Since 2003 almost everything I buy/sell cost me reg fee. Few fresh hand registered domains but most are "expired" .coms that fall through the cracks and get picked up at reg fee. My range of sales on reg fee expired domains has been primarily high xxx to high xxxx. Have turned down 13k on one reg fee one so I'm sure someday I'll regain my sanity
and say yes and turn a reg fee acquisition into xx,xxx.
Since I don't play in auctions too much unless really needed for my own site development as I have 40+ websites or for a client I'm a passive seller that waits for the inbound lead as only having $8 invested in something allows ya the luxury of hitting renew until the right offer comes in over having thousands wrapped up into an auction domain where you need to cash out quicker. So my game isn't buy for 10k and flip for 12.5k it's always been how much can I make from $8 or $8 and a few years renewals. Really enjoy trying to make something outta nothing as no $8 stock share has ever produced xxxx for me so think I dig the challenge more of can I make xxxx outta x.
So basically my formula...
1) Buy the best .coms I can find, this means looking at quite a few and having the discipline to pass on some good ones, basically here's a list pick the top 3,5,10 etc... or however many I feel like buying that day and buy them and then calm down till the next drop list. Quality over quantity. Would a business want this domain? Does it have commercial appeal? How many end users are in the space? How much would it cost someone to ship this item? How much profit margin in this product/field? etc...
2) List them immediately on my own sales pages
3) Add them to Afternic, Sedo, Uniregistry etc...
4) Wait for the inbound leads, respond quick/professional and try to work them into sales
My sales today come from...
#1 My own sales pages and has built quite an end user database over 14 years which sometimes equals recurring business or referrals
#2 Afternic due to their distribution network I believe
https://www.afternic.com/domain-reseller-network
Sedo and Uniregistry don't do much in comparison I believe because most leads/sales come in from the landing pages so since those point to me that's where most sales happen=direct. Afternic still contributes to my sales because their distribution network is the strongest and doesn't need your domains pointed to them to make sales.
Big fan of doing my own pages and Afternic distribution network. Sure as the years go on Afternic will account for more and more of my sales but unless they can account for 100% of them I'll probably always do my own pages as it's worked for quite a while now.
Fine to pay commissions for distribution networks that blast your names where end users are but paying commissions for leads that come to you in anonymous fashion or require you to point your domains to a market that end users have never heard of that would have came in anyway from your own landing pages with name, email, phone, ip address etc... a no brainer to save commissions, route to your own escrow service of choice, build your connections with possible recurring revenue as well. Leads can have a lifetime of value. Every domain that we've ever sold at a third party aftermarket pretty sure the buyers are still on their email marketing lists years later=lifetime recurring revenue, for them anyway.
I still list at a handful of places as ya never know but most of all leads/sales my own pages with Afternic accounting for the majority of the rest.
