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advice Mike Mann Selling Strategies

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MrOriginal

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Has Mike Mann ever written about how he goes about finding buyers for all of his domain sales? While many at this point are probably on reputation from his DomainMarket site, I'm sure he does a lot of hustling as well.

I will always see his recent sells around here and always am surprised by how much money he earns for domains I wouldn't even register for $100; such as:

TheHealingTree.com $20,000. Purch 9/23/11 $120.
PortobelloAmerica.com $9,888. Purch 4/9/17 $70.

He is clearly doing something different and managing to find some of the best possible buyers to get this kind of cash for these kind of domains... how is he doing it? How is he finding these clearly hyper-targeted buyers who pay top dollar?
 
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Has Mike Mann ever written about how he goes about finding buyers for all of his domain sales? While many at this point are probably on reputation from his DomainMarket site, I'm sure he does a lot of hustling as well.

I will always see his recent sells around here and always am surprised by how much money he earns for domains I wouldn't even register for $100; such as:

TheHealingTree.com $20,000. Purch 9/23/11 $120.
PortobelloAmerica.com $9,888. Purch 4/9/17 $70.

He is clearly doing something different and managing to find some of the best possible buyers to get this kind of cash for these kind of domains... how is he doing it?


You say "you wouldn't register for $100" well clearly he knows what to register and not to register then, you answered your own question. He has industry knowledge and know how, and experience. He has a very large inventory, which is a numbers game to an extent, but he works his self to the bone from what I hear. A Real hustler in sales, so he knows his stuff.
 
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You say "you wouldn't register for $100" well clearly he knows what to register and not to register then, you answered your own question. He has industry knowledge and know how, and experience.

I could have these domains in my portfolio and I'm sure I would never sell them, or at least not for the prices he gets.

He's not just good at picking potential winners, but he's also managing to find targeted buyers at the same time.
 
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I could have these domains in my portfolio and I'm sure I would never sell them, or at least not for the prices he gets.

He's not just good at picking potential winners, but he's also managing to find targeted buyers at the same time.

Well he has:

1. Name and Brand / Industry Recognition

2. Connections I think? as most big domainers do

3. VAST large inventory (A numbers game)

4. Hustles hard to make a sale from what I hear

5. Knows the industry

The proof is in the sales.
 
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I could have these domains in my portfolio and I'm sure I would never sell them, or at least not for the prices he gets.

He's not just good at picking potential winners, but he's also managing to find targeted buyers at the same time.

Buyers come to him too it's a numbers game - huge inventory.
 
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He is clearly doing something different and managing to find some of the best possible buyers to get this kind of cash for these kind of domains...

Actually .. there isn't anything clear here at all.

Let me preface the following by saying I have no idea if he is an amazing sales person or a horrible one. I'm going to guess he's good based on what I've heard and some of the limited numbers I've seen. But the fact of the matter is that if he's got 100,000+ domains in his portfolio then he's always going to have a few random lucky ones like those .. but more importantly, that even with the sales you've mentioned, he'd be losing tons of money with renewals.

However, the opposite is true if his portfolio is smaller and/or he has a lot more sales.

At the end of the day ... without looking at his entire portfolio, acquisition/sales prices and full list of sales, it really is impossible to draw any conclusions at all .. other than the fact that from time to time, some rare end users seriously pay a lot for domains! :)
 
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Think of BrandBucket, Brandpa and a few more sites of the like, Mike has more to offer than all of them put together IMO, I am not so sure he has extreme worries about paying renewal fees, I don't think his focus stems on making sales to pay renewal fees, I have read that a lot through the years, people saying he will lose money if he doesn't sell X amount of names to cover renewals, I don't think that is the case at all IMO, He has built his empire, and i think he likes his inventory, he also buys what he likes, Like his recent purchase of MotherFuckers.com, people went ape shit over that and many thought it was a crazy buy, not so, Not if he likes it IMO,

Mike has battled the UDRPs , and won many times, as well as sold the name to the person who filed the UDRP against him, that is damn savvy IMO,

The man is pretty damned relentless when it comes to his inventory of domains, I don't see him ever divulging his strategic methods of selling and acquiring his portfolio, he appears to be a one man band with his business, but i can see him enjoying his portfolio, and that in itself speaks loud for his contributions within the domain name industry.

Mike Mann will continue to raise eyebrows for as long a he decides he wants to do it IMO
 
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Think of BrandBucket, Brandpa and a few more sites of the like, Mike has more to offer than all of them put together IMO, I am not so sure he has extreme worries about paying renewal fees, I don't think his focus stems on making sales to pay renewal fees, I have read that a lot through the years, people saying he will lose money if he doesn't sell X amount of names to cover renewals, I don't think that is the case at all IMO, He has built his empire, and i think he likes his inventory, he also buys what he likes, Like his recent purchase of Motherf*ckers.com, people went ape sh*t over that and many thought it was a crazy buy, not so, Not if he likes it IMO,

Mike has battled the UDRPs , and won many times, as well as sold the name to the person who filed the UDRP against him, that is damn savvy IMO,

The man is pretty damned relentless when it comes to his inventory of domains, I don't see him ever divulging his strategic methods of selling and acquiring his portfolio, he appears to be a one man band with his business, but i can see him enjoying his portfolio, and that in itself speaks loud for his contributions within the domain name industry.

Mike Mann will continue to raise eyebrows for as long a he decides he wants to do it IMO

Rick purchased MotherF******.com
 
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I could have these domains in my portfolio and I'm sure I would never sell them, or at least not for the prices he gets.

He's not just good at picking potential winners, but he's also managing to find targeted buyers at the same time.

He's not finding them, they're finding him.

One of Mikes strongest tactics is having the ability to hold out for the perfect buyer. I also get the impression that he's a pretty belligerent / no-nonsense guy, so that will help him achieve the high prices.
 
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I have some theories explaning this strange situation.
.......
1. Most sales are fake, and they are intended to make .com market look hot.

And Sedo is part of the game, Sedo desparately promotes .com, because there is a vast inventory to liquidate. tld of the month is .com always. Whenever someone is interest in your .biz Sedo diverts such buyers into .com region, and pretends there is no other extension.
.......
2. He has Nsa connections, so whenever someone considers buying a domain, he registers
or buys it before the enduser.
........
3. He has connections with people who work with big corporations. Big companies are surrounded by sharks and you just can't approach them. If you are lucky you can reach marketing dept or legal department, who have their own interest in making money from that company's actions. Instead of paying 500, they will file 2000 udrp, and charge their company 10000. A company may pay 50K to buy your domain, but you might get only 100 and not become aware of it. If you can break this middleman step like domainmarket does, then you can sell for fair prices.
.....

I'm not saying these are true, but I believe such things happen somewhere.
Everyone is interested in their own profit. Middlemen may prevent sales in multiple ways, while
trying to optimize their own profit.
Google shared its profits with little guys via adsense, and in the meantime installed its analytics,
established browser connections, and sharing profits only with other big players, and contribution from little guys is no longer needed.
Does anyone make significant money from ppc anymore? I don't think so.
 
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I have some theories explaning this strange situation.
.......
1. Most sales are fake, and they are intended to make .com market look hot.

And Sedo is part of the game, Sedo desparately promotes .com, because there is a vast inventory to liquidate. tld of the month is .com always. Whenever someone is interest in your .biz Sedo diverts such buyers into .com region, and pretends there is no other extension.
.......
2. He has Nsa connections, so whenever someone considers buying a domain, he registers
or buys it before the enduser.
........
3. He has connections with people who work with big corporations. Big companies are surrounded by sharks and you just can't approach them. If you are lucky you can reach marketing dept or legal department, who have their own interest in making money from that company's actions. Instead of paying 500, they will file 2000 udrp, and charge their company 10000. A company may pay 50K to buy your domain, but you might get only 100 and not become aware of it. If you can break this middleman step like domainmarket does, then you can sell for fair prices.
.....

I'm not saying these are true, but I believe such things happen somewhere.
Everyone is interested in their own profit. Middlemen may prevent sales in multiple ways, while
trying to optimize their own profit.
Google shared its profits with little guys via adsense, and in the meantime installed its analytics,
established browser connections, and sharing profits only with other big players, and contribution from little guys is no longer needed.
Does anyone make significant money from ppc anymore? I don't think so.

4. Mike Mann faked the moon landing
 
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4. Kubrick did it, but he probably did as art, not for lying purposes; and indirectly admitted it by saying:
A-11 work and no joy makes Jack a dull boy; in another movie.
 
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The topic of the thread is interesting, but I suspect we will never know the answer!

With such a huge domain portfolio, the real question is what fraction of his domains are selling each year. If both the average price (for all sales, not just announced ones) and the percentage sold are both higher (or one higher and one equal) compared to industry average, then clearly there are seller/promotion tactics that are highly successful. I suspect he would not share them for obvious reasons, and they may not even be transferable if he did, as the persona he built by being one of the big players in the golden age help a lot I would think. When people go to him for a domain name they expect to be paying big bucks.

Konstantinos does a monthly post on Mike Mann announced sales, and has convenient links to the past sales, so an easy way to browse the names he announces as sold.

https://onlinedomain.com/2018/09/20...t-for-126128-vistaglobal-com-mymedic-com-etc/

Konstantinos also points out that Mike has at least about 300,000 domain names. If we adopt the 1% per year average for com throughput, would imply about 3000 sales per year or 250 per month. He announces about 1/20 that many, so it really depends on how many others are being sold. Of course with high prices, Mike could be successful with a lower ratio. He needs to sell about $2.5 million a year to cover renewal costs.

Only slightly related, but I found this post by Andrew re 10 of his biggest sales and how they are used, or not, currently. Clearly these are all great names, and I am always surprised when valuable digital assets that high prices are paid for go unused or under-utilized.

https://www.namepros.com/blog/mike-manns-top-10-sales-where-are-they-now.1092788/
 
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In a UDRP response (dollarcity) he (?) says he sells 4000 domains per year. So 3000 estimate above looks quite accurate. I bet he doesn't pay for renewal. or pays a very small amount, because if registrars make 1 usd for each, it makes 300,000 , so he might be paying Icann fee + 1 usd. Or can even make a deal with Icann and drop Icann fee, or give commission from sales instead of paying for renewal. It is very risky to assume that hundreds of 5 figure sales will be possible every year. There might be a small financial crisis, and everyone may delay purchases for a year, and that year would be a pure loss, and that trend may continue.
Domainmarket might be a big organisation invented for speculation purposes, and this may be making domain market alive and make people invest in domains, So registrars have profitable business, even when there are not many new endusers. .. In the next round "they" may collapse this business to make people drop their qualty domains, and restart everything after a few years.

.Global registry sells .global domains for 4-5 figures every week, but domainers can't. Similarly other registries can't sell similar tlds, like .site, .online, .world. Some people seem to know how to reach endusers and convince them, or, making fake sales for speculation purposes.
 
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lets not forget the tons of contacts he has and made over years

i assume he has at least some repeat buyers... does he do outbound? or has people working to do outbnd for him lik2 some other successful sellers.... by now he must know every broker in industry..those have access to databases of sales and buyers we can hardly imagine... so imagine all this put togethet...its basically exponential effect... this is why ge sometimes make unbeliavable sales..that often do not have logical explanation...pricewise etc
 
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I have seen one of Mile Mann's biggest ever sales where after many months go by but Whois never changed to buyers name staying in Mann's name, that imo makes some of his incredible high price sales that few here would buy for $100 or even less, seem suspect. After all, who would pay more than 100k (for what looks like a $100 domain) and not have the ownership transferred!
 
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lets not forget that it most its a numbers game. Also these domains may be used for future projects and could be short lived marketing plans so to spend $25,000 on marketing for a big company is nothing. Now yes the domains that sell we would maybe see $10 from Namepros but again if I could hold 300,000 domains and don't need money ASAP then I can quote high fees and maybe get them. For him the QUANTITY over QUALITY works better for him.
 
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Get buyers' name and email, and offer a high price although you would happily accept 5 percent of it, and time passes and domain is not sold, and contact the buyer again and say, there is a huge promotion this summer, 80 percent off on a few select domains and one of them is what you are interested in, coincidentally. If sold, great, if not sold sell for cheap in the future. Problem with this, in my experience: Whatever you say by email, it is totally ignored. Whenever I'm supposed to get an interesting response by email in all cases, I just don't get anything. It feels like my communication is sandboxed, but why... Maybe they make a call using a convincing soft female voice... I can convince people using a logical argument. But people just don't listen. I don't know how to cure people's ignorance disease. My explanation: You can't convince people, they need to be exposed to some information from different angles and indirectly..then it works. You need to control minds, not give advice.
 
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There has to be some balance between quantity and quality or he wouldn't survive. While still relatively new to the domain game, my business philosophy is similar to Mikes. Compared to Mike my portfolio is peanuts, but the quality is improving over time. It's taken me almost a year to accumulate a portfolio of a little over 1,500 names, and despite warnings from old timers here, renewals aren't, and won't be killing me. Of the 120 names that have come up for renewal, I've renewed just 21 to the tune of $180. I'm sure Mike, if he's as smart as they say he is, does something similar.

On another note, unless I missed it, his Linkedin Bio shows him involved in four or five businesses that he started...Phone.com, MakeChangeTrust.org, MakeMillions.com, SEO.com and DomainMarket.com. No telling how much he's making:xf.smile: or losing:xf.frown: from those businesses.

In my case, starting, naming and operating dozens of businesses over the years is a huge advantage. I'm still very much a work in progress, but the sort of success Mike has had is very encouraging to me. And for those of you who know me, I don't need much encouragement:xf.wink:
 
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I have some theories explaning this strange situation.
.......
1. Most sales are fake, and they are intended to make .com market look hot.

And Sedo is part of the game, Sedo desparately promotes .com, because there is a vast inventory to liquidate. tld of the month is .com always. Whenever someone is interest in your .biz Sedo diverts such buyers into .com region, and pretends there is no other extension.
.......
2. He has Nsa connections, so whenever someone considers buying a domain, he registers
or buys it before the enduser.
........
3. He has connections with people who work with big corporations. Big companies are surrounded by sharks and you just can't approach them. If you are lucky you can reach marketing dept or legal department, who have their own interest in making money from that company's actions. Instead of paying 500, they will file 2000 udrp, and charge their company 10000. A company may pay 50K to buy your domain, but you might get only 100 and not become aware of it. If you can break this middleman step like domainmarket does, then you can sell for fair prices.
.....

I'm not saying these are true, but I believe such things happen somewhere.
Everyone is interested in their own profit. Middlemen may prevent sales in multiple ways, while
trying to optimize their own profit.
Google shared its profits with little guys via adsense, and in the meantime installed its analytics,
established browser connections, and sharing profits only with other big players, and contribution from little guys is no longer needed.
Does anyone make significant money from ppc anymore? I don't think so.

Alex Jones 101 class

Sedo is an 100% legit , honest company, I have been doing business with them for over 15 years, buying and some selling, Of all the domain name companies i know, i can honestly say, Sedo is still the best after all these years. at least for me.
 
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I'm not saying Sedo is dishonest. But they are biased. Their search function is bad. They make selling difficult. Since buyer supply might be limited, it may be best for them to sell something which will bring higher profit.
.....
I'm using a new browser which has strong ties with Google. On the homepage there is a Google search box, and 8 sites (screenshots and links) I visited before. Many sites I visited only once appear there, but a few sites I visit most often never appears there. Why: Because I need to type site name, and I will see organic looking ad at the top for that site and the real organic link below it. So I will most likely click the ad instead of clicking the organic result. This is what they have in mind. They are trying to optimize profits, while making my job difficult, and at the same time track all my visits, and associate them to my identity if possible.
.....
BTW Sedo or Google's choices might have been benefical for my finances sometimes, an on the average I might be a winner, so I shouldn't be complaining about such stuff. What I'm saying is: Everyone is trying to optimize their profit, and meanwhile while big players do this manually or via AI, we have less and less control over our businesses, and things make look illogical, while there is a plan or design behind the scene we are not aware of.
 
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Alex Jones 101 class

Sedo is an 100% legit , honest company, I have been doing business with them for over 15 years, buying and some selling, Of all the domain name companies i know, i can honestly say, Sedo is still the best after all these years. at least for me.
Has it been your experience that "end users" ever find their way to Sedo? If so, I'd appreciate knowing how they find their way? Thanks
 
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Has it been your experience that "end users" ever find their way to Sedo? If so, I'd appreciate knowing how they find their way?

I am not .x but to me there are lots of companies that find their way to Sedo, either directly through professionals in their web or branding divisions, or more likely through consultants/brand experts they hire when looking and through the big brokers. Sedo have handled so many big sales for so many years that they do have the ear of those that acquire names on behalf of companies. They have respect.

I think that the small 2 person business are not finding them, though. Nor Undeveloped etc. I would support your argument that they are not finding much of anything (possibly a few through Afternic network where they show up at registrars when hand registering). I think that is part of the reason so many small companies start with a hand registered domain, even though not that many dollars would provide something better. If we can solve that mismatch, we will have many more domain sales, at least in the $$$ to low $$$$ range imho.

Bob
 
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I bet he doesn't pay for renewal. or pays a very small amount, because if registrars make 1 usd for each, it makes 300,000 , so he might be paying Icann fee + 1 usd.
You seem to be unaware, or forgot, that the bulk of domain registration / renewal fees are charged by the Registry, i.e. Verisign. Currently $7.85 per year. Registrar and ICANN fees are peanuts by comparison.
Or can even make a deal with Icann and drop Icann fee...
Yeah, dream on... ICANN waiving their fee... priceless! :ROFL::ROFL:
 
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