The second is when someone is appraising a name. My hair stands up when the appraiser says: “this name is worth low xxx, more with develpment”. This is insane.

A good name will generally be easier to develop, but a name is a name, is a name. The value is in the name. If you are selling a functioning website then you are selling a business….not a name.

And why do people keep saying that these names are selling for millions of dollars when it is actually the business that is selling? Any developed name that is sold where the new buyer keeps any of the previous development is NOT a domain name sale. It is the sale of a business.

Development doesn’t kill domains. People kill domains.

I don’t care if you have Computers.com. I don’t care if you have ReallyCoolComputers.com. Just like real estate: if you build it and don’t do it properly, you’re going to lose whatever income potential it had.

Imagine if I had a downtime prime New York property and put cardboard hotel boxes on it expecting people to pay me to spend the night. Or if I had this incredible land on the beach, threw heaps of trash on it and expected people to pay me for access.

Development doesn’t kill domains. People kill domains!

Rob Grant said it best in his recent DNJournal interview; “Development is just one of many ways Grant has financially diversified in recent years to protect himself from shocks in any one category. “In addition to our real estate brokerage, we operate a self storage business, we have a big vacation rental business, I operate a 23,000 square foot office building, so we have both commercial tenants and residential tenants. One of the lessons I learned early on was that it is very important to be as diversified as you can be. You can’t rely on any one business model because if you do you will be taken out. I’ve seen it time and time again and I’ve had it happen to me. So anytime I see an opportunity to create a business, or even just another revenue stream, I do it.”?

With that being said, development is not for everyone, however, there is nothing stopping you from partnering with someone who has the time, skill and experience to build the business for you. Everyone is too focused on 100% of the pie, vs reaping bigger rewards with owning 50% and letting someone else do all the work and build larger revenue streams.

You can accomplish so much more in your online domain portfolio businesses if you abandon these terms from your way of thinking. “My business is all about me, I want 100% of the revenue, Development is not for me, and lastly, PPC is doing fine, no need to develop.”

Strategic partnering to develop domains is the future for many in the domain industry. Makes perfect sense to align with someone/a company who does this well. Another revenue stream in the end. The best thing about development, if one plans fails, another goes up. It really is that easy.

The key is to learn from this if it does happen, and prevent it from occuring in other developments by emplacing effective systems and strategies.

Life’s lessons are never free. There is nothing to fear, but fear itself. In the end, you gain nothing if you never take the risk to strive for excellence and stay complacent.

Steve Morales