This is not directed to just the domaining industry but business in general.

Over the past few months I have noticed a few domainer feuds going on. They seem to have gone public through blogs. It leaves me pondering one question: Can’t we all just get along?!

I’m leaving the discussion about feuds like that alone for this moment. I’ll get to a point later about that. The feuds are just something that drew me to write about this topic.

What I wanted to say first is, earlier in the year I was talking to a fellow domainer, someone respected and successful. Part of the conversation was about my commenting on domain values and how I didn’t feel certain domains were worth X amount of dollars. After our conversation I thought about it and this person was right. Although I am a very opinionated person by nature, I decided to take the advice and leave certain commentary out. Who am I to judge if a buyer wants to pay $50,000 for a domain name. It may be a poor purchase to me, but it obviously holds a value to that buyer. Instead of me saying something like, “They were crazy to buy that!” or “What were they thinking?!” I could focus on the positive and say, “What a great sale the owner made!”. Keeping it positive like that shows that we want each other to be successful in the domaining realm.

Do we have to love each other? No, but what possible good can come out of me bashing a value or saying no way would I pay that? The answer is none. For all I know, I could have domain buyers watching my videos or reading my articles just to gauge the domain industry so they can make an educated offer on a domain name they are looking at. So now I have discredited a domain name and it’s value, possibly hurting any future sales of that domain and others like it. In the end that helps no one. I’ve tried hard since then to not be so negative with certain things.

My lesson after the conversation, which brings me back to the mention of feuding earlier, was that we are in this together to a certain extent. We do not necessarily have to like everyone and we do not have to be best friends or even friends at all. What we should be doing is not hurting each other, especially not publicly. There are places for feuds like private forums, email or even the phone.

I know that some will react to this saying a blog is an individual’s private forum and they can say whatever they like. This is very true and I get it. Believe me, there are days I want to just go off on certain topics, but I refrain from the negativity. Again, no possible good can come from bashing someone. When I feel strongly about someone I have been known to email them directly and even call them personally.

As with many things in life, there are exceptions to this. A perfect example would be a product or service review. I do feel it necessary to write an honest opinion about such a topic. Readers do need honest feedback on using a particular service or product. Another exception would be scams. If one of us falls victim to some sort of scam, giving everyone a heads up is different than just trying to be mean and vindictive towards someone else because they aggravated you.

The point of all this is to say we need to support one another to help propel the domain industry further. I am not perfect and am the first to admit that even with trying to be more positive with certain things, I still let stuff slip. I am a work in progress, working towards progression in general. How much better would things be if we all tried to be a work in progress?