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debate How to make a 7-digits domain sale !

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Cyril.Best

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DPs,

I create this thread because I start to understand one big paradox of this industry.

Everyone has its own chapel and certitudes on everything whatever is domain name appraisal, dotcom vs ngtld, blablabla ... - why not ?

But the reality is that only few of you as already sold something for 7-digits in his/her life to a buyer - whatever it's a domain name or anything else.

The first time, I had this chance, I was 20 years old (a long time ago;), I was very lucky because it was not just a domain - it was a full website, a marketplace, but I learned something for the rest of my business life :

What makes the price of a domain name is not the domain itself (whatever is the name or the extension) - it's the buyer - it's the business opportunity or the threat for the buyer !

All the rest : sales tactics, story, emotions .... are pure cosmetics and/or bullshit to go to the deal.

So, to answer the initial question : How to make a 7-digits domain sale ?

The right answer is : Don't chase after the perfect domain, chase after the perfect buyer !

and then bring the perfect domain to your buyer.

You will see - price will then be secondary at the end of the game.

Hope it helps.

All the .Best,

CF
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I’m aware of a group in Southern California that has been trying to sell an art collection for - 11 years now. They tried to get me to invest in the collection last year. They’ve hyped the collection many times and even shared all sorts of different “engagement letters” with potential investors and buyers over the years that they claimed proved that someone was going to buy the art in a matter of days or weeks.

They also obtained a much ridiculed “appraisal” of the art that factors in trying to sell unsigned numbered copies of the art to the public even though the artist is dead and unable to sign anything any longer.

The collection has never sold and due to recent controversy over the artist (a pop singer) the art is probably now worth almost nothing. And still they occasionally hype claims that this investor or that has submitted a letter of intent to buy at some ridiculous price.
 
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How to make a 7-digits domain sale !
🚩

Awesomeee

I know how to make a 9 - digits domain saleee
I will tell you how after it will be doneee
 
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I try to be fair an balanced, so if I could insert a few words in the discussion, just from my viewpoint.

I see much value in a registry CEO being active on NPs, but I think paraphrasing what the late Carl Sagan said about claims and evidence, with great influence must come great responsibility. In my opinion the $500 projection, whether meant just for city ones, as literally it did apply to, or more generally was probably unwise. While the CEO may, and probably does, feel that number is in keeping with the projection of interest in .best according to models, I think there is too great a chance the message will be misinterpreted (especially coming from a CEO as opposed to a random anonymous new poster) as either a guarantee or an idea that can be extrapolated. We all know how many newbies have been hurt by hearing an article or reading a book on the "easy domain flip, get rich" and then are disappointed when it is neither easy nor fast nor assured.

I think there are a number of interesting and worthwhile things we have learned from the .best threads and the involvement of the CEO. These include (in my opinion)
  • A bit about the history of the TLD acquisition (some are quoting registration numbers and resale statistics seemingly oblivious to the fact that the TLD is in new hands and has a new direction).
  • Some about the social media plan, and how the extension is seen as a complement to .com (or country code) and not as a replacement for it. One can debate this, but at least it potentially offers something different from most new gTLDs.
  • The extension currently has tons of good names that are not registry reserved. That is very good news for domain investors, as the lack of quality non-reserved names is an argument against ngTLD by some.
  • The announcement about the radical decrease in wholesale prices to the registrar (notice in Feb with 6 month period to implementation). For many the high renewal prices was a stumbling block,so that is important information to our community.
  • The announcement of names being dropped from the reserved list provides NPs members with inside information that can be valuable to their domain investing, and today even asking for input on what niches we would like to see premium reserved names drop in.
  • The aesthetics of the extension can be debated, and has been but it is arguably strong compared to many new gTLDs and the research evidence that @Cyril.Best has provided is valuable imho. It is sort of akin to the two years of full time analytics that Radix did in starting with 1000+ names and moving to the final 9 they won (part of a keynote at NamesCon).
I think the critics should acknowledge that we have learned rather a lot of value in just a few days. Name calling is never proper, and in my opinion a few posts have strayed past the NPs rules regarding respect.

Finally, if I might suggest that when considering how to interact with NPs as a CEO I think Epik's @Rob Monster offers model behaviour. Yes, he occasionally points out that Epik has such and such that is, I know, a form of promotion. I think most NPs members accept and welcome him here because mainly he provides information and help to NPs members. It is sort of like @Kate Buckley guide re social media (if I am remembering it correctly) that make sure that no more than 20% of your interactions are promotional with the rest being genuine altruistic contributions.

There is a lot of value in letting past perceived wrongs be in the past. Can we all just leave this rocky start and view this as a new day? The critics accepting that there have been useful contributions and that their name calling and harsh words were out of hand, and the registry operator agreeing to be more sensitive and guarded and less promotional going forward.

Just thoughts from an old man who is wrong on many things:xf.wink:, but I've believed in peace and respect for a long time. Thanks for reading another too long post.

Bob
 
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I try to be fair an balanced, so if I could insert a few words in the discussion, just from my viewpoint.

I see much value in a registry CEO being active on NPs, but I think paraphrasing what the late Carl Sagan said about claims and evidence, with great influence must come great responsibility. In my opinion the $500 projection, whether meant just for city ones, as literally it did apply to, or more generally was probably unwise. While the CEO may, and probably does, feel that number is in keeping with the projection of interest in .best according to models, I think there is too great a chance the message will be misinterpreted (especially coming from a CEO as opposed to a random anonymous new poster) as either a guarantee or an idea that can be extrapolated. We all know how many newbies have been hurt by hearing an article or reading a book on the "easy domain flip, get rich" and then are disappointed when it is neither easy nor fast nor assured.

I think there are a number of interesting and worthwhile things we have learned from the .best threads and the involvement of the CEO. These include (in my opinion)
  • A bit about the history of the TLD acquisition (some are quoting registration numbers and resale statistics seemingly oblivious to the fact that the TLD is in new hands and has a new direction).
  • Some about the social media plan, and how the extension is seen as a complement to .com (or country code) and not as a replacement for it. One can debate this, but at least it potentially offers something different from most new gTLDs.
  • The extension currently has tons of good names that are not registry reserved. That is very good news for domain investors, as the lack of quality non-reserved names is an argument against ngTLD by some.
  • The announcement about the radical decrease in wholesale prices to the registrar (notice in Feb with 6 month period to implementation). For many the high renewal prices was a stumbling block,so that is important information to our community.
  • The announcement of names being dropped from the reserved list provides NPs members with inside information that can be valuable to their domain investing, and today even asking for input on what niches we would like to see premium reserved names drop in.
  • The aesthetics of the extension can be debated, and has been but it is arguably strong compared to many new gTLDs and the research evidence that @Cyril.Best has provided is valuable imho. It is sort of akin to the two years of full time analytics that Radix did in starting with 1000+ names and moving to the final 9 they won (part of a keynote at NamesCon).
I think the critics should acknowledge that we have learned rather a lot of value in just a few days. Name calling is never proper, and in my opinion a few posts have strayed past the NPs rules regarding respect.

Finally, if I might suggest that when considering how to interact with NPs as a CEO I think Epik's @Rob Monster offers model behaviour. Yes, he occasionally points out that Epik has such and such that is, I know, a form of promotion. I think most NPs members accept and welcome him here because mainly he provides information and help to NPs members. It is sort of like @Kate Buckley guide re social media (if I am remembering it correctly) that make sure that no more than 20% of your interactions are promotional with the rest being genuine altruistic contributions.

There is a lot of value in letting past perceived wrongs be in the past. Can we all just leave this rocky start and view this as a new day? The critics accepting that there have been useful contributions and that their name calling and harsh words were out of hand, and the registry operator agreeing to be more sensitive and guarded and less promotional going forward.

Just thoughts from an old man who is wrong on many things:xf.wink:, but I've believed in peace and respect for a long time. Thanks for reading another too long post.

Bob
Just wanted to say I appreciate the level of detail you put in your posts Bob :)

That is all
 
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Couldn't you have started with this post? Interesting approach and it's a refreshing concept.

If the social network gains traction I can see this work. You're definitely exploring uncharted territory which is something more registries should do. Extension wise, not a fan but I like the technology and the vision.

Thanks. We are totally exploring uncharted territory both in the domain name industry and in the social network industry. I am more worried about the second one coz it's all new for us but we have an asset (the TLD), the best one I would even say ;) and not a lot of company have one. And we are entering a new era in the social networks space. So rwe have a project with a strong disruption. Let's transform it to a traction coz I totally agree with it's the key of success in a social network.

Again thanks for your support.

Wish you also the .best for your business.

CF
 
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Je ne suis pas étonné de voir un compagnie francaise qui a lancer .best.

Le menu best of etc...

As someone who speaks French and English, best should always come first and not behind the dot for the vast majority of keywords and terms. I can see it having some appeal in a number of European markets. However, aside from domain hacks/terms like iamthe.best etc. I don't feel it's the .best investment vehicle.

I wish you well with your venture Cyril.
 
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Je ne suis pas étonné de voir un compagnie francaise qui a lancer .best.

Le menu best of etc...

As someone who speaks French and English, best should always come first and not behind the dot for the vast majority of keywords and terms. I can see it having some appeal in a number of European markets. However, aside from domain hacks/terms like iamthe.best etc. I don't feel it's the .best investment vehicle.

I wish you well with your venture Cyril.

Merci ;)
 
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If anyone doesn't understand this new strategy, https://www.go.best and the fact that it will work, then they haven't been around the block very long.

@Cyril.Best the only worry I have is that another tyrant will be born out of this process, a new lockdown, more bureaucracy, people and small businesses getting locked out and penalised, the rise of a new elitist system.

Decentralised Dictatorship. Take your Soma.Best

Hi james - Sorry for the delay of my answer coz I think it's probably the best remarks I heard over the last days on our social network strategy. So thanks to come with this and let me give your my view on this high level points :

So first for : "another tyrant will be born out of this process, a new lockdown, more bureaucracy, people and small businesses getting locked out and penalised, the rise of a new elitist system."

I would say that this is exactly what we are trying to : Break the existing system. I mean not just think out of the box but break the existing box ! For me the revenue sharing with the users is as much important as the decentralization of the data. Who are locked actually ? The users coz they are not rewarded for their contributions. Instagram and facebook are doing $40B revenue last year and will do around $80B this year and they don't share any penny with their community. Like the old guy said, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product !

Plus, for the first time, we will create a worlwide social network on the internet and the biggest innovation at scale since the ngtld program in 2012. My personal ambition is to create a better internet world not my own Best world. Seems a wise dream for a lot of us but this is my primary ambition in front of anything else.

And as for the question : what will you be doing to ensure that you are not part of the problem in the websphere?

I would say that it's interesting because we already have a such talk with the ICANN commitee on this. I mean : Will the stability and the security of the internet being affected by our project ?
My answer was : Absolutly not and we will do exactly the opposite. By the decentralization, we will reconnect the people together. the tagline of the ICANN is One Internet but where is the internet right now : totally fragmented between regions.

We can be the first one to achieve this ICANN dream for the websphere.

Hope it helps - if not of course feel free to give me back your feelings on this.

All the .best for you and your business.

CF
 
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Not being very observant, I have only just noticed this thread. My thoughts -

It is commendable that Cyril has told us so precisely how he has made the sale, but there are factors in his favour that most of us do not have access to - and from what he says, it was a team effort. I don't have a team. I had a bicycle, but someone stole it from the back yard.

In the first place, it is good to target the customer - but actually getting access to the man who might make the purchase decision is often very hard. Cyril has done well to achieve that. He is right to say that the person will always listen in the first place, but getting past the minions who have "being obstructive" in their job descriptions is the tricky bit. Well done for getting over that hurdle.

The second obvious difficulty is arranging the payment in such a way that it can be set against tax, which I am sure is why there has to be an amicable agreement in the terms of purchase - instalments could avoid an actual burden on the business. Needs good advisors to keep that on an even keel.

But the big advantage here is the control of the domain extension. Being able to offer a range of unregistered or cheaply registered domains is beyond the portfolio of most of us. That on its own could justify buying into Cyril's mode of operation.

I just hope the .com does not get de-valued before I can sell off the domains I have . . .
 
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Finally, if I might suggest that when considering how to interact with NPs as a CEO I think Epik's @Rob Monster offers model behaviour. Yes, he occasionally points out that Epik has such and such that is, I know, a form of promotion. I think most NPs members accept and welcome him here because mainly he provides information and help to NPs members. It is sort of like @Kate Buckley guide re social media (if I am remembering it correctly) that make sure that no more than 20% of your interactions are promotional with the rest being genuine altruistic contributions.

All the pro Rob Monster posts lately certainly take the cake Bob.
 
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Thanks. We are totally exploring uncharted territory both in the domain name industry and in the social network industry. I am more worried about the second one coz it's all new for us but we have an asset (the TLD), the best one I would even say ;) and not a lot of company have one. And we are entering a new era in the social networks space. So rwe have a project with a strong disruption. Let's transform it to a traction coz I totally agree with it's the key of success in a social network.

Again thanks for your support.

Wish you also the .best for your business.

CF

I have no idea what this thread is all about, but I think you should have retained be.best, it would have been better to use in marketing than go.best
 
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I have no idea what this thread is all about. but I think you should have retained be.best, it would have been better to use in marketing than go.best
The First Lady at the White House would be a perfect client for Be Best as well with her anti-bullying initiative by that name! (as a number of other organizations I am sure). There are clearly a number of superb possibilities including The.best too!
 
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The First Lady at the White House would be a perfect client for Be Best as well! (as a number of other organizations I am sure). There are clearly a number of superb possibilities including The.best too!
Yes, I have heard of that campaign, but it doesn't look like it will go anywhere, especially given the 2020 election will probably go down in history as probably the most nastiest when it comes to accusations, and insults.
 
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bless you too.
welcome to namepros and to my ignore list.
🚩

HAHAAHAAA

To "welcome" a new member in
such a way is (your right of course but) not normal hahaahaaa
At least you blessed him back, that neutralizes it in some wayyy

.best regards
 
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Hi Joe,

Here is for instance what we did to sell hotels.best/hotel.best to get a proposal for $1M :

We decide to invest time and hard work on the travel/hospitality business (it was absolutly not sure at the beginning that it was for hotels.best/hotel.best, it could be travel.best destination.best, restaurant.best, ...)

1. So, we analyse the full hospitality industry best players
2. For each player, we source their revenues, number of customers, # rooms, type, trends, sales strategy, recent failure, recent success, new acquisition, ongoing acquisition, ...
3. Then we source their digital strategy and spend on google ads, youtube, FB and others social network.
4. We compare their digital spends with their competitors and market stats.....

CF

Could you clarify some doubts?

1. Since you research so much about the buyer (like ad spend, CPA, recent success etc). Do you include all these data in your outbound email to the buyer in order to convince him?

2. I read the Freedom.com outbound case study of Ali and found that he used just 1,2 sentence email body for the initial contact and the reason given was that top level executives do not have time to go through lengthy pitch. Do you agree or disagree on this?

3. For your other premium domain sales, did you opt for outbound emails/calls or listing on marketplaces?
 
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🚩

If I sell, lets say regards.best I made a 7-digit domain saleee
Because the word "regards" has 7 digitsss
Simple as that hahaahaaa

rrregards ;) besttt
 
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Could you clarify some doubts?

1. Since you research so much about the buyer (like ad spend, CPA, recent success etc). Do you include all these data in your outbound email to the buyer in order to convince him?

2. I read the Freedom.com outbound case study of Ali and found that he used just 1,2 sentence email body for the initial contact and the reason given was that top level executives do not have time to go through lengthy pitch. Do you agree or disagree on this?

3. For your other premium domain sales, did you opt for outbound emails/calls or listing on marketplaces?


1. Never in first email. Our position is to present all data in a face2face meeting. Could it be a skype call or physical. First barrier is always the harder as the buyer has no idea of the valueable information you want to bring him. So we always try to find an internal sponsor, first contact if we cannot go directly to the decidor. One trick to get a first contact/sponsor is to go to industry convention to get a first contact. There is always sales and marketing team, plus you can approach several potential customers in the same industry.

2. My experience on that is that when we talk to decidor/exec, we don't argue on the value of the domain name for the buyer, we only focus on the potential business/interest at the endfor the company and so effectively just with 2 sentences max.

3. We are actually working on listing .Best names on few MP but for the big names of our reserved list (100 names max), we found it's more efficient to go directly to the buyer.

Like I said earlier, our strategy is more to find the perfect buyer that fits with a domain instead of finding the perfect domain that fits with a buyer.

Plus, all our recent premium sales teach us one important thing : price is a real subjective point of view when speaking about .best domains - for one unique reason : the string "best" brings a real emotional aspect to each deal.

Specially if you can connect directly with a business owner that sales/revenues are really sensitive to its business reputation : hotels, restaurants, bars, lawyers, doctors, plumbers, real estate agents, ...

I benefit also from this to explain that we are in a way to register some recent premium sales with namebios.

Once listed, we will also give you more infos on how we conduct each deal with buyers.

Wish you the .Best for your future trades,

CF
 
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1. Never in first email. Our position is to present all data in a face2face meeting. Could it be a skype call or physical. First barrier is always the harder as the buyer has no idea of the valueable information you want to bring him. So we always try to find an internal sponsor, first contact if we cannot go directly to the decidor. One trick to get a first contact/sponsor is to go to industry convention to get a first contact. There is always sales and marketing team, plus you can approach several potential customers in the same industry.

2. My experience on that is that when we talk to decidor/exec, we don't argue on the value of the domain name for the buyer, we only focus on the potential business/interest at the endfor the company and so effectively just with 2 sentences max.

3. We are actually working on listing .Best names on few MP but for the big names of our reserved list (100 names max), we found it's more efficient to go directly to the buyer.

Like I said earlier, our strategy is more to find the perfect buyer that fits with a domain instead of finding the perfect domain that fits with a buyer.

Plus, all our recent premium sales teach us one important thing : price is a real subjective point of view when speaking about .best domains - for one unique reason : the string "best" brings a real emotional aspect to each deal.

Specially if you can connect directly with a business owner that sales/revenues are really sensitive to its business reputation : hotels, restaurants, bars, lawyers, doctors, plumbers, real estate agents, ...

I benefit also from this to explain that we are in a way to register some recent premium sales with namebios.

Once listed, we will also give you more infos on how we conduct each deal with buyers.

Wish you the .Best for your future trades,

CF

Put aside what I think of the extension, either positive or negative, you do give us a detailed insight on how the registry is operating. Gotta give you that!
 
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Also one more information : I want to add that we are also working to give access to our buyers to the NP's community (not just reference our sales) in a way that can it can benefit to the trader community.

I mean understand the spirit of end-user buying a .best premium domain name.

Actually working to arrange ITW with buyers and DN experts.

Keep tuned.

Best,

CF
 
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Also one more information : I want to add that we are also working to give access to our buyers to the NP's community (not just reference our sales) in a way that can it can benefit to the trader community.

I mean understand the spirit of end-user buying a .best premium domain name.

Actually working to arrange ITW with buyers and DN experts.

Keep tuned.

Best,

CF


really?

do you think that those are frequent buyers of other
less favorite domains?

or want to become domainers????
 
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Plus, all our recent premium sales teach us one important thing : price is a real subjective point of view when speaking about .best domains - for one unique reason : the string "best" brings a real emotional aspect to each deal.

ok you sound like you understand sales
but why the he.. are you selling .best

and not really the best ?????

ok you earn more
but is that really true?

if you would buy premium .com s instead
and sell them the way you do

and add as a bonus a -best at the end of the premium domain
well that would mean real business

don't you think so??
 
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