A very common theme in the domain industry is venturing into the abyss of domain development. Domain investors often times are lead to consider domain development for a number of reasons.

Domain investors often conclude how lucrative the opportunity of domain development can be to increase the domain’s overall value as well as the opportunity for residual income by way of a full-fledge online business.

From personal experience, domain development is very much as deceiving as attempting to understand truly how big an iceberg is at surface level.

There’s not too many people would quit or forgo business school or college to immediately start a business.

But today’s guest, Marianna Felsman, did just that decades ago on her way to becoming partner and entrepreneur of BlueAir, a thriving Austin-based Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) services company.

When entering into the domain industry with great hopes, wishes, and dreams of striking it rich as a domain investor, most domain investors would ever imagine having to mortgage their house in order for their dream to be realized.

Well, that very thought as well as few others was considered by Drew Wash — a long-time domain investor, and entrepreneur of MovingSites.com, a host of website communities designed to bring experts together.

Of course, financing domain names is nothing new under the sun. Domain leasing and financing certainly happens each and every week, if not on a daily basis.

It’s not news to read about a person or company leveraging varying financing options to hopefully stake their claim to highly-valued virtual real estate.

The question I pose is whether or not financing of new gTLDs is likely the chasm that separates registries that fail and flop versus those that wildly succeed. 

Most likely, everyone investing in domains has hope and dreams of realizing substantial ROI for their domain portfolio.

And if you don’t, then you might need to consider your motive for domain investing in the first place. 🙂

I’m not going to tell you that you can or can’t make a reasonable amount of money buying and selling domains.

The truth is, domain investors can make money, lose money or do a combination of both, hopefully, more of the former and less of the latter. 😉

It’s been a while since I shared a domain sale experience. The reason I’m highlighting today’s story is based on my latest experience selling a domain to a buyer that’s likely a Chinese domain investor.

How do I know that the domain buyer is a Chinese domain investor? I don’t know with great certainty, but it’s highly likely based on what I’m about to share with you.

I’m glad to report a few months into 2018 that I’ve been blessed with an influx of favorable domain inquiries. In fact, most of my sales started last November.

However, this specific domain request arrived a few weeks ago and intrigued me because of the following reasons:

It’s been a little over a month since I attended and shared my NamesCon experience as a first-time attendee.

One of the most talked about presentations from day three of NamesCon was Paul E. Nicks’, GM of GoDaddy, keynote: Lessons Learned from Operating the Most Valuable Portfolio in the World.

But what you might not know or heard about was the very lively breakout session focused on domain appraisals: Mastering Aftermarket Appraisals.