Day 5 – 21 days to becoming a better domainer
You’ve been busy. See what you have already accomplished in just 4 days? Even you’re not following this plan day by day, you can still catch up pretty easily. Get on board if you’re not already and lets take this up a notch. You’re in the domainer mindset. Now that you’re comfortable posting, asking questions, taking notes, it’s time to make contact with some industry experts.
What?
What makes these domaines industry experts so special? What separates them from you? Well, not much. Regardless of your age, you’re really just an earlier version of them. They just have more experience and have developed good judgement. Mark Twain once said, “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.” So all you have to do is make some bad decisions… or better yet, learn from those who have already made the mistakes and found the roadmap that works.
Who?
Who are these people? Great domainers are all over the place, scattered amongst the not so great domainers. They are easy to find. You’ve been on the message boards and reading domain blogs constantly for the past few days. You can see who is talking smack and who is spewing knowledge. You can find articles about individual domainers and what they have accomplished with just a little searching. Hell, there’s a great story about a guy that took out a second mortgage on his house to invest in a single domain. You can see which bloggers are respected and write intelligently about the subjects pertaining to the business and which ones just don’t rub you the right way. Use your judgement and then shoot an email to 3 domainers / bloggers you don’t know.
Yeah, its weird reaching out to someone you’ve never met. You want to make money buying and selling domain names? Then you better get used to it. This will give you some practice in a safe environment. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They don’t respond. So be it. What’s the best thing that can happen? You find a contact that can and does actually teach you something. Think carefully about how you craft your initial email to them. First impressions tend to last and could mean the difference between a one time email and long term correspondence.
My suggestion would be to structure the email as follows:
1. Keep it short. My list of suggestions should be longer than your email.
2. Start out with some information about how you know who this person is. Nothing creepier than being contacted by some random person with no idea how there is a personal connection. Besides, it’s human nature for people to want to hear about themselves.
3. Next, tell a small bit about yourself. Not too much, because they don’t really care at this point and you don’t want to lose them.
4. Then ask a question while referencing something you know about them. This gives them a reason to reply to you and an opportunity for them to talk about their own opinions. Again, human nature makes this enjoyable.
Dear Mrs. Awesome Domainer,
I recently read an article about you on A-Domain-Blog.com and I really like your philosophy on the value of domain names (or some other topic related to this person). I’ve only been into domain investing for the past 3 months (or 20 years). While the article covered .com names, I was wondering if the philosophy still applies when used on .xyz names?
Thank you for your time,
Joe Domainer
If and when you do get a reply, be sure to thank them for the information. Don’t jabber on and on about the subject and turn this into a stalking situation. Instead, politely thank the person and ask if it would be alright if you contacted them now and then with domain name related questions since they have such a deep well of experience to draw from. Depending on the answer, you may have a new long term contact / mentor that can help you develop as a domainer.
Stay tuned… next week we’ll talk about your actual domain names.
