whats your biggest mistake in 2008 and what did you learn from it?

[replic8te]

So its near the end of the year, and Im looking back at my various businesses. Maybe you are too. Thinking about what you could do different or better in 2009.


What was your biggest business mistake in 2008 and what did you learn from it?



For me, it was definitely investing .... more like over-investing in land rush segments. It's my second year of part time domaining (I also have other developing businesses) and when I saw LLLL.coms take off, I figured "Hey, there is something to this landrush thing".

So I wondered about what might be the next segment to explode. There were the L-L-L's, .info's etc etc. But NNNNN.com made the most sense for me, easy to value (or so I thought) and what could be more desireable than a dot-com?

Now Im sitting with a large bunch of NNNNN's and part of the lesson is, I didnt plan far enough in advance for the renewal fees. Dont get me wrong, I believe in NNNNN.coms as a long term proposition, but I think you are going to see masses and masses drop come feb/march 09.

If you have some cash, pick up some nice ones, I doubt Marchex or whoever it is that has all the US postal codes is just going to drop them, so that will help with scarcity to some extent. I also know some large (1000+) investors that intend holding theirs.

If I had the money Id keep em, age em. But such is hindsight and now Im focused on spending my money differently.

Bottom line: Make sure you bite off what you can chew, long term.

Thanks to all the DNFers that helped me learn this year, some who know who they are and some I read here.



So what was your biggest mistake of 2008 and what can we learn from you?

Happy holidays

 

[Sonny Banks]

My biggest mistake in 2008 was not develop all my domains.

 

[Stian]

In 2009 I will buy more domains than I did in 2008 and also focus on .COM domains only (no more .nets .. ). I will stick to the "safe" names which I believe are; LL/LLL.com, dictionary .COMs and pronounceable LLLL.coms which are easy to brand and spell. I don't think I will develop more, as I still think flipping names is the most fun and efficient way of making $$$ with domains.

2009 will be a blast for domainers!

 

[Theo]

The biggest mistake would be to sell below value. The global markets follow the same cycles every few years. Unless absolutely necessary, now it's the time to hold.

 

[BLazeD]

Investing in things I know nothing about.

 

[DN BROKER]

Selling!

 

[Makis77]

my biggest and greatest mistake is to buy and sell in a rush that most of the times made me less profit than planned or even loss
i m 2 yrs in this industry and i m trying to learn from my mistakes because i make a lot but thankfully i rarely make the same mistake twice

2009 is developing more .gr domains and stop buying other than .com's

 

[katherine]

My mistakes:
not buying enough domains
selling a few names 'cheap'

But every year is getting better than the previous one

 

[owntag]

My biggest mistake was sold 100+ LLL.mobi in bulk ($120/each) long time ago.
It looks like this is no longer a mistake now

As for the upcoming 2009, I will hunt and buy more domains than I did this year, and try to lift my daily adsense revenue to $40/day

 

[Onward]

Selling one of my best names below my perceived value to fund another project...

The ROI still can and most likely will be a huge winner, but I will always regret selling this domain name...

 

[ScottFish]

Buying Hyphenated and .mobi domains and not reselling them before renewal feed caught up to me.

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

I got married... no wait that was last year. :lol:

 

[dnbroker77]

...

 

[Poker]

I got married... no wait that was last year. :lol:

Understandable...it probably feels like longer

 

[mike031]

i made no mistakes.......... 2008 rocked!

 

[kershnerd]

I bought way to many new domain names just because the name was cool... names like myfootyourass.com, absurdemailaddress.com, and about 200 other ones. I had no intention of develop those domains. What the hell was I thinking?!

I did buy doory.com, a 5 letter brandable domain name for $1000.00. I changed my company's domain name from doorywebsolutions to doory. I am not sure if that was a good decision yet or not!

2009 is going to be all about increasing traffic to my many crazy websites including worlds biggest b*tch (dot) com!

Good luck in 2009 to everyone and thanks for all the help you guys have given me this year! You guys are great!

 

[denny007]

Bought matureporn.com for $130K, because I thought all the traffic is type-in while 70% of the traffic was in fact expired from the old site running on it.

 

[lotk.com]

Working 60+ hours a weeks with no overtime
Hopefully 2009 will allow me to develop a lot of my domains.

 

[GAMEFINEST]

I didn't really make any big mistakes, because I was on the sidelines..watching

 

[Linkan]

The biggest mistake would be to sell below value. The global markets follow the same cycles every few years. Unless absolutely necessary, now it's the time to hold.

Quoted for truth. If you can afford it, now is really the time to hold on to your investments during this world wide financial dip.

My biggest mistake during 2008 was to not develop properly and earn enough cash from affiliate marketing. An error which will be corrected... starting now actually.