In preparation for my participation the a session next week at DomainFest entitled:
Domaining 2.0- What Does the Next Evolutionary Phase of Our Industry Look Like”
I began asking myself exactly what is domaining?
I’ve see this question being asked in comments to my blog on many occasions.
To me the answer is clear.
Domaining is comprised of three distinct activities:
The acquisition of domains
The holding of domains
The sale of domains.
Domain acquisition can be in the form of a domain registration, the purchase of a domain from a domain owner, the purchase of a domain through an industry auction, the purchase of a domain through a drop auction.
Holding of domains, deals with parking or developing domains. Including in the holding of domains are legal issues such as trademark disputes, renewal fees, PPC issues and development issues.
The sale of domains includes private sales to end users or other domainers, sale of domains through industry auctions, be they part of a domain show or through sedo.com, snapnames.com or afternic.com.
Seems simply enough.
Anyone have any other broad categories of activities that compromise domaining?
While full-scale web development is NOT domaining, I believe minisite development might still fall under the realm of a domainer’s activities. As well, the sale of domains to end users is probably more likely if one does some marketing to businesses which sell the product or service.
“Holding” sounds too passive; “monetization and maintenance” might be a better term. Also, if all domainers made “advancing the industry” part of our business equation, perhaps we’d be able to prevent the misapplication of the “C” word and neutralize CADNA.
On my website:http://www.goodkarmatoyou.com/index.php?Aboutus
I called myself the Creative CEO (whatever that is). I just love domain names as it allows me to create something from nothing. With the hot catchy domain names, one can create websites to reflect their functionality.
Eventhough my English suks, but at least I know the power of words..and can turn into something meaningful via websites.
How else can one express and get paid on the internet?!!! Man..I love domains and the internet.
Domaining is compromised of:
Buyers (investors) mostly long term
Sellers (resellers/flippers)
Monetization (parking)
The above are the biggest sectors
whatever development or brokerage, etc…is going on it is on a small scale who nobody really cares much about from the mainstream.
Best,
Mike
Leonard
I think you can be a domainer and develop one or more sites out as well.
Jeff
I think that advancing the industry is a by-product of making smart acquisitions, those that do not blatantly infringe on trademarks, and hold a domain in a smart and responsible fashion, like not making whitehouse.com a porn site
Domaining is like the above described comments. But lets not forget that “ PRO Domaining “ means also being a “VISIONARY” . Someone which looks beyond the normal. Someone with never ending self discipline in staying in the domain game even if it took months or years to learn how these wheels turn.
These kinds of domainers mostly have run different businesses and therefore learnt much of what it takes to get to a point of success.
Regarding personality, I think domainers have two things in common. First they are all salesman and second they are constantly looking for “brain food” on 24/7 bases.
What Duane said! Bingo! A very good reflection of, as he noted, Pro Domaining.
@L. Britt – “While full-scale web development is NOT domaining”
Sure it is. Full-scale development (if pursued) is only part of domaining related activities. They are not mutually exclusive at all.
@MHB – “… you can be a domainer and develop one or more sites out as well”
Right.
You can be a domainer, and a million other things… Why not?
🙂
I think there is only maybe a few hundred “professional” domainers in the industry… 1000s of floaters here and there that “domain” occassionaly… and 1000s that get involved each and every month trying to chase the easy money which don’t even last more than few months…they burn through a few hundred bucks and disappear.
Best,
Mike