Domain Magnate

DomainMagnate brings you an exclusive interview with “trendicator” from namepros, who Had YXL.COM Stolen and Recovered It. Read through for first hand tips on how to keep your names secure and what you should do in case your domains get stolen.

- details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
my friends call me Max. I am a Chinese man in his handsome early 20’s
my username at namepros is trendicator

- How long have you been into domaining and how did you get into it?
i’ve been domaining for 2 years now. When first started, i was still at university, and tried to get a website for myself to impress girls, so i thought. One thing led to another, i began to stock up domains. read more »

I will be posting more interviews soon with different domainers of all levels, starting from the beginning domainers to the top stars of the domaining community.

Everyone gets a fair chance, the only requirement is that you have to own at least 10 domains and be an active member of the domaining world.

Post below if you’d like to do it and I’ll send you a short list of interview questions to your email.

For previous interviews check out the interviews category

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Rich from Quad Letter Domains

- Name, age, location?
Richard Shorten, 25, United Kingdom

- What are your top 3 domains?
I have lots of names spread across many different niches and lately have focussed heavily on quad letter domains so its difficult to single out specifics…

- Username on main domaining forums?
My username is rjs_essex and I frequently visit Namepros and am a moderator on AcornDomains.co.uk. Such a boring handle, my initials and county in the UK but I guess if I change it now no one would recognise me or know who I was!

- How long have you been into domaining and how did you get into it?
I’ve been in the domain business for about 4 years now. I started out buying a domain to host a website for a small business idea I had – starting up as an on call IT technician for the private sector. If I had had the time I would probably still be doing it but it never really took off. I started looking around the web for ideas and was also inspired by a family member who started out in domaining back in 2000. read more »

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Jeff from DomainBits.com

Details about yourself, occupation, age, location.
Hi Michael! Thanks for the interview. I’m in my late 30s, and live in Ottawa, Canada, with my wife and 4-year old son. My wife and I work together from home - on domaining as well as marketing and running our websites. I also write the blog DomainBits and write for DomainNews. I really like domaining as I like to do things my way, and domaining has no paths that you need to follow - you create your own path and your own success. Staying in my pyjamas all day, being around for my son when he’s not in school, and making good money are all good perks too!

What is your primary focus, e.g. generics, country tlds, short domains etc?
I think that for people who are newer to the industry, there are lots of good opportunities in ccTLDs. These domains are much cheaper than .com domains, and there is solid end user money coming into these extensions to ensure that they continue to do well in the long haul and are not simply speculative bubbles.

So, I concentrate on ccTLDs. I particularly concentrate on UK, Canadian and Indian domains. I’ve found .uk is a particularly strong ccTLD, and my .uk domains do well in terms of type-in traffic and end user offers. I’m in Canada, so I understand the local business climate well, and so I invest in .ca for that reason. I like .in and .co.in for the long term, as India is a huge market whose primary language is English and where there is still going to be a large movement to the internet by both consumers and businesses. read more »

DomainMagnate.com presents an interview with Daniel, or tetrapak on NamePros and DNForum. Daniel is 23 and a full time domainer/web developer

- How long have you been into domaining and how did you get into it?
The story how i got into the domain industry is a bit funny, at least i can laugh now.. 4 years ago i’ve been helping a guy developing his Dubai related business website, and he promised a lot of things, like to be partners and such. I already had a website under developement with the first domain registered by myself, since then it is my biggest website with over 100k uniques per month, but that is another story. So this guy obviously haven’t paid for my work, but he introduced me the so called domain parking.. He sent me over an XLS file with his earnings of the last month. I was simply amazed when i saw that such domains as *Company*Properties.com (TM name..) can earn $8,000 / month purely by registering it and changing the nameservers. So with his help i figured i would register similar domains, as his top 10 domains were all earning 1k$+ / month, i thought i have nothing to lose. First i registered Properties*Company*.com/.net/.org.. and quickly parked them. Now i was officially R I C H. Then came the surprise… Day 1, no earnings.. Day 3 no earnings.. Day 6 ONE unique visitor! Now, i contacted the guy about my “problem”, and i told him that i believe he has faked his stats.. He said his brother is the one dealing with the domains, so he has nothing to do with them, but he knows a way to get a 50k offer on a domain. Which was…: Sedo Featured Listing! Yes, you guess it right, i had another 40$ burned. No sale… Of course he was surprised, but he asked me a favor, to bid on his domain (regfee name..) on Tdnam for 8k, he said there would be people to overbid me anyway. Sure. This was the end and luckily i had no contact with him since then. The good thing is, i started to earn with Adsense, and everything i earned i have reinvested in domains that were suggested by the friendly guys at over Namepros. The first serious sale was of a regfee hyphenated name for 8k that i registered in my first year.

- How many domains do you own and what is your primary focus?
Xxx names, it changes every day. No dot mobis and no dot asias I mostly own .com’s, but i prefer any other tlds for developement. I had success with .info’s as well, they are my lovely cheap ones (except the renewals!). read more »

Would you tell us a few words about yourself? How long have you been working in the domain and web hosting industry?

I have been with Dotster in the domain and web hosting industry since it was privatized in 2000. During that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of several industry firsts, including the first namespin algorithm, auto renewals, the first shopping cart and the first expired domain auctions.

Under my tenure at Dotster, the company has thrived and has grown to become one of the largest registrars in the world. Dotster has helped almost one million businesses and individuals establish a read more »

A recent interview with Rick Schwartz posted over at Search Feature:

Mike Dammann: How did you get the idea to start the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Conference and Expos and how close are you to the search engine industry?

Rick Schwartz: It started as a 12 person get together at my home. When 35 wanted to come I hooked up with my Attorney, Howard Neu, and decided we needed a venue other than my house and an agenda of activities and discussions. When 135 signed up we got THRUST into the convention business. 6 months later we held our second TRAFFIC show in Las Vegas and this time 235 showed up. By the time we have another show in Florida a few months later, we were 350 strong. So it was never planned, it was needed and we just took the ball and ran with it.

After 10 shows we have established ourselves as the key event in the space and thousands of domainers and investors have come to one show or another.

As for the search industry, it is an industry having more and more in common with domain owners. In our show in May in Orlando we will have at least one SEO panel and in future conferences even more as our channels overlap more and more. read more »

This is the first of a series of interviews with different domainers intended to let everyone express their views, opinions and share their experience.

I think it will be interesting for most domainers to see how their fellows are doing. If you’d like to get interviewed feel free to contact. Domainers with all levels of experience will be given an equal chance here. read more »

In this new section I’m planning to post a series of interviews with other domainers.

Unlike other Interviewers I’m not going after the domaining celebrities, but rather much smaller scale domainers and domain professionals like the average readers of my blog in order to give everyone a fair chance to express their opinions and share their views on the industry.

You’ll get to see domaining through the eyes of various people with different domain portfolios and experiences, as well life backgrounds. An unbiased and straight forward approach to domaining by a wide range of domain investors from the newcomers to experienced professionals.

I received several inquires lately from people interested in being interviewed and
some interviews are being prepared now. If you are reading this and you are interested in getting interviewed feel free to contact me by pming on DNforum or Namepros (My username: Michael_Goldman), or by sending an email to ‘contact’ at this domain.

stay tuned for more updates and the interviews