Outside View on the Domain Industry — An Interesting
What happens when an amateur shows up to a domain meetup.
I came across a blog post today by a self-proclaimed “amateur” domainer who attended the South Florida Domainers event the prior week. It’s an interesting read since the author, Craig Agranoff, showed up to the event thinking he’d be surrounded by prolific domainers. Instead, he claims, the majority of them were amateurs like himself. In his own words:
I’ve dabbled in domain trading and development ahead of and have made some money doing it, but have always thought of myself as just a dabbler, an amateur. Turns out, I’ve done more of it than most of the “experts” in attendance. A lot of them were there, I think, to try to siphon information from the successful domainers.
Even the examples Agranoff gives of the top sales by people that he at first labels as “some of the pretty well-known and prolific domainers in the world” are not substantial.
Agranoff also writes that he was surprised by how much legal wrangling goes on in the background of the industry:
It’s amazing how many things there are surrounding the domain business as well. Lawyers, mostly, but they are the back-end that most people don’t see. They cut deals, smooth out the legalities, and work on people’s behalf to defend against or prosecute theft of trademarks or copyrights. With them are the paralegals and support staff. All focused on the domain name industry.
It’s worth a read to get an outsiders take on meeting a group of domainers for the first time.
