New Kids on the Block

When I first started acquiring domain names back in 2005 I was approached by someone who'd been in the game a lot longer than me & one of the things he said was that over the years he'd seen a lot of people come into the game and drop out. He advised me that New Zealand domains are hard to market and I listened. I've never really tried actively marketing my portfolio, sure I occasionally get approached by people interested in my domain names, but generally I try covering my costs with advertising and the occasional sale helps fill in the deficit.

Surviving the recession

I pretty much dropped out of domaining during the worst of last year's recession and am only just starting to get back into it. For a while I thought I'd have to ditch a considerable percentage of the portfolio, but I just managed to keep it together and came out with the portfolio largely unscathed. Parking still doesn't pay very well and I still don't see myself back in domaining in the conventional way. I'm moved from investing into developing and am currently developing out many of my domain names into small sites.

Late Renewals and Drop Catchers

It's no secret that most of my domains have come from drop catchers. Most of the currently active .nz domain collectors have also picked a fair proportion of their domains up through drop catchers.

One of the on-going frustrations of drop catching is going to the effort of doing the due diligence on an expired name and not getting it. Sometimes this is because someone else decides it is worth more than I do , sometimes it's because another drop catcher gets the domain, and sometimes it's because the domain owner decides to renew the domain just before it drops.