Bye bye DomainState.com
Damn, I can’t believe I was actually going to shell out like $20k for this place few month’s ago… It went up for sale earlier this January by the three amigos, and I immediately put in a $10k offer without thinking too much about it. It seemed like the right thing to do and who knows, maybe I could of turned things around and make a load of money, one way or another. Right??!
I even went on to contact a few friends to see if they would like to “partner” up on a joint-effort acquisition if the auction for DomainState.com gets heated because I was not really willing to take on so much risk by myself beyond $20k. I had no other interested parties… No takers!! And now that I think about it… It’s not even worth my original offer of $10k. What the hell was I thinking??! Ack.
The place has been pretty much dead for the past few years… Not much happened there. We all like to think that we can do some kind of a revival miracle and bring things back to life, and make a ton of money but the domain forums biz sucks. I heard the new owners spent something like $45k to acquire DomainState.com.
I have nothing against the fellas who now own and run it (Above.com) they are a great bunch but all of the social networking sites are where people interact and make all the connections nowadays it seems. That is where the action is at. Forums still have their place in certain niches, but there is a forum overload in the tiny domain biz and DomainState.com hit the deadpool a long time ago. Lets face it!! It’s a has-been.
So here we are, 4 – 5 month’s later… The place is as dead as can be. It’s time to move on. I am removing it from my bookmarks… Pulling down whatever links I have pointing to it from my websites, because really, it’s a waste of time visiting it and I would not recommend anybody participate on it either… Even if it was 1 or 2 minutes per day. That time can be spent doing something else a lot more productive at places which have a brighter feature.
Randall
May 23, 2010
Meh,see thats where you failed my friend, You looked as it to make money when really all you had to do was look at it to be a help to the domaining Biz. A forum is a place in this niche anyways where to buy and sell domains as well as developed websites and ask questions. First I would have taken the suggestions I made in the forum. http://domainstate.com/showthread.php3?s=50f0a303ebaf918d800a73b04bd68deb&threadid=105470 Yes that is me. I would have also got some friends and none friends to help with it. I would LOVE to run a forum like that and if I had the money I would have purchased it. Its a very very useful tool but it takes know how to run a forum and I think you went over you head. No offense but I think you should have reached out and got some staff as well as started using the forums as a marketing board like RJ did with NamePros. Use the stats and Member database to make money. Upgrade the old software and then go from there. I would like to help if I could. I know you do not know me but ChefPatrick, and many others do. What about Ross of ygrab he knows me also. All you had to do was ask for some help from fellow domainers, not investments. Feel free to email me if you would like to do it my way for a while and see if it cant change and turn it into a investment, I do not ask for anything Just some admin power and the open door, I could have that forum kicking in a few weeks probably.
Randall
chandan
May 23, 2010
a forum need active discussions or else it will be treated as dead
Mark Hoffmeister
May 23, 2010
I was at DS quite a bit a few years back, they did have something going. It felt like GD (GreatDomains) did at one point – like there was an elite group of people you might gain some knowledge from. Plus it seemed like buyers did visit the room. I stopped visiting too. Just about the time Bido started – that was really fun when they first started – should have just kept bido a chat room like GD or DS used to be and let the domain trading go on in the background, or as a sideline keep the focus on interaction / conversations and friendly banter. So domain sites can’t be dead? What sites do you recommend to replace the empty slot in my favorites?
Mike
May 23, 2010
@ Mark
I did a lot of biz over at DomainState.com and met a lot of good people but that was a long long time ago. As a member there since 2004, things have only gone downhill past few years and just haven’t been the same… I was optimistic, but now it’s time to be realistic. It is what it is… The place is D-E-A-D.
Right now most of the action is on the social networking sites it seems; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc… As well as all the blogs. A lot of lively discussions scattered all over the place.
David
May 23, 2010
Hi Mike,
I agree with you, domain forums do have much more competition, with blogs and social sites, but they still are used by domainers for many things that blogs and social sites just do not cover as well.
As the buyer of DomainState.com, we do have many plans to make this a forum that is once again a very popular destination. There are many new functionalities about to be released, many new domain tools are being specifically developed for this site, along with many existing Trellian tools that are planned for integration.
In short DomainState will not resemble what it used to be, an old and tires forum, but will become a choice destination for domainers, webmasters and SEOers.
As soon as a few of the above are released I will be back to request a link back
which I am sure you will then again be happy to provide.
Cheers
David
Joseph Slabagh
May 24, 2010
Congrats David, also could you open the threads up for Google to read them? Cause they are not indexed (Only 4 pages out of the 1000’s of threads)
Also, check this:
Currently Active Users: 30
There are currently 8 members and 22 guests on the boards. | Most users ever online was 2992 on 01-08-2008 at 09:29 PM.
2008 was the peak of this forum, can you make it peak higher then that again?
The first thing I would have done is update that forum skin, even if temporarily. It looks old, and boring. Another thing is the forum setup. I would update that too.
David
June 14, 2010
Since the redesign of DS ita been all down-hill. The most maddening thing is the new owners decided to use News Aggreagator posts and list them as new posts where you get fooled into thinking they are human posts but soon you realize they are from automated bots.
When I visited DS today it was sad to see 8 out of 10 of the new posts were from bots. I am probably outta there too like other members have left. Mostly a waste of time.