But are we really on a path to success or failure?
Acquiring a two keyword .com domain for $5.95 still is fairly easy. Having a focus or direction of something that WILL indeed perform (topic-wise) certainly is another key success factor.
Income Calculation (rough, over three years):
1. You might sit on it for three years, so that puts the fee to 20 bucks (roughly).
2. Spending the time to research, register adds another 50 bucks (if you're thoughtful).
3. Developing a one-page static html doc adds 100 bucks, using the keyword research you went through under 2. and a standardized template you would only create once (cost neglectible if used for hundreds of domains).
3a. Using a parking account instead (including targeting features etc.) might limit that cost to 50 bucks though.
4. Maintain your spreadsheets and evaluating stats on an ongoing basis, maybe adjusting listings or one-pagers might add another 50 bucks a year, 150 for the calculation period.
So, if you would not make any money by using ads on your one-pager or profit share by sedo or the likes, the net cost would amount to some 300 bucks in three years, all incremental and working cost included.
In summary and considering that 50% of your domains never sell you would have to sell every domain for 600 bucks in order to break even.
Profit margins of 50% would be the least to even stand up for in the morning anyway, so this increases your price to almost 1000 bucks per sold domain.
Conclusion:
Since you make 400 bucks per domain then, you would have to own 500 domains of which you turn around 250 in order to make $100,000 net income, but again we are talking three year frame here.
That means you either sell for 2500 bucks or increase your portfolio to 1500 domains, selling half of it within three years.
THAT would bring you close to your house at the Bahamas (don't budget for the hurricane season though).
Anyone wants to add, correct, challenge or donate his first $100,000?
2) Size of market related to domain (million?, billions?)
3) Whether the market is one that does well online (hotel reservations, etc.)
My favorite example of 1+2+3=millions?
Hotels.com.
Forget people selling 50%. Most current speculators are lucky if they sell 1 or 2%. The big money domains were picked up in 1995.
Choose wisely. Better to spend $5,000 to acquire a domain worth $10,000 than to spend $5,000 buying 500 unreg'd domains worth less than the registration fee.
With all the Widget.com domains staken, there is really no market for unregistered domain names:
If I have widgetworld.com, nobody is going to buy it when they could just register allwidgets.com or aboutwidgets.com or buywidgets.com or widgetkeyword.com or widgeting.com or widgetguide.com or widgetdirect.com... etc..
You get the idea. In todays world domains are either worth $200,000 or $2.
There are a few bucks to be made in snatching expired domain names ... many names were still being used, but accidently were not renewed. With all the red-tape at network solutions, often people buy the line "just buy it when it comes back into the general pool of names in 30 days".
Selfwritingsoftware, biometricequipment, centralareanetworks (just to name a view) will all be talk of town in exactly this combination of words, you don't look for such upcoming techs at software.com or networks.com.
As long as there is progress and research and markets shaping, products and ideas hitting markets and public domains, there will be someone selling the stuff or informing about knowledge etc.
Questionable if you could make a living of course, but I strongly believe that THERE IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A DEMAND FOR SPECIFICS.
you turn a $6 domain into a $100 expense pretty quickly. Including $50 per domain per year to "keep up a spreadsheet" I'm surprised you didn't include the cost of the calories you burned typing your email....
How about buy a domain for $6. put up a "this domain for sale $200". spend 30 minutes emailing the top 25 bidders on overture that the domain is available and why not at least "take it off the market".
repeat.
I guess the 30 minutes you mention is free time for you, someone who needs to pay bills with the time spent for work needs to have some idea where the time goes. Also your idea works perfectly for a domain or 10. Many of us hold thousands or hundreds though and make a good percentage of their revenue with them.
Please, before you become personal next time, try to remember that this is a board where professionals of various types discuss their business models and ideas to generate value.
I do think though that your calculations, while they may apply to you, don't apply to everyone. For example, I don't spend 30 minutes per domain per year managing a spreadsheet, and it doesn't cost me $100 to create a 1 page static html page.
