50: Smart Tips For Domain Investing: 101, with James Iles

Is it still possible to make money buying and selling domain names? For answers I turned to James Iles, who started flipping domains when he was a teenager. Later, he became a blogger in the community.  Since last December, James has taken on the role of Global Domain Investing Community Manager for GoDaddy. In this episode, James shares insights on; the critical step you need to take prior to putting any money down to buy domains as an investment, how to determine if a particular one is a good choice, what it might be worth, as well as costs involved, what you can expect to earn working at it a couple of hours a day, and a fun fact about the .ai extension.  What you’ll hear: 01:45 What a Domain Investment Community Manager does 03:05 James started domain investing as a side hustle 03:29 Can you make money at it today? 04:35 Start with a good education in domain investing, for example GoDaddy’s Domain Academy 05:30 How do you tell if a domain name is a good investment? 07:22 NameBio offers a great database of domain sales that gets updated every day (upwards of $2.3 billion in sales in the database) 08:14 GoDaddy’s tool that uses its back data is called GoValue  10:27 The biggest mistake domain investors make 11:23 One of James’s biggest investing mistakes 12:05 Some of the metrics to look for 12:57 Fees for buying and selling 13:50 Afternic is GoDaddy’s aftermarket sales portal 14:32 James discusses what he sees for side hustle revenue potential 16:43 The .ai extension 18:05 Consider off-line learning resources like in-person conferences, ie NamesCon 20:08 James’s regret in selling staycool dot com 22:03 Low barrier to entry 22:32 Reach out to James through email or Twitter 23:06 His best tip 24:42 Put in the time to learn about the industry - take James up on his offer! 25:13 Before buying what you think is an extremely valuable domain…check the spelling!!!   Connect with James: Email, jiles at godaddy dot com https://twitter.com/jamesiles Connect with Joan: https://www.instagram.com/joanposivy/ https://www.facebook.com/posivy/ https://www.joanposivy.com/ Be on the show! https://www.joanposivy.com/be-our-guest.html