Zip-Lining through the canopied rain forest in the Jamaican mountains, I can’t help but to think about Frank Schilling’s post on SevenMile.com. Like most of the big domainers, he doesn’t sell domains and he attempts on his blog to explain why that is so.

Perhaps because I was flying through the trees at night I could focus on the question at hand. When is the right time to sell a name?

I think back to my days at an Internet start-up in the mid-nineties. The venture capitalists would rant about how they would only invest in a company with one of three exit strategies. They would need to “go public” so their shares would be liquid, sell the company or the founders would need to buyout the investors.
What was their reason for this way of thinking? They wanted to realize their gains. They were keenly aware of the worthlessness of paper wealth. Gains aren’t realized until the cash is in the bank. Having something worth money is not the same as having money.

I think that many domainers out there have only paper wealth. I’m not speaking of Frank who has both. A good deal of domainers are sitting on names that are worth a pretty penny but generate little income and they refuse to sell the name. I just don’t see the sense in that.

I suppose part of it is personality related. For me, I can sell a name at or slightly below today’s value and feel comfortable that I can do more with that money than what I sold it for. If I was someone that didn’t have faith in my ability to buy something new for far less than today’s value I would struggle with it a bit more.
For now, I’ll take the cash and this little girl on an adventure.

There is something great about having kids with different spring breaks. While I’m Island hoping with my youngest, I’m just 11 days away from spending a week in Jamaica with my oldest. My friends and family can enjoy pictures of that trip too while I annoy domainers with completely non-relevent ramblings.

So far we’ve hit the U.S. Virgin Islands, St Martin/Maartin, Antigua and St Lucia. The boat was supposed to stop in Barbados today but due to large swells it couldn’t safely dock. Instead we are out to sea and tomorrow we’ll drive around the Caribbean’s Pompey, Montserrat, to look at the volcanic ruins. All this before returning to the home port of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s there that I am looking forward to the most, simply because I own sanjuan.com.

P.S. Never tell a personal trainer you’ve just met that you climbed Mt Kilimanjaro. I’ve worked out each day on this ship and the guy has nearly killed me each time. Damnit though, I’m going to get in shape.