You Must Read This Ahead of Developing Your Domains

Why developing your domain names might be a bad idea.

From time to time I read excellent blog posts that explain aspects of domaining much better than I can.

Nat Cohen delivered yesterday with a post titled “The Dangers of Optimism -or- Don’t Develop“.

His point in a nutshell: just since you’re a good domainer or have good domains doesn’t mean you can build a web business.

It’s very true. They require very different skills. I’ve seen countless web business started by domainers fail, although many times they’re afraid to admit it.

I personally sunk over $20k into Lakeway.com, only to make critical design errors, underestimate the feet on the street sales effort required to sell listings on it, and rely too much on the promises of third parties to turn it into a viable business.

Other development efforts (such as this blog) have worked out well.

Does the problem lie with domainers? I think it has more to do with the false view that all web businesses are successful. I’m not sure that domainers are any more or less successful building web businesses than the typical person. The truth is that most web businesses fail.