A blog post entitled Young Entrepreneurs: Top 25 Teenage Millionaires, caught my eye this morning.
The story lists 25 Teenagers who became millionaires by starting their own businesses as early as the age of 10.
Out of the 25, I counted 14 that made their millions by starting a business on the net.
One of these teenagers is a domainer:
Matt Wegryzn. This young man made his fortune in the business of buying and selling domain names. Some of the individual domains that he’s sold have gone for over six figures each. He was 17 when he started.
According to an interview with Mr. Wegryzn, he had owned: JF.com, Luci.com, Redo.com, ARQ.com, Ally.com, Gary.com, Jennie.com, Valerie.com, XD.com, VD.com, Oy.com, Occassion.com, Stern.com, and Arlene.com
He went on to say in that interview, have sold XD.com and VD.com, which was publicly reported, for 210k for the pair. I’ve also sold JF.com in the six figure range. My other large sales included Gary.com and Stern.com.
Its great to see a 17 year old kicking your ass.
Mike,
He also has listed some other great domain names for sale on DN Forum. What do you think of these?
AlltelRebate.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f116/alltelrebate-com-approx-300-month-thread-266464.html
SuperTroopers2.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f5/supertroopers2-com-thread-380652.html
WrongTurn3.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f5/wrongturn3-com-movie-domain-type-traffic-thread-377566.html
JeepersCreepers3.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f116/jeeperscreepers3-com-thread-377338.html
Saw6.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f116/saw6-dot-com-15-000-visitors-month-growing-thread-376026.html
TheRing3.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f5/thering3-dot-com-movie-title-thread-375132.html
BarackOama.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f116/barackoama-dot-com-thread-333198.html
JhonMccain.com
http://www.dnforum.com/f116/over-1200-month-revenue-jhonmccain-com-more-thread-324010.html
Anonymous
Sure nothing to be proud of in this list.
Wonder why someone so successful in selling Great quality domains has gone down this path.
Sad to see.
That’s the great thing about the Internet — success doesn’t depend on who you are, where you’re from, your age, race, gender, education, credentials, etc. There are quite a few younger members on Namepros and DNF who may not be at $1MM yet but are well on their way to being there in a few years time.
Mike,
I am sure they make lots of easy money.
Is this the Matt that started Bodis.com ?
@ Jamie: Yes – have to second what Mike said.
@Jamie
Yes, this is the Matt who started Bodis.com
He also once had quite a lot of TM’d/Typo domains…don’t know if he still has.
Nevertheless an impressive story, and I respect the accomplishments of this young man in acquiring and selling these premium domains, and building a parking company from scratch as a “one-man-show”.
Wasn’t that Bodis.com an absolute wreck of a parking company? Now it looks like a knock-off Sedo.
If he was 17 when he started and owned those quality domains, he must be around 27 now??
@ Adam
Bodis LOL
100% parking revenue for domainers and still making “millions”
a couple months ago a 22 yr old kid sold his banking blog for $15 million to bankrate.com
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/10/06/interview-with-the-15-million-blogger
Just saw this linked from my FB.
Article was old. Yes I have done typos in the past and I stand by it as being my best business in the past. Business is business and I do not care what anyone thinks of me monetizing typos (trademarked or not). I do not do it anymore anyway. I just broker them now.
I have not stooped down to anything. A typo was one of my first domains. Perhaps it was not “trademarked”, but it was a typo none-the-less.
If there is a concert, and you open up a hot dog stand to get passing by people to buy your hot dogs, are you “squatting” on the concert holders? Well, typos are not too much different. And fact of the matter is, most very successful businesses do it, Microsoft and Verizon including. They just rebrand it as “helping people find where they want to go”. Verizon DNS error ads for instance.
Anyway, this article is a bit old. Bodis is no longer 100% revenue share for new members (not to mention it was always pointed out from beginning that we only gave it for new members for a very limited time), but people seemed to disregard that. Would love to see Adam and Caesar come up with something much better. 🙂 It may look like a knock off Sedo, but we only wanted to integrate parking with a marketplace and so far we’re barely getting through with the parking, so there is a long way to go.
I’ll say that I’m making more with non-typo, non-TM generics, especially foreign domains, at Bodis.com than at many other places.
My earnings there are better than what Fabulous, NameDrive, or Sedo pays out. You’d think FAB would do better but they have really fallen off the cliff.
Thanks for the kind words Johnny.
Many people do not realize the extremely difficult process of setting up a domain parking company and running it. It is harder than I EVER imagined.
We’ve had RevenueDirect with 800,000 parked domains sell out to Sedo for reasons I know and am not going to say.
We’ve had small companies fail, and we’ve had almost no one come into this game within the last 2-3 years.
And according to some, there are more parking companies that will fail in 2009/2010, bigger than RevenueDirect.
One thing I did not like in the domaining community since I started was the fact that not many domainers know how to work together. Most like to turn against each other and post ugly comments and then, when they bash new and upcoming companies, they go to another board complaining that their revenues are dropping at some of their old companies.
The reason I started Bodis was because I was fed up with dropping revenue rates and wanted to change that. It is not easy, especially if you cannot get the same ad feed or anything close to it as the other companies.
Takes a lot of work and time, and is more of a gamble and luck rather than a business strategy at this point.
Great debate on both sides!
Well done, Matt!
Back in 2007 good deals were much easier to come by and buyers were abundant. Things have changed much now, but there are still opportunities in other domaining venues. Good luck with bodis!
Michael
As I said, all it takes is creativity!!!
This article was interesting as well as the comments…
I have names at Bodis.com
I am pleased with Bodis…
I use several PPC services…
I learnt long ago to not put my
just under 10k domains all in
one spot.. so they are here and there..
and for the most part – I keep things
quiet… private… and rarely share
business details with anyone…
I’ve always been that way…
I guess I have always preferred
to get to know people that wanted
to know ME… for me… not for how
successful I am or how many
thousands of domains I have…
or how many end user sales I
have each week…
I do like to meet folks though…
I treasure my business friendships….
Time for a Baby Ruth mini-candy-bar
it’s been here on my desk for 3 hours…
I think I heard it say “Patricia… ”
~Patricia Kaehler – DomainBELL
Good approach Patricia. I wish you would tell me that 2-3 years ago when the article was published, because I didn’t know then.
The article was for Tyler Cruz so new domainers would get some advice on how to go from nothing to something. Not to bash on my fellow domain investors, but there is a difference between going from nothing to something in 2009, than going from nothing in 1999 to something in 2009. It is a different ball game, and that needed to be explained to new and upcoming domainers. Getting by in the domain industry is very hard work now. Not what it was 10 years ago. The opportunity is going down every year.
There is still a chance. I’ve met a few people recently that went from absolute $0. Complete broke, to already a few thousands. When I say broke, I mean broke as in they had only $15 in a PayPal account. They are some also from countries where monthly wage is $400 or less, and making $1000 when you are living in such countries is a big deal.
This is no more “let’s buy 20 domains and see what happens 10 years from now”. That approach is gone and never will come back. That article was supposed to give inspiration to the new generation.
Hope it did. But that would be my last set of articles, and it was like I mentioned 2-3 years ago.
Before you posted Patricia, I already emailed Michael to take the post down. As mentioned, I don’t like to be in the spotlight anymore either. There is a big difference between the age of 17 and nearing on 22. That is not my type of approach anymore.
Anyway, there are good things in store for Bodis. And that is all I care about. The Bodis members and keeping those happy that are currently parking with us. 🙂