Great clarification post rick,

Rick,

I have always admired your willingness to follow the money. Your a HUSTLER and SALESMAN.

I think you made the right move in the position you were in.

Good Luck

Very well said. I was one of the people that questioned your logic but appreciated the explanation. Best of luck in your new venture

I'm not sure I buy it. You're brilliant. That's not in question. You got into Harvard for Christ's sake. Something's amiss. Time will tell. Long time follower, short time doubter. Time will tell.

I'm the one that described you as an enigma, Rick.
Good luck!

1-800AUCTION.COM

"large majority of my portfolio, I have discounted severely"
Where can I see the list of domains you have for sale?

Think somebody just came to the realization that 100, 200, 500% actual profit is better than 10,000% assumed profit if you sit on the name long enough. Domainers as a whole have a really warped sense of what their domains are worth because of the few who, as Rick says here without bluntly saying it, got very lucky.

amen.

I am still following your advice and some of your recomendations and criticism. Domainers must thank you for your words even if they don´t agree with you. I still follow to buy and sell domains (web properties or virtual real estate are also good names for domaining) and just try to be more selective when buy others more and let expire those i personaly didn´t buy.
Thanks.
Carlos
domainsinternational.net

Rick, thanks for the comments and your thoughts. I personally have considered you a leader in our small community for some time and listen with an open mind when you talk about your business deals. One can always learn and one does not need to take everything one says as gospel but history is always a good teacher as you've shown many times. Thanks again and good luck with the current business model.
Scott Neuman

makes alot of sense, and you have every right to say or do whatever you feel is right according to you or in your opinion!!

I think domains are worthless if U just parked for some little revenues that sometimes can't even pay for the renewal fees. I used to owned more than 4000 domains 15 years ago and many I had left them deleted. I still noticed my expired domains are immediately snaped by others and put up for sales for a high price ?
I have now slightly more than 700 domains and will try to develop them to add more value to them . Unfortunately, domains are not my core businesses.....

I have a wonderful penis, and golden testicle hair.

I am not agree that Rick is only a Money Follower as those of Wall Street urban cannibals. If you read him well we are constantly learning even if we disagree with some words or prahses, this is not so important. I followed his advices more than my PM that a week ago lost the parlamentary elections and he is running for living in France, worst than Kadhaffi for the better or for its own hell he is fighting. My Pm is a european called a "democrat" and he is running like a PIG!
We all are jealous about Rick as the beginners jealous the masters. When he called domains as web properties thousands of us will call it too. But he is not a domain guru and he is the courage of contradict himself. Let´s doing all our efforts to make domaing worth again!

have you experienced to take a mirror and look to your wonderful penis during hours? Why do not try a dance (Merce Cunningham or Pina Bauch style), while you suck your penis and cut your testicles off, everything in a same gourmet gesture?

Good post, I think we are in a period where people in the last few years have over-registered domains and built up portfolios where the offers, parking revenues and other domain related revenues just haven't been coming in to support the renewal costs.

So there is a lot of talk the last few months of domainers culling names out of their portfolios and slimming down to quality names only.

While all this is happening, we still see domains selling every week in the DNJ report like they always have, the $1000 to $6000 ish range being the sweet spot of most sales. So it is a funny period we are in.

People with old portfolios of top generics, or people who have always been selective about quality, probably aren't feeling it to the same degree.

It always comes back to cash flow and bottom line is what you are doing making money. Selling proven revenue generating web properties should be a solid avenue, and like you mentioned at times this will still include domain names. Good luck with your new focus!

I think you're right about the domains being worthless . Everyone is hasting to register domains like it's the end of the world , trying to make some small profit .

I guess I'm one of the ones who get lucky consistently. I believe it's more than just luck, and sometimes it just takes some insight into what's coming, and what people are gonna be willing to pay for to put their name on that particular part of history.

I am afraid nobody is awaiting yet another website broker.

Furthermore the website brokering business is not as simple as you think, because the best web properties are rerely offered for sale, and if ever certainly not for 5 years of revenue.

I don't think domains are worth any less today it's just a slow market and being a broker in this market is tough. I guess I am one of the few who think if someone offers you $10,000 for your domain name today it will be worth $20,000 or more in 10 years. At least I hope so since I have turned down offers of over $100,000 on some of my names.

Actually, I rather respect the decision you made Rick. The first thing I was told when I was a rookie stock broker, is never get emotional with a stock! It seems to me you are a very wise business man and have learned to cut your losses when you need to, Kudos! Like many people here, i also have a domain portfolio, but have only made real money from developed websites such as blackworld.com, leicestersquare.com and soon to launch grouprestaurant.com hopefully. The truth is, I couldn't even sell TikiTorch.co.uk on Domainlore a UK Auction site for 80 bucks! A domain like that looks very obvious in e-commerce terms, however no takers. The bottom line is, something is very wrong in how the domain aftermarket works in general. It's a very parochial market overall, partly because of how it is presented to the universe and not because the domains don't have value. Perhaps one fine day, someone out there will come up with a fair and viable system that makes more sense for everyone. I totally respect Rick's business perspective and wish you good luck in your new endeavour.

Cheers! Robert.

Domains aren't worthless nor will they ever be. Just at this time, it's a buyer's market. This is the time where people with huge portfolios (1000+) are making cuts and sacrifices, possibly dropping or shedding some very valuable domains to put on the shelf for later. It's like the housing market, great time to score a house on the cheap, and it will surely rise in value again as time progresses. I am personally sticking to my niche hunches, marijuana legalization, mobile software, and casino gambling. Plenty of domains in these categories have dropped and I have picked up what I feel may pay off in the future.

Nobody's done a real scientific survey on how many domains are being created ... how many are being sold (the no of buys and sells) .. ... how many drop out on monthly basis and so on? So unless this has been done, we should not just pick up on a handful of super-duper domain sales and say there's nothing wrong with this market.

As well as that, when a player like Rick who's been a large holder of domains for so long and has transacted in far more domains than a lot of us put together, then it is time that most of us should take heed simply because he would be far better positioned to judge the traffic than most of us.

I myself as a very small domainer can see for myself that a lot of other domainers around the forums are not very happey about the present market situation. You'd only need to spend an hour a day on this to experience it for yourself.

Rick....you and I have done over 6 figures worth of deals in the past, and I consider you a friend. I always support what you do, and have always respected your positions and goals. You email last week DID offend a few people, and thanks for the clarification. Since I know you, I gave you the benefit of the doubt as to what you meant.....good luck, and I like your new business model. Fred.

Domains are not worthless just parking companies,the PPC model is garbage if you have a domain that gets 1 click per month( quality traffic they call it) but has 1,000,000 broad 250,000 exact searches a month on Google and is the leading search term then there is only one outcome develop it or luck out and find a end user.The thousand voices of the domain brokers marketers and SEO experts? only add to the confusion. a high search memorable domain will always be valuable but most businesses have still not figured it out.My roughly 175 domains collectively have about two million + searches a month on Google now that is marketing power but until i develop them they seem to be just garbage on the street these domains only show 1200 hits at Sedo for the last 6 months and earnings of $8 so if people only depend on direct type in dot com domains as the benchmark then pretty well every domainer is screwed.

Yes most domains are worthless but that's the rub because it hurts the few with valuable domains i don't know why someone thinks dogwalkers dot com is valuable or cheapticketreservations dot com but that's the state of the market.
Get a industry or product domain and relax and the crap will slowly dissolve just like my dogs.

Yes the market makes no sense just saw soyouthinkyouareamagazine.com sold for 10,000

Re: A lot of these domains that don't make sense... I smell something very fishy about some of these sales. If you take a close look at a lot of these circa 2000 to 4000 dollar sales reported on DNjournal, a lot of those domains I wouldn't even buy for $1.00.

ive developed quite a no. of domains hit me up if you want or need some help.
business [a] credworthy .com

You see the domain industry with a lot more forward vision than many of those in the domainer circles.

Some domainers realize what is about to happen to domain names and their values and don't like t talk about it, and others just don't see how it will pan out.

It's refreshing to see a prominent domainer call it as it is.

Rick,

Take two aspirins and try your back peddling apology again tomorow. Just because you overpaid for your domains doesn't mean domains are evil.

I suggest you develop your cyber properties and catch the next wave which will surely arrive shortly. After the gtld failure that lies ahead, you'll be happy you held onto your precious .com portfolio.

You really should think twice before trashing the industry that you, yourself, helped create.

Rarely

Have I met anyone as arrogant as Rick Latona.it comes as no surprise that eh created some controvesy.I do however agree with him as a seasoned investor the income generating domaon names are a better bet-the other business in like buying racehorses buyenough and one will come home if you are able to feed them all for long enough.

Agreed. You know in darker circles of the world economy antiques were/are used for money laundering, b/c it's hard to pin a value on what they are really worth. It wouldn't be a stretch at all to see how domain "sales" would allow transfer of big amounts of money for similarly nefarious purposes. Probably explaining some of these more questionable transactions.

Thank God someone said it. I agree. *Many* (most?) domainers have truly warped sense of what their domains are worth.

One thing I respect about Rick is that he has big balls: right, wrong or indifferent he takes a stand and doesn't stand in the corner. Easy to kiss ass and say domainers aree going make millions but takes a stronger person to say horseshitiswhite.com is going sell for $50k