Are you an Armchair Domainer?

Second guessing and postulating isn’t just for football.

Yesterday I read a guest post at Domain Name News titled “Armchair SEOs Play with Toys.com“. It was a good article regarding Toys.com losing its Google ranking, and how it’s easy to sit back and say “Toys ‘R’ Us” screwed up”. It’s easy to say that from the outside looking in, but we really don’t know the circumstances.

It got me thinking regarding a lot of domainers out there that I’d describe as “armchair domainers”. They’re the ones on forums telling people they sold their domains too cheap or they’re asking too much. They criticize every move made by another domainer, but what have they done with their own domains?

I’m guilty of this sometimes, too.

A recent case of armchair domaining comeuppance was when Faculty Lounge “bought” toys.com for $1.25M. A lot of people on forums stated either it was worth much more or it sold for too much. Few of those people ever thought their comments would be tested. And let’s face it, none of these people had the money to buy the domain themselves. But when the auction was rerun and ended at $5.1M, a lot of people had to eat their words.