Hacker News Reader

Comment by felipemnoa | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if buying lots of domains in the hope of making it big is like buying lottery tickets in the hope of making it big. Does anybody know if this business model actually works?

View on HN

Both (lottery tickets, domain names) have working business models. Google it.

Not knowledgeable enough about domain names but I am certain that buying lottery tickets is lose-lose proposition to anyone, by design.

I actually had a friend in school who did this (lottery tickets) as a side business. They had an investor that provided the capital, and when the jackpot reached a certain level, they would buy up a few percent of the total number space. Believe it or not, the expected value actually worked in their favor.

The hardest part was sifting through the dozens of boxes of tickets (which he stored in his dorm room) to find the winners.

You are wrong. Lotteries are systems, systems are hackable. I bothered to Google one example cause I know many people are ignorant and make assumption without research like you.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128264.900-lottery-w...

When I said lottery I was referring to a fair draw. You cannot beat the math.

I'm also interested in getting an explanation from someone in the business. Assuming that you are not selling something like sex.com but are confined to more modest domains, and that you pay about $10/year per domain. Out of a random group of 500 domains, you need to sell 1/year for $5000 just to break even. Sure, you might hit the jackpot once with someone who really wants that one obscure domain you hold but for most domains you will be lucky to even get one offer in 3 years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com