This post has been written by David George, admin at Prycr.com, dad, full-time real estate and mortgage expert, part-time domainer.

Now that I’ve introduced myself and shared the experience of my first domain name sale in my last post, I thought I would fast forward a bit and share some insight that I found useful years ago, but that still helps me today. Over the years, I have become quite disciplined in evaluating and buying domains, and these small practices served me very well in the beginning.

Before making my first sale, I had mostly been purchasing domains for the sole purpose developing them into websites. As my thinking began to shift on domain names as being not only addresses for websites, but as names for resale, I began to take a closer look at the characteristics of a good domain for investment, and I began to develop a simple strategy for evaluating names.

Some of the things I would take a look at were:

Does the name make sense?

Can I generate income from the domain until it sells or as it appreciates in value?

Then, if the name passed that set of criteria, I would look at the next set of factors:

What is the lowest registration price I can pay for the name?

How much will it be to renew it?

If the answers to those questions were favorable, I’d usually search for two or three comparable names, that were brilliant ideas of mine, go to sleep, then, the next day, make a choice from the three.

This worked great for me for a while, but I realized that there was so much more to learn. Each day I read and read, from blogs to newletters, to forums, I could see the domain industry taking shape and I wanted to be a part of it.

If you’re that new domainer in the house that wants to be a part of it, hopefully these very basic steps, along with the tools I’ll write about next time, will help you build a better portfolio.

Until next time.