My advice for anyone getting started is easy...
Develop!
Parking is pretty much useless unless you're spending money on premium domains (which most newcomers don't) and flipping isn't a great strategy for today's newcomer either.
If I had to start again from scratch with just $200 in my pocket, I would spend $180 on a single domain in a niche that I knew well (but that was also popular enough to be profitable) and $20 on a nice logo from Logo Nerds (DNtrade sponsor!)
Why would I pay for a logo? Well I've seen the logos that a lot of DNtrade newbie's websites use, and a lot of them are bloody horrible! A decent logo can make almost any Wordpress blog look professional, and gives you more chance of a visitor staying on your site rather than closing the tab straight away.
I'd then setup a Wordpress site using a nice clean design, and write content and build links every day until I was bringing in enough revenue to repay the cost of the domain within twelve months. That's only $17 a month, which should be easy to reach.
That doesn't value your time at anything, but let's be honest, the alternative would have been sitting in front of your TV or computer wasting time anyway!
But getting back to the point, once you realise that you can buy a domain and make the whole purchase price back within twelve months (or less) then you'll have the confidence to spend more on better domains.
I know a lot of newcomers like to hand register because it seems cheap, but I can safely say that all of my most profitable websites are built on domains that I did not hand reg. That said, more than half of my portfolio is hand reg, but many of them are 5+ years old.
Anyway, I hope I've just given something back to the forum after my trouble making yesterday.
