Certain habits inhibit your progress as a domainer and if you don’t identify them in order to address the issues you are dealing with, you will end up being disappointed by your results and worst of all, won’t know where to start in order to fix things.

Today, I would like to refer to some of the most dangerous habits you should get rid of, so let’s not waste any more time and get right down to business.

Here they are:

Dwelling on the past. Whether we’re talking about a sale which ended up faltering or about an acquisition opportunity that you lost, I can pretty much guarantee that dwelling on the past is unhealthy. It is unhealthy because you are spending valuable time and energy on this something you can no longer change. Maybe you’ve made a mistake, maybe you even screwed up royally. That’s just the way it is, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it now. Instead of dwelling on the past, I’d strongly recommend focusing on the future.

Having a destructive attitude towards the success of one or some of your fellow domain investors. Our brain is a fascinating mechanism. One of its number one goals is to protect us. To make us believe that we’re amazing, that we’re the best and can do no wrong. This is why your brain can easily become your biggest enemy rather than simply your biggest ally. When you hear a success story, your first instinct will be to somehow fight it, to find something that’s wrong, to find excuses for yourself and negative things about the person the story is about. Maybe he just got lucky, maybe you think he did something shady or questionable, the list could go on and on. Don’t make the mistake of letting things degenerate into a spiral of jealousy. Instead of trying to bring the person in question down, do your best to lift yourself to his or her level. Have a constructive rather than destructive attitude whenever you hear a success story.

Losing control whenever you’re involved in bidding wars. Bidding wars are fascinating in that they tend to tell you quite a few things about yourself that you might have not known otherwise. Greed, competitiveness, a lot of emotions and things which have to do with human nature start surfacing whenever you are involved in a bidding war. For this reason, auctions sometimes the generate into frenzies. Domain investors are no longer increasing their bids because they think they’re getting a genuinely good deal, they’re doing it because they lost control. Because they started to think emotionally rather than rationally. Before each auction, I would strongly recommend making a game plan and doing your best to stick with it. Don’t find excuses to bid just a little bit more, be disciplined.

Becoming impatient if the person you are selling to does not get back to you in a timely manner. Due to this impatience, a lot of people end up sending lots and lots of follow-up emails whenever the other party is not getting back to them quickly. Don’t do this, as it tends to make you look desperate and it should come as no surprise that it hurts your position during a negotiation. Try seeing things from the perspective of the person you’re dealing with. If he sees that the other party is this desperate, he might be tempted to become more aggressive and we don’t want that, do we?

Losing your temper during a negotiation. A lot of times, you will be downright offended by an offer that has been made or by a statement made by the other party. Don’t make the mistake of losing your professionalism, keep your cool and do your best to extract as much value out of each transaction as you possibly can. Don’t insult, don’t engage in useless back-and-forth drama episodes.

Not paying enough attention to the renewal fee dimension of their business model. Most domain investor simply consider renewal fees a non-issue. Something they’ll somehow manage to deal with, in other words. Now if you own a small portfolio then sure, I understand that there is little need to lose any sleep over renewal fees. But the more domains you own, the more of an issue renewal fees start to become. Or to put it differently, the more of a percentage of your average acquisition cost is represented by the yearly per-domain renewal fees, the more you should worry. Let me give you an example. If you hand registered 1000 domains and paid $10 for each, your average acquisition cost is $10. If the average renewal fee is nine dollars per year, then this effectively means that you are spending 90% of the amount you spent acquiring the domain on renewals each year. This is huge because again, you have to spend the amount in question each and every year if you want to keep your domain. On the other hand, if you buy 10 domains at an average acquisition cost of $5000 per domain, then the $8.5 in average renewal fees will represent a considerably smaller percentage of the average acquisition cost. Therefore, the person in this position has little need to worry about the impact of renewal fees. As far as most domain investors are concerned however, renewal fees represent a large enough percentage of the average acquisition cost to be a huge issue. Don’t make the mistake of underestimating their importance.

Not caring all that much about the liquidity dimension of investing in domain names. Now sure, we all want to sell to end-users at high prices, fair enough. But things happen, life happens. What if you all of a sudden need access to a lot of capital? If you have no inventory that can be easily liquidated on the domainer to domainer market, you’re going to be in a bit of a predicament. The less liquid a domain is, the more of a haircut you will have to expect when selling it quickly. If you want to avoid having to sell domains for pennies on the dollar, make sure to have at least some liquid domains in your portfolio. For example short domains or generally speaking, domains that are sought after on the reseller market.

Not paying enough attention to domain security. Domain theft is an issue far too few people take seriously. It surprises me how, in the year 2015, there are still lots and lots of people who use the same email address and the same password for multiple vital websites. Don’t make this mistake, use different passwords, use strong passwords. If possible, use two factor authentication as well. Paying attention to domain security is definitely not something in the realm of rocket science, common sense can and will get you far.

Using the term “potential” as an excuse for not making money now. Domain investors frequently like talking about how much potential their portfolio has and a lot of them have developed the unhealthy habit of using the “potential” argument as an excuse for a portfolio which is currently not making money. While I have nothing against the idea of being patient, I believe it is very important to have a portfolio which is currently profitable. If you been using the potential argument for many years and the results still aren’t good, then perhaps it’s time to go back to the drawing board and in an honest manner, assess the viability of your current business model.

Not acknowledging that a certain domain type is in bubble territory. For example short domains, especially numerics. Acknowledging we’re in bubble territory doesn’t have to mean selling everything you have, it simple means having a realistic perspective and taking it from there. I don’t know how high prices can go, I don’t possess a crystal ball and neither does anyone else.  What I’m saying is that once euphoria starts taking over, you cannot afford to let it get the best of you. If you think that the bull run an asset class is currently experiencing will last forever, then I’m sorry but the likelihood of ultimately getting burned are high. If prices are in bubble territory, acknowledge this and don’t live in denial. Don’t sell right away if you think there’s steam left but don’t assume the bubble will last forever. It won’t.