.orgHere Come the Developer Armies
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Back in January, Sahar didn’t agree with my advice in How to (Really) Make Money with Domain Names and wrote in response on his own blog:
[T]here is gold in development, however, if you think it is better than domain ownership and PPC, think again, many times over. I personally am a believer that some of us are property owners, some are developers, some are deal makers, some are collectors, and so on. Just because you do one thing right does not mean you will do the other as well.
Over the next few months, though, more and more domainers began admitting that there was less and less money in “domain ownership and PPC.” PPC revenue was drying up quickly, making asset appreciation more and more the primary value component of the buy-and-hold strategy — and that’s not good if domain name values are plateauing.
Today it looks like Sahar is no longer just a property owner. Julia writes:
[R]ecently [Sahar] sent out a mail to his facebook network which gave a short synopsis about [his company] Recall Media and how they employ over 70 programmers who are busy building out their domains. Take a moment to digest that information, 70 programmers.
I definitely don’t want to single out Sahar here at all. For every domainer who would have argued back in January that buying and holding was better than development, there are probably ten today who would now argue differently. Julia is absolutely correct when she writes:
[T]he general point to this post is about following the money. Like money investors, by the time the mainstream press are raving about how much money there is to be made in any particular sector, the “money” and by this i mean “the players” are already in there and have been in for some time.
Pure domaining has been on the back of the curve for quite some time now, but we’re still on the front of the curve for development. You’d better hurry, though, because armies of developers like Sahar’s are already hard at work taking new ground that used to be much easier to conquer.
Photo by Ben McLeod.
Sahar Sarid
August 21, 2008 at
12:54 pm
Shane,
We had programmers and businesses for many years now and I said it many times prior to January. The issue was and still is, if you own good PPC domains, should you rush to develop them? And is it better? With development, there are more casualties than winners, still.
Cheers
Sahar
Shane
August 21, 2008 at
1:42 pm
If we’re talking about good PPC domains, whether to develop them or not depends on the particular domain. Even then, though, the number of “good” PPC domains is dwindling rapidly. PPC revenue just isn’t anything like what it once was, and it’s just going to get worse.
And just to be clear, I’m not talking about developing sites like Assista or Bido — sites that are trying to change the game like eBay and Google did. I’m talking about doing some very basic build-out on sites about engineer jobs or Oxford, Mississippi — sites that are simple, but that generate several multiples of the revenue that PPC would and that build enterprise value the longer they run.
Sahar Sarid
August 21, 2008 at
2:16 pm
Mini-site development, I’m all for it. In my world this isn’t development, just hacking some text and images together.
Cheers
Sahar
Shane
August 21, 2008 at
2:29 pm
Yeah, I figured we might have be working with different definitions. I’m not much for game-changers. Maybe it’s lack of huge ambition or A.D.D. (or both), but I like smaller sites that I can manage on my own — especially when there’s still plenty of money to be made with sites like that.
BlogSavvy
August 25, 2008 at
1:58 pm
Shane, Nice post, while the “good domains” still elude me there are plenty that can make good money too. Nice post.
Kelly
August 26, 2008 at
8:34 am
I’ve read and heard that domain name business has been seem become popular again recently. What I read is this business does not give “big money”. Maybe not as big as affiliate marketing. But I think there is nothing wrong to try it. It is good business opportunity. No wonder many player joined.
Shane
August 26, 2008 at
8:49 am
You can definitely still make money in it, but it’s nowhere near what it was. See Julia’s second quote in the post above.
Just Get Started » Ask Shane.org
August 27, 2008 at
12:48 pm
[...] is a perfect example of that. Sahar and I had a good conversation in the comments of my article Here Come the Developer Armies, and one of the main things it helped me realize was that people often shoot for very different [...]