving offers, whereas the stars of your portfolio end up going by unnoticed. At the end of the day, I guess it all boils down to realizing that there are certain things you can never control and there’s isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that.

The final similarity I would like to refer to is the fact that when investing in domains, just like when renovating your home, it is ridiculously easy to overspend. You just *have* to have that new piece of furniture, you just *have* to buy the comfortable sofa you’ve been drooling over for so long and the list could go on and on. The same way, in the domain world, you just *have* to bid just a little bit higher in the auction you’re involved in. That domain would look so great on your portfolio… you just *have* to dig a little bit deeper in your wallet and the list could go on and on 🙂