Interview With Tetrapak by DomainMagnate

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!).

– What is your main domaining strategy: waiting for end users, fishing

for bargains to resell to other domainers, investing long term,

developing etc.?

Actually a mixture of these. I really don’t like to resell, except if i’m in need, or when i feel i had the fair portion of the profit and there is no problem to pass a bit of it to the buyer. Most of my profits from the websites are going into domains and for my living as well, and these domains are normally for long term investments.

– What is your preferred registrar and parking company?

Goddady (don’t laugh) / None, i don’t like parking companies in general.

– What domaining sites do you frequent? E.g.: Blogs, forums, news,

auctions, tools

I like to read a lot on forums, so number one place is shared between Namepros and Dnforum, everything else is less important.

– Do you have any domaining icons that inspire you and that you look up to?

I wouldn’t call him an icon, but the guy who really inspired me was Matt, the one behind Bodis. He might not be too popular because of Bodis nowdays, but imagine a guy who started off at the age of 18 buying and selling such names as OY.com and Stern.com in his first year. He has risked a lot, and i’m much more a safety player, but i do respect him for what he achieved.

 

– If you had two million bucks to invest in domains, where would you put them?

In Dubai domains. Imagine, DubaiProperty.com went for 20k. Now take a look at the projects of Dubai, only Business Bay will have over 300 highrise towers, let alone Dubai Marina, Palm Jumeirah, JLT and all the rest. It is still a good time to buy some top Dubai domains if you have the budget.

 

– If a friend asked you to help him invest $10,000 in domains, what would you buy?

I would buy him an LLL.com, it has worked once, it made him 250% ROI in less than a year. Another option would be an excellent CVCV.com, such as BENE.com, something brandable and good sounding.

– What do you think will happen with the domaining industry in the years to come?

A lot of new and worthless extensions a lot of newcomers both to the internet and to domaining, and from our point of view what’s really important, massive money invested. And of course Google World Domination.

– What do you think are the current best opportunities in domaining?

Abbreviations with meanings and a lot of possible acronyms. The shorter, the better, people are lazy.

– What would you recommend to newcomers?

Start off with developement and only reinvest the money you earned with your websites. This way you can only expand and actually be able to build up something profitable. There is a very little chance that you will have a huge sale of a regfee name if you only have money to register one domain. It would be also a good strategy what Matt did. He knew that the name of the new Nintendo console would be announced in days, and he was basically refreshing their homepage every 5 minutes (imagine his look, like a zombie :)), then he registered wiigames.com, wiiforums.com and so on, to later sell for couple of thousands of dollars. Pretty good start i would say.

– If you had to start it all over again what would you change in your current domain portfolio/strategy?

It is a strange question. You earn your experience during the years you actively work in the field. There is no way not to make mistakes, so obviously i would have to say i would change this and that, but i rather feel good that i have gone through all these.

– If you were able to go 15 years back in time and register 5 .com

domains when they were all available, what would be on your list?

I hope you are joking 🙂 Who would not say Sex.com? I’m not a greedy type, i would just be fine with this one, haha.

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added by Michael:

Daniel is a great guy and it’s always a pleasure to talk to him.

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions for DomainMagnate.com readers!