@Tim
Not worthy of a new thread, because my angle is atypical, not much for others to learn from.
Been on the web since it had pictures.
Never owned any domains I didn't use for my own purposes.
Had a successful PPC affiliate business (dead now) and we bought a few domains to build landing sites with.
In 2008 I was paying too much tax, and got hooked on the big gamble of domain investing. Figured if I only broken even profit-wise, I would at least be in a lower tax bracket when I sold them.
Bought roughly 2000 domains. In retrospect I initially paid about 5x more than I would now, and half of them I wouldn't have for free.
I had the luxury of screwing up and learning from my mistakes while still being able to afford to stay in the game.
Enough of my domains were good enough to make enough profit for me to not give up.
Inevitably my income fell and it is now time to sell my stockpile.
Some stats:
Average time to sell a domain = 20 years (so far, with time that average will drop)
Average purchase price = $100
Most I ever pay for a domain = $1000 (perhaps a mistake)
Average sales price = $1000
Biggest sale = $20000
Let expire = ~500
Current ratio... expire 20, sell 1, buy 3
Time spent: ~15 hours per week (spilt evenly between selling, buying and maintaining)
I'm currently pulling an average salary from domain sales, and it is my primary income. Until a lot more of my domains are sold it will be impossible to tell if I have profited from the exercise. I envy domainers who have a low stockpile and fast turnover, who truly understand how well they are doing.
Biggest mistakes:
.info
keyword domains that are not .com
Saviours:
brandables
short domains with any sort of vague meaning
#1 best advice: don't use metrics like keyword searches - few bargains to be had. Try to find domains that take intuition to recognise as good - there'll be less people to compete with.
Example, looks like I will pick up AdHoy.com tonight for $70 via NameJet. That means that nobody has noticed it via search algorithms. I'm not convinced it is a great name, but I feel someone might pay a grand for it.