Every few years someone declares domain investing dead.
I've been hearing it since I started. The dot-com crash hangover. The 2008 recession. When Facebook took over the world and nobody needed websites anymore, remember that? The flood of new TLDs that was supposed to kill .com. The pandemic. Now it's AI that's going to make domains irrelevant.
Same song, different decade.
Here's the thing though. The people saying it's dead aren't always wrong about what they're experiencing. They're just wrong about what it means.
Domain investing isn't dead. But the version they wanted it to be? Yeah, that's gone. It's different.
There was a time when you could hand-reg something decent, throw it on Sedo, and just... wait. You didn't even need to know why it was valuable. Someone would eventually email. I'm not going to pretend I didn't benefit from that era. I absolutely did. Bought names I had no business buying and got lucky when someone needed them.
That market is dead. If your entire strategy was built on that, you're going to be disappointed. Markets mature. The easy stuff gets arbitraged away. Happens in every industry.
But here's where people get it wrong. They think because the easy version is dead, the whole thing is dead. That's like saying real estate investing is dead because you can't flip houses in 30 days anymore like you could in 2005. I'm not a real estate investor, so take that for what it's worth.
What hasn't changed is why domains actually matter. Businesses still need names. Startups still need credibility. A strong domain still shortens the gap between "who are these people?" and "okay, they're legit." If anything, that's gotten MORE important as the internet gets noisier.
What's changed is who gets paid.
The market rewards operators now. People who understand end users, who know how to price, who can negotiate without getting emotional about it. It punishes collectors. I learned this the hard way. Actually I'm probably still learning it even though I don't want to admit it. I've got names in my portfolio right now that are there because they "feel premium" but if I'm being honest, I have no idea who would buy them. That's expensive thinking.
I made a mistake a few years back. I turned down a $4,000 offer on a name because I was convinced it was worth $10K. Anchored to my own expectations instead of what the market was actually telling me. The domain eventually sold, but not for what I passed on. Took another year and sold for $3,500. I basically paid renewal fees to make less money. Not the best business move.
The market taught me that lesson. I didn't need to learn it twice, but I probably did anyway on some other names.
One thing that trips people up. They see fewer public sales announcements and think sales have dried up. That's not what's happening. The best deals often happen completely privately. Direct outreach. No press release. No tweet. No NamePros thread. When someone says "nobody's buying anymore," what they often mean is "I'm not seeing the signals I used to see."
Which brings me to something I've been thinking about. I think liquidity expectations are the biggest disconnect in domain investing.
Domains aren't stocks. They never were. But people treat portfolio numbers like stock tickers. Expecting fast flips across a wide portfolio is how investors burn out. The ones still doing well? They've accepted longer hold times on higher conviction names. Fewer renewals. More intention. Less spray and pray.
I'm trying to do this myself. I've written about it before. Dropping names that haven't gotten a single inquiry in three years. Hurts every time. What if I drop it and someone wants it next month? But you know what hurts more? Renewal fees on names nobody will ever want.
Actually, side tangent. I was talking to a guy I met through DMing after reading some tweets a few years back, and he told me he'd never dropped a domain. Ever. Like it was a badge of honor. I remember thinking "that's either incredibly impressive or incredibly expensive." Probably both. Trends also move faster now than they did 10 years ago. Keywords that mattered in 2019 might be completely irrelevant today. New industries pop up overnight. AI, climate tech, fintech infrastructure, creator economy tools. This rewards people who stay curious and punishes people who locked in their strategy in 2012 and never updated it.
The real skill isn't chasing hype. It's recognizing durable demand. I'm always working on improving that skill.
Here's a hard truth that people don't want to hear. Most failures in domain investing are self-inflicted. Overpaying at auctions because you got competitive. Renewing names you should have dropped years ago. Refusing to listen to market feedback. Blaming "the industry" instead of your own decision-making.
That's not a broken market. That's poor discipline. I know because I've done all of it. I'm not going to lie.
Brandability also matters more now. Exact-match keywords still sell, don't get me wrong. But companies increasingly want names that feel flexible and ownable. This requires taste. You can't automate taste. You learn it through exposure, mistakes, and pattern recognition. And even then you're going to be wrong sometimes.
So when someone asks "is domain investing still worth it?" the better question is whether they're willing to treat it like an actual business.
That means tracking renewals like inventory costs. Knowing your real all-in price including every renewal. Understanding why each domain is in your portfolio. Being comfortable with long stretches of silence. Improving outreach instead of spamming every contact form you can find. Walking away when a deal doesn't make sense even if you need a win.
The people declaring domain investing dead usually fall into two groups. Those who expected quick wins and didn't get them. And those who stopped adapting.
The investors still doing well? They're too busy to declare anything. They're negotiating. They're pruning portfolios. They're compounding quietly.
I don't know if domain investing is "worth it" for everyone. It depends what you want from it, how much time you have, whether you can stomach long hold times, whether you have the capital to play the game properly.
What I do know is it's not dead. It's just different than it used to be. Which is true of basically everything else too.
Think I'm wrong? I still make dumb decisions. But I'm still here. That's either persistence or stubbornness. Probably both.
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