You Might Be A Domainer If…

I saw an interesting article from this site that talks about domainers. Domainers are people who invest, buy, sell and monetize domain names. Domainers were initially frowned upon by the online community due to certain "ethical" issues. Domainers profit from inexperienced Internet users who type in the words in their web browsers instead of using a search engine. When these visitors click on the ads posted in the site, the domainers earn money. Also, they may sell the domain at a premium to willing buyers that decided on utilizing the domain for their business or personal use. Over time, the image of domainers have pivoted from opportunist to entrepreneur. Domainers do not usually talk about their success in the "industry". That’s probably why domaining has only been recently "accepted" by the general public and the online community as a valid means of web business-making.

“The industry was very secretive for a long time,” said Frank Schilling, an industry pioneer who hit it big with bare-bones Web destinations like drugproblem.com and diamondweddingrings.com. “When you make millions at home in your underwear, you are not telling a soul about it,” he said. (New York Times) Frank Schilling is reported earning 20 million dollars a year from his domains. And he doesn’t even have to take a bath when he goes to work. I think earning 20 million dollars a year not doing anything, save a few clicks here and there has to be the ultimate dream life of any corporate slave stuck in his cubicle until dismissal time. I’d know. It’s my dream too.

The article below tries to comically illustrate domainers and their so-called "way of life".

You Might Be A Domainer If…

 

… you think .mobi is a whale.

… on your job application you list cybersquatting.

… you can recite GoDaddy promo codes from memory.

… you’ve named one of your kids Alexa.

… you think "tasting" has nothing to do with food.

… you’ve appraised your own name.

… your main source of income is Adsense revenue.

… your Sedo rep sends you holiday cards.

… you consider "traffic" a good thing.

… your company’s CEO is not as important as it’s SEO.

… you own a "Vint Cerf for Pres" shirt.

… you have a diverse portfolio, but don’t own any stocks.

… you consider new visitors to your home as unique.

… you’ve registered a LLLL.com that doesn’t even make sense.

… you’d rather register a domain than register for class.

… you consider Whois a social network.

… you still refer to Zuho as SwapNames.

… you’re not a lawyer but can recite trademark laws from memory.

… you own some sort of iphone related domain name.

… your backlink quality is more important than your quality of friends.

… two words: ICANN

… you’ve ordered chips & Dotsauce.

… you knew GoDaddy before he was even a father.

… you’ve been in a fistfight because someone has dissed your Pagerank.

… you’ve registered a celebrity’s name.

… you consider parking nothing to do with an automobile.

… you’re favorite quote is "may the Rick Schwartz be with you."

… you’ve posted over 1,000 posts in any domain forum.

… you trust Estibot more than your girlfriend.

… you’ve registered a misspelled word…on purpose.

… you cried when all the LLLL’s were gone.

… you don’t know a country’s capital, but you sure as hell know thier .cc

And the last reason You Might Be A Domainer is….

…you have a bracelet that says "What would Frank Schilling Do?"

by Rudy Hernandez

As you can see, the article requires some domainer humor. It may look absurd to the Joe who knows nothing about the Internet but I’m sure all the learned men and women of the web were laughing their pants off while sipping their favorite afternoon tea.