The fact that DomainSherpa is saying goodbye is awful news for the industry. I haven’t interacted with Mike all that much but when I have, he always struck me as a great guy with awesome work ethic.

Our first interaction involved him asking me if I want to hop on for an interview (I think this was during year #1 of DomainSherpa) but back then, I was very insecure about not being a native English speaker and afraid that people who were used to my good writing would be disappointed by the imperfections of my accent and stuff like that. Very funny to remember these things in light of the fact that I guess I’m among other things a vlogger nowadays, with me recording myself 3x per week over at my YouTube.com/OneMinuteEconomics channel… ah, the weird ironies of life 🙂

But I digress.

The bottom line is that right from the beginning, it was clear Mike’s a hard worker and the 404 videos he’s published make this perfectly clear.

Major props!

Unfortunately, just like in a lot of other cases, the industry hasn’t supported him enough IMO.

You know, one of the best things about domaining is that the barrier to entry is so low that anyone with a dream and a couple of bucks (literally!) can get started.

One of the worst things about domaining however is that… the barrier to entry is low 🙂

It sounds strange, I know, but this barrier to entry thing is a double-edged sword for sure because on the one hand, opportunities abound but on the other hand, a lot of domainers are complete beginners when it comes to pretty much anything business-related.

Again, business-related in general, not just domaining-related.

What I mean is that to quite a few people, domaining represents the very first contact they have with the idea of making money online. Naturally, they dream of sunshine and rainbows but when reality rears its sometimes ugly head and they don’t make as much money as they’d hoped (or even lose money), a lot of them develop unhealthy attitudes.

Blaming the industry instead of figuring out what THEY did wrong.

Thinking it’s all one big conspiracy.

Looking the other way when someone who gave them 100% free content asks for help (maybe when launching a new project, perhaps something else) but being brutally critical should that person screw up every once in a while.

… this sense/attitude of entitlement represents, in my opinion, one of the top 3 problems of our industry.

I know this post won’t change anything.

I’m simply observing how things stand and warning everyone that should the industry continue “evolving” in this manner, the only opinion formers left will be those who want to continuously sell you something or push whatever obscure agenda is on their plate.

Because, let’s face it, who else would stay on board if the emotional benefits as well as financial ones are just not there?

With that stated, I wish Mike the best of luck and want to apologize for not praising his work more frequently over the years. He most definitely deserves it!