Mike Mann has been mentioned many times on the NamePros blog for his incredible domain sales data, including his $75,000 sale of BroadSpectrum.com and the $40,000 sale of AnimalsUnited.com. Individually, these sales are impressive, but we decided to look through Mike's domain sales history to see exactly what he's sold over the years.
Thanks to Mike's Twitter account, his followers can get a fantastic insight into his sales. We decided to trawl through the archives of Mike's tweets to find all of his reported domain sales from January 1st 2015 until September 4th 2016, and after doing so, we analysed each and every sale.
In total, there were 83 sales reported. These reported sales are just a snapshot of Mike's domain sales activities, and with a portfolio of 250,000 names, I'm confident that there are hundreds of more deals that were never disclosed.
However, we only have 83 domain name sales to look at. These 83 domain sales all include a sales price, with 71 of these sales reports also including an acquisition price.
The 83 domain sales amounted to a dollar value of $1,602,276. This means that the average sales price was $19,304.53. What's incredible is Mike's acquisition costs of just $20,380 for all 71 domain names with acquisition data, which works out at an average of $287.04 per domain name. This equates to an average return on investment (ROI) of 56,146.3% per name.
Mike's largest reported sale during this period of 20 months was AUX.com, which was sold for $100,000 to a domain name investor that is based in Dubai. At the time, Mike described the domain as being sold for "way too cheap as a way to keep good cash flowing." His lowest reported sale was the $500 sale of RestroomReview.com.
The largest acquisition price that was disclosed was CorporateLeasing.com, which Mike paid $4,000 for in 2008, but eventually sold for $21,100 in August 2016. There were several domains that are likely to have eclipsed this acquisition price, but their purchase prices were not disclosed. These names include fun.co, aux.com and jazz.co.
Mike sold an impressive amount of hand registered domains for four- and five-figure fees. Out of the 71 domain sales with acquisition data, 20 of those domains were acquired for a registration fee of just $7.50, with 36 of the domains being acquired for less than $100 each.
In terms of ROI, these low acquisition fees equate to tremendous returns. The largest ROI is 466,566.7% for the $35,000 domain sale of ProgresoFinanciero.com, which was acquired for just $7.50. The lowest ROI was the aforementioned CorporateLeasing.com sale, with a ROI of 427.5%.
In the past, Mike has made a public stand against new gTLDs, and his sales back up his beliefs that .COM is still the best option. Out of 83 sales, 78 were .COM. The five non-.COM are:
Over the past year, many investors have been concentrating on short domain names, geared towards Chinese domainers. Mike seems to have bucked this general trend by producing four and five figure sales from "long tail" .COMs.
Out of the 83 sales analysed 26.2% of the domains were either 11 or 12 characters in length, with almost 5% of sales coming from domains that are over 20 characters in length.
Here's a breakdown of the 83 sales, in terms of the number of words that each domain consisted of:
As I said earlier, this is just a snapshot of the domain name sales activity of Mike Mann and his company, DomainMarket.com, but I feel that it provides a great insight into the business of one of the domain industry's most prominent investors.
It's worth noting that renewal fees were not factored into ROI calculations. I also did not check WHOIS data for each sale to check that the data had moved from Mike's company to the new owner's details.
Update on Sep 12, 2016: Part Two
Thanks to Mike's Twitter account, his followers can get a fantastic insight into his sales. We decided to trawl through the archives of Mike's tweets to find all of his reported domain sales from January 1st 2015 until September 4th 2016, and after doing so, we analysed each and every sale.
In total, there were 83 sales reported. These reported sales are just a snapshot of Mike's domain sales activities, and with a portfolio of 250,000 names, I'm confident that there are hundreds of more deals that were never disclosed.
However, we only have 83 domain name sales to look at. These 83 domain sales all include a sales price, with 71 of these sales reports also including an acquisition price.
The 83 domain sales amounted to a dollar value of $1,602,276. This means that the average sales price was $19,304.53. What's incredible is Mike's acquisition costs of just $20,380 for all 71 domain names with acquisition data, which works out at an average of $287.04 per domain name. This equates to an average return on investment (ROI) of 56,146.3% per name.
Mike's largest reported sale during this period of 20 months was AUX.com, which was sold for $100,000 to a domain name investor that is based in Dubai. At the time, Mike described the domain as being sold for "way too cheap as a way to keep good cash flowing." His lowest reported sale was the $500 sale of RestroomReview.com.
The largest acquisition price that was disclosed was CorporateLeasing.com, which Mike paid $4,000 for in 2008, but eventually sold for $21,100 in August 2016. There were several domains that are likely to have eclipsed this acquisition price, but their purchase prices were not disclosed. These names include fun.co, aux.com and jazz.co.
Mike sold an impressive amount of hand registered domains for four- and five-figure fees. Out of the 71 domain sales with acquisition data, 20 of those domains were acquired for a registration fee of just $7.50, with 36 of the domains being acquired for less than $100 each.
In terms of ROI, these low acquisition fees equate to tremendous returns. The largest ROI is 466,566.7% for the $35,000 domain sale of ProgresoFinanciero.com, which was acquired for just $7.50. The lowest ROI was the aforementioned CorporateLeasing.com sale, with a ROI of 427.5%.
In the past, Mike has made a public stand against new gTLDs, and his sales back up his beliefs that .COM is still the best option. Out of 83 sales, 78 were .COM. The five non-.COM are:
- Fun.co - $70,000
- Watches.co - $43,000
- Jazz.co - $22,000
- StopTheHate.org - $25,000
- Outsource.net - $20,000
Over the past year, many investors have been concentrating on short domain names, geared towards Chinese domainers. Mike seems to have bucked this general trend by producing four and five figure sales from "long tail" .COMs.
Out of the 83 sales analysed 26.2% of the domains were either 11 or 12 characters in length, with almost 5% of sales coming from domains that are over 20 characters in length.
Here's a breakdown of the 83 sales, in terms of the number of words that each domain consisted of:
- 7 one-word .COMs
- 3 one-word .COs
- 1 one-word .NET
- 56 two-word .COMs
- 14 three-word .COMs
- 1 three-word .ORG
- 2 four-word .COMs
As I said earlier, this is just a snapshot of the domain name sales activity of Mike Mann and his company, DomainMarket.com, but I feel that it provides a great insight into the business of one of the domain industry's most prominent investors.
It's worth noting that renewal fees were not factored into ROI calculations. I also did not check WHOIS data for each sale to check that the data had moved from Mike's company to the new owner's details.
Update on Sep 12, 2016: Part Two
