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While at the recent DomainFest conference I met up with Sean Stafford who recently wrote a book on domains titled "Domain Graduate". Let me first of all say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the author was equally as engaging.
 When I read Sean's biography it really struck me how we had both had similar events impact our lives. For example, he was 14 years old and worked at a local computer shop. I was about the same age and played around on a TRS-80 computer at the back of a local computer shop. Sean worked at an Internet Service Provider. I founded an ISP in the back room of my house. The list goes on and on.
So it was with great anticipation that I began reading his book to see what he had to say about domaining.
The early chapters of the book deal with the current domain market and what potential opportunities are still available for new entrants to the market. This is really refreshing as all to often domain owners try and corner the market by discouraging new players rather than helping them along the way. Maybe it's a little bit of self-interest on their part? Sean seems to have transcended this attitude by providing a road map for the domain industry for the masses.
I found the initial section on determining intrinsic value a little brief but since the book has been written for the new domain owner it was appropriate in its brevity. I was pleasantly surprised that this topic was readdressed in more depth in one of the later chapters. Something to get my teeth into :-) On the other hand determining a domains intrinsic value is probably the subject of a book in itself!
The example of how Sean built up his own portfolio was almost a mirror image of my own (including starting out with $100). It was great to see how he learned the value of traffic and openly sharing that information with others.
Sean then takes the reader through a chapter relating the differences in types of traffic, from link-pop to typein. For new domain owners this chapter is invaluable because if you really take it to heart then you won't get burnt down the track with a domain that has the traffic just vanish.
The chapter on traffic monetization was strangely combined with domain tasting. I'm not sure why this was the case as tasting and monetization are completely different. The following chapter on monetizing beyond parking comes to the conclusion that "you will almost always get paid more for developing your own site than if you use a parking company." While I agree with this conclusion for an individual domain the problem that many domain owners have is that development of thousands of domains is not scalable while parking is.
This is when I hit chapter 10. Sean reviews a number of the major parking companies providing his opinion on both their good and bad points. What got me interested more than anything else in this chapter was the fact that he stuck his neck out and put into writing his experiences with each company. Well done!
The making more money with domains chapter was really light on although it covered a few of the basics such as keyword and template setting. I imagine that my reaction to it was primarily because it's a topic that is in the middle of what we do at ParkLogic. We've spent years developing optimization techniques and processes so I may be a little guilty in expecting more in this area.
The following chapters deal primarily with buying and selling domains, domain valuations and also some of the things that a new budding domain owner should know about such as scams etc. These chapters were clear and to the point, providing new domain owners with a number of options on how to increase the value of their portfolio.
So did I like the book? I found Sean's writing style really easy to read and the fact that he punctuated the narrative with his own personal experience made it even more engaging. He's managed to squeeze the widely varied aspects of the domaining into 85 pages that take the reader on a journey through our exciting industry.
Is the book perfect. In my opinion no, but no book is. It does succinctly address the concerns of new domain owners and point them in the right direction. From my perspective this is a book that warrants shelf space (or disk space) and congratulations are in order for the author.
Web: domaingraduate.com (affiliate link)
Wiki: domainFest, ParkLogic, Sean Stafford
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