Another huge Filipino Domainer has allowed me to do an interview. Andre Tanner is one of the local figures I look up to in Domaining in the Philippines, he owns a lot of the prime domains and has started way back.

Andre has then amassed a good number of premium domains and is ready to make it all happen. One of the best examples are Boracay Philippines and Restaurants Philippines (up coming project), which really carries a huge potential and could be worth a lot in the next few years.

So Andre, How did you get involved in Domaining?

This I do not remember exactly but once I started earning some money from my work doing web development back in 2002-2003 I started buying some PH Domains with traffic. Back then there was a list on Unregistered.ph of the Top unregistered PH domains with traffic. Some were bought already but I found a few that were available and bought them for an expensive $70 each. Other people were also browsing the list so when I went back at a later time to look for more domains, a lot were taken. I think I only have 1 domain left from that time but it was a gold mine. DotPH took down that site in 2006 I believe but I wish I had gotten a lot more domains there earlier, someone made a lot of money off that list

What’s your experience in Domaining like?

It’s an interesting experience, for generic TLDs, a lot of money can be made just by buying and selling, the market goes up and down and the industry keeps on growing. I can understand why people park domains since a lot of the big domainers just have a sheer number of domains, its the only logical solution to monetize them. We prefer to develop a few key domains and just park the rest or sell it. We’re not heavy into the parking business nor do we have thousands of names, a few hundred good names here and there. I feel its a tough industry if you just domain since you have to stay on top of the latest trends, sales, happenings as there’s so much competition with other people trying to get valuable domains. There are niches and there are domains expiring every day, but the more people who get into this industry, the harder it becomes. It was much easier a few years ago and way easier but more risky and expensive during the dotCom bubble which is where most big domainers made their killings. I tend to look at domaining like real estate, buy a good property, hold on to it, then sell it or develop it and then sell it or turn it into a business.

As for the local market we’ve been invested in it for 5 years with our generic domains and we’re still holding onto our portfolio, I see the PH domain industry and the internet industry in the Philippines growing and booming even bigger in the coming years.

For gTLDs we have made some big sales, for local just a few profitable sales and little bit of income from parking. Locally, parking is not that viable, you need a lot of traffic since most parking services get their ads from Google or Yahoo and such ads and there may not be enough Philippine ads for PH domain parking. We plan to develop our local PH portfolio and make them in to blockbuster websites which make good money.

—- End of Interview —-

Thank you so much Andre for the time, I hope this was very helpful and inspirational to those who are looking to start up in Domain investing.