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(Almost) A Decade of Domaining...

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Nikul Sanghvi

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Some questions came up on the sales thread around trading strategy, so I wanted to write something that shines a bit of light onto my recent performance and current setup. I thought it would also be pragmatic to explain the journey to this point so that my thinking is framed in some context.

In particular, the questions (on sales thread and via DMs) are about revenue, investment levels, ROI and building a profitable portfolio. I’ve put the post here under AMA, as I wanted to provide a level of transparency that’s rarely given in this industry. I also wanted to allow room for NP members to dig deeper into anything specific.

This has been my path - and that doesn’t make it right or wrong. It’s just how I’ve set things up, to work for me. The first thing to take away from this post is that you can’t emulate someone else's journey because your personal circumstances will always be different. What you can do instead is understand multiple strategies and combine the various elements to shape your own method.

The journey so far...

I was pretty late to the game (2009) and started out by hand-registering domains in .co.uk and .com. Over the first two years, I amassed around 200 to 300 domains, had three low to mid $XXX sales (on domain forums and via WhoIs). I kept no records, accounts or notes. Sales got a bit better in 2011 but I still didn’t make any profit. My first Sedo sale was for $300 in 2011, around two years after signing up. Most of what I had registered was garbage but I continued to renew out of sentiment and sunk-cost fallacy. Overall, my costs were around $2k to $4k per year and I barely sold $2k over three years. The sales I made were just sheer luck, from a spray-n-pray approach. My 'day job' at the time subsidised the losses of the learning curve.

In Year 4 (2012), I slowed down the hand-registrations and started buying low-value domains, between $20 to $250 per domain. With about $5k per year going into the pot, I eventually started to break even on sales. Around this time, I formalised into a limited company and started keeping my own accounts. From this point on (up until very recently), I stopped taking domain related profits out of the business, to focus on reinvestment.
Once I started to build confidence (mainly from not being in deficit), I also pushed another $15k of savings into domains to start buying a few at low $XXXX - albeit, overpaying for many of them.
In addition, I also bought one particular domain for $10k after two months of research. It was a category killer .com for an emerging technology niche and I planned to develop it as a site.

Year 5 (2013), no sales for the whole year. No major purchases, around $4k loss from in renewals.

Year 6 (2014), ticking along, sales in low 5-figures. No major purchases. Profits (after renewals) were kept in the business.

Year 7 (2015), I got lucky and things jumped into hyperdrive.
I sold my $10k domain for six-figures in a private transaction. The previous owner had reached out to me to try and buy it back. I declined but was curious as to why he’d try that. I then had an inbound email from the end-user and we negotiated over three weeks before closing the deal. (Turned out the end-user had contacted the previous owner first!).
In hindsight, the secret ingredient to getting the six-figure price was simple but partly non-intentional - I genuinely did not want to sell the name at that time. I had significant research and belief that it was going to be worth more in the future. Fortunately, the buyer felt the same way.
After the sale, I went on a buying spree, spending around $100k throughout the year - mostly on mid $XXX to low $XXXX. Not all of that money was well spent but I’ll come onto that later.
Of the domains I bought in that year, I quickly flipped an iot-related domain (10x) for just under $40k (buyer requested privacy) and hack.uk for $7.5k

Year 8 (2016), zero sales. Nothing. I felt a bit nervous but I kept buying - spending another $75k on 40+ domains.

This year (Year 9 - 2017), has been a contrast to the previous year. I slowed down spending with only $20k reinvested but reached $120k in revenue across 11 sales.

So why am I sharing those details?…

I joined Namepros in mid-2017, and this has coincidentally been one of my best years for trading in the sales thread. But as you can see, the truth is that it hasn’t always been as consistent or as fruitful. The sales thread acts like a heavily photoshopped instagram feed that only highlights the good moments. It can be misleading when used as an indicator of achievement or accomplishment. The thread provides an environment in which to showcase the peaks whilst completely ignoring all of the valleys. It would be irresponsible of me to only talk about my sales and never anything else. The obscured truth then propagates unrealistic expectations for new entrants into our industry - leaving them frustrated and disappointed within a few years, unable to replicate the same sales.

Over the last 9 years of domaining as a hobby and side-business, I’ve only made profits on three years and that's not even three consecutive years. It’s safe to say that my performance in 2017 is not representative of my overall track record but it is a culmination of the process. Since 2009, I’ve invested/reinvested around $250k into domains and sold around $400k worth of domains. A big chunk of the total revenue came from a single sale. For me, it isn’t anywhere close to being reliable as a primary source of income (for me). Taking money out of the business also limits its future growth.

My current ‘core' portfolio is less than 300 domains, but all have been paid for through previous sales and profits. I’m likely to renew at least 80% of these. My largest concern is that I’m heavily over-indexed with .co and I’ll address this imbalance as a goal for 2018 (buying more .com)
I also have a ‘testing’ portfolio (around 800 domains) that has a much lower propensity for renewal (high churn) but I’m constantly using it to test new purchasing tactics such as buying deletes or bulk buying during coupons/discounts.

I wanted to share all of this context before I gave any advice… primarily to highlight that I’m far from an expert in this field, and also to show that like many of you, I’m still finding my own feet.

Here's brain dump of things I’ve learnt over the last 9 years - might be useful for new domainers...

At the beginning:
  • Don’t expect much if you’ve just started. In fact, expect losses and a steep learning curve. But keep learning. The sales thread is important but use it as a reference tool, and not a yardstick.
  • Reading is essential but I’d also recommend learning through action. There’s no point in waiting until you feel like you know everything. There is no such thing as for complete knowledge or a perfect strategy. Get going, seek feedback and then iterate over time for improvements.
  • Learning to sell hand-registrations is a low cost way to learn about what sells and how to sell. But it’s also a great way to become disheartened and defeated - because it’s harder to sell hand-regs than it is to sell premium domains.
  • Keep going and keep trying, unless you specifically make an educated decision to retreat because you cannot afford the financial losses. In that scenario, before giving up, first scale down, audit/learn and re-evaluate the existing strategy.

Sales / selling:
  • I’ve accepted the inconsistency of sales and developed the patience required to avoid panic during the periods of weaker trading. I’m not advocating blind-faith or not having any introspection. Audit your inventory as if it belonged to someone else (without personal attachment), and if you are confident of it having potential, then don’t worry if there are quiet periods.
  • I’ve said this before but when in negotiations, look for win-win situations with the buyer. Give them respect and be professional, even if they choose to act differently.
  • I tried outbound marketing for three months this year (for the first time) but didn’t enjoy it. It made me feel like I was in a weaker negotiating position and the extra sales didn’t offset the time investment. I know it works well for many people and can be very profitable, so maybe I'm doing it wrong. Learn about this as early as you can. Contrary to common belief, low value domains don’t sell themselves very often.
  • I have a deliberate and documented exit point for each domain, so that I don’t wait for infinity. Just because the first offer was $XX and the second offer came in at $XXX, doesn’t mean the third offer will arrive at $XXXX. Owning the asset inflates our own valuation subconsciously. But if there is a final offer, the easiest thing is to ask is, ‘Would I buy the domain today, for the same amount of money as this offer?' (Abstract yourself from the current ownership of the asset.) If the answer is no, sell it. Don’t be frightened by the imaginary 'money left on the table’… it’s an illusion that will skew the exit point.

Pricing:
  • The price that a domain is bought for has no bearing on the potential sales price (within reason). There is no pre-defined logic to say that the markup must be 0.5x or 2x or 5x or 10x - but it’s likely that the 10x or 20x will take exponentially longer than the 2x. It’s useful to think about how long you’d be willing to wait for each domain to sell. Leave aside some money to renew the best domains, so that you don’t risk losing them.
  • Once you start buying at $XXX and upwards, make sure to have some moon shots. Maybe not lambo money or life changing sums but don’t be scared to try and sell your favourite $500 purchase for $20,000. Likewise, don’t be scared to price a $2,000 purchase for $50,000. If you don’t try, it’ll never happen. I’ll always aim to have at least 5 domains that are designed to make the needle jump rather than move up in increments. I’ve used the cricket analogy before but you need to choose which balls to hit for a single run, which ones to hit for six and then have a couple that you can try to smash right out of the stadium (often serendipitously).
  • Use the cash flow from your single runs to fund renewals, so that you can hit the sixes (/home runs). Without this, you can end up under-selling your 'winner' domains to fund your ‘losers’. The compounded returns of small sales are the bedrock for making the bigger ones.
  • At the other extreme, if you realised that you’ve overpaid for an asset (‘loser'), don’t be afraid to sell it at an acceptable loss. An exit will still bring cash flow but if you anchor yourself to your purchase price and wait for an offer above that purchase price, you might one day find that another $50 or $100 of renewals has gone into it. Even worse, the loss may have widened against the updated market value.

Buying strategy / building a portfolio:
  • The simplest and most fundamental principle of the game is this: identify assets that you think are undervalued, buy them and then sell them at a price closer to (or above) your estimated valuation. This means you need to be able to spot the domain as being undervalued, calculate by how much it is undervalued, and then make a risk calculation on the duration period within which you might be able to redeem the delta (through reselling). To do this, you need to know market values but also identify the direction within which the market is moving (e.g. which niches are trending, what types of names are selling)
  • There are no magic formulas based on volume or number of domains in a portfolio. Buying 10 domains at $XXX, doesn’t equate to an automatic $XXXX sale. The primary force driving the probability of sales is the quality of the inventory (and subsequent demand for that inventory), not the quantity. However, a large portfolio of above average quality will compound the probability of sales, albeit at a higher annual cost.
  • Build upwards towards scale… by that, I mean towards higher-value domains. Every low value ($XXX) sale that I have is simply to create contributions towards acquiring and renewing the higher value domains. Perfect example of the pareto principal: I now use 80% of my capital to buy 20% of my domains, and the remaining 20% of the money to buy/renew the other 80% of inventory.
  • Obvious but easy mistake - if you’re awaiting a big sale, don’t spend or reinvest the cash until you’ve banked it…
  • ...and once you've received the funds after a sale, don’t let the cash burn a hole in your pocket. It’s too easy to spend/waste money which has been mentally-accounted for as ‘house money’. I’ve always made my worst purchases immediately after I’ve made my best sales. After the six-figure sale, I deceived myself into thinking that my judgement was impeccable, and therefore any future investment that I made would also be bulletproof. I quickly reached an unsustainable level of risk tolerance, thinking that I’d easily repeat my success. A false sense of confidence and arrogance caused me to be irresponsible.
  • If I’m investing or buying in a niche (driverless/crypto/etc), I often find myself stuck in a filter bubble (/echo-chamber) where all the content around me connects to that niche (twitter / blogs / forums etc). It happens by accident during the research process and suddenly I start spotting related content and keywords everywhere. It creates a fall sense of confidence, makes the niche look ubiquitous and causes me think that the investment is hotter than it really is. (On the flip side, it’s also easy to get niche FOMO).

General business advice:
  • Keep aside money for quarterly/annual taxes, renewals, subscriptions and training/books for yourself.
  • My accountant is one of the best advisors / mentors that I have. In due course, finding a good accountant is essential and worth the money. I still keep my own accounts but have valuable support throughout the process.
  • Listen to others, especially those that disagree with you. If you ask for opinions, and receive views that challenge your perspective on things, pay attention and try to understand where they come from. The worst thing that an investor can do is only to seek opinions that reinforce their own. It inhibits learning if you receive a challenging viewpoint and then immediately double-down (reaffirm) on your own opinions without giving it serious thought. My best friends and advisors hardly ever agree with me from the outset - and that’s why I value their perspectives.
  • There is a constant battle between your analytical thought processes and your emotions/gut. If you can control the emotions, you can also control the biases that affect decision making. That’s why its’ important to feel good about domaining and be happy with the decisions you make. If it’s becoming emotionally stressful or if it is affecting your health/wellbeing in a negative way, you’re doing it wrong. Of course there will be ups and downs. But your emotions are deeply connected to your gut instinct. And that same gut instinct is connected to your appetite/ability to take risks. You need to be able to sustain the depths of regret when you hold your ground on a key negotiation. But most importantly, you need to be able to sleep well at night, even when things aren’t going perfectly.
  • Keep learning but accept that there’s no perfect answers or ultimate strategies. Be aware your own circumstances, strengths and weaknesses. Understand your own emotions, irrationality, boundaries and decision making processes. Search for and discover your own blind spots. Find people to surround you that constructively/lovingly identify these blind spots, and can fill them with their own knowledge. Don’t underestimate the role of luck - complete control is an illusion. Finally, no regrets - only lessons learned.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for sticking with me. I hope that within the rambling, there’s at least one or two valuable things that you can take away from the post. Feel free to ask me anything below.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Thank you @Jv1999 @boker @vravis9 @domains21 @frank-germany @Kenny @lolwarrior @Doron Vermaat @AbdulBasit.com @Dave @DomainBarracksRob @Kazzia and everyone else!

Writing is a slow and difficult process for me... but the feedback always motivates me to keep going :)

I assume you're still using the old Escrow.com integration. We recently integrated with Escrow Pay and one of the many improvements is that this integration completely eliminates these deadbeat transactions that sometimes were initiated on the previous set-up.

Good point Doron - that's correct, those were all from the old Escrow integration. I swapped across to Escrow Pay last month and haven't had any BINs since then. Escrow Pay also looks slicker and a lot more buyer-friendly.
 
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Writing is a slow and difficult process for me... but the feedback always motivates me to keep going :)
Hopefully, without coming off as a fanboy, you are gifted.
Please keep it up.

Peace,
Kenny
 
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Nikul should write a book "The beginners guide to domain investing", It will be a best seller for sure. Thanks Nikul for your immense contribution to the community.
 
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Thanks! @Nikul Sanghvi for sharing your amazing domaining journey with us. I hope this will help many beginners like me to learn alot from your valuable content.

Have a nice day😊

Best Regards,
Mohit
 
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Thanks @Nikul for this detailed write up. I really enjoy each words,very informative , you are a great writer ,keep it up.
In May 2018, I changed over 1600 domains to point them towards Efty nameservers. (The quote above says 2016 by accident but it should be ‘mid-May 2018' - apologies!).

I’ve recently logged 100 sale inquiries from those landing pages, so wanted to share my experience. Hopefully this post helps other NP members - especially those of you that are thinking about setting up your own custom landers.

I’ve joined this post onto my AMA thread to stick with the theme of openness and transparency. I’ll do my best to answer any questions.

As a summary of the over the last eight months:
  • 1600+ domains in May 2018… but today (Jan 2019) it's closer to 1300... and falling!
  • 100 inquiries through Efty landers
  • 12 completed sales
  • Total sales (gross): $20k
  • Average sales price (gross): $1.67k
  • Estimated savings on commission: approx $3000 (@15%)
Background...

From May 2017 to April 2018, I used a variety of discounts and coupons to register 1262 .CO domains at a cost of $9.5k. You can read more detail here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/page-3#post-6786857.
Nearly all of the domains were using Sedo landers but I also had them listed at Afternic. Between September 2017 to April 2018, I paid over $5k in marketplace commissions spread over 15 different sales from this sub-portfolio.

I'd known about commission-free landing pages for a while, but decided to explore further in April 2018. Aside from the commission, there were several frustrations that I had with traditional marketplace landing pages and marketplace negotiation platforms.

The first thing that visitors see on the Sedo landing pages are the PPC ads. I’ve never made any worthwhile money from PPC, so my primary goal was always reselling the domains. Having PPC-based landers meant that only a small portion of the page was dedicated to sales messaging. (Visitors using adblockers would see a completely blank page!).

Once the user clicked that message, they’d be taken across to the ‘For Sale’ domain lander and would then need to register in order to make an offer. Each additional step creates resistance but arguably filters through only the most motivated of buyers. I’d been asking the Sedo team for PPC-free landers for a while but I gave up waiting after a year of hearing ‘they’re coming soon’. I knew there may have been some workarounds with redirects to skip the PPC pages but I didn't want to do that.

Another challenge was that once the user had jumped through any hoops to make an offer, I’d never know much about them. I could see which country they came from and when they’d opened their account. But I still wouldn’t know their name, which city they came from or be able to converse authentically in order to know their business or needs.

It’s logical that marketplaces have to create this obscurity so that their platforms can’t be circumvented. In addition, I respect that a proxy offers certain buyers a level of protection from sellers (and vice-versa). However, for me, negotiating through a marketplace messaging system feels highly impersonal when compared to email or jumping on a call. I always felt that I was losing sales because of these barriers.
Most marketplace messaging systems are designed to streamline the negotiation into a ping-pong game focused on price discovery. Some potential buyers chose to exit negotiations early - and after that, there's no easy way to get back in touch with them.

There are some very good brokers on Afternic and Sedo - and they’re definitely worthy of the commission fee. They reach out directly to buyers and sellers to get deals closed. But I really wanted to learn to negotiate for myself - and practice was the only way I’d get to do it. The majority of my sales on marketplaces didn't involve brokers.
For a while, I also had a gut feeling that the vast majority of sales were driven by organic traffic to each domain rather than as a result of marketplace search. I understand the importance of a domain being promoted in the registration path, but I wondered if I should be paying commissions on sales where the domain itself generated the lead. This made me want to explore if I could continue to make sales with my own landing pages.


Getting started…

I got going on Efty using the Bulk Upload tool and a CSV of my domains. I won’t go into details of how this is done, as I think the Efty team have some decent documentation covering this. It’s pretty painless. Once I’d got the domains indexed into Efty, I bulk changed all of the domains nameservers.

I chose not to use Efty for it’s custom marketplace, mainly because I didn’t think it would be useful. I’ve never focused on domainer-to-domainer sales... and I doubt that end-users really want to browse through my whole portfolio. Maybe it’s different for BrandBucket and marketplaces designed for discovery, but most of my domains don’t match that format. My transactions (so far) have been buyers reaching out to me for one specific domain - with no interest in the others.
For hypernames.co, I’d already set up a Wordpress site to redirect two dozen of my favourite domains. My Google Analytics data shows that most visitors only view one page per visit. (For anyone interested, the WP theme I'm using is Spaces by ThemeBeans.com).

For the Efty landers, I opted to use the Kiffer theme with a BIN (BuyItNow) and MakeOffer. I also enabled Escrow.com as my primary payment option. The BIN prices varied, but I set a blanket $500 minimum for MakeOffer. For reference, more than three-quarters of my inventory is priced between $2k and $5k - and my modal asking price is $4k.

I didn’t customise the page text or add logos as I knew the inventory was going to have a high churn rate. I also didn’t make proper use of the financial data that can be added to calculate renewals and portfolio profitability - as I already had this data in Excel and my accounting software.

Finally, I set up Google Analytics for the Efty landing pages, implementing a small hack to tidy up the pagename data: https://www.namepros.com/threads/efty-landers-and-google-analytics.1032187/#post-6732849

I left all of the domains listed on Afternic and Sedo, without FastTransfer or MLS activated. Both platforms had BIN with MakeOffer enabled.


Deal flow: turning inquiries into sales…

Here’s a breakdown of the 100 Make Offer inquiries that have come through so far…


ItuUKdB.png


  • 42 of these are spam, abuse, very confused people and a few duplicate inquiries (people who submitted the form twice)
  • 21 inquiries never got back to me after my initial reply (or two additional follow up emails)
  • 25 negotiations didn't work out because my asking price exceeded the buyers budget, or they changed their mind during negotiations

  • 12 have been converted into sales after negotiation
The total for completed sales came in just under $20k and at an average of $1667 each.
Excluding the 42 junk inquiries that I didn’t bother following up on, I had about 7 or 8 actual inquiries per month on a portfolio of 1300-1600 domains. My overall success rate for turning those inquiries into sales was about 20% (12 out of 58 inquiries) - which leaves plenty of room for improvement!

On sales, there was a mixture of who paid the Escrow fees (buyer/seller/split). Through a marketplace, I might not have been able to close all of the sales - and if I had, there would have been around 15% in commission. If I continue to trade at the same pace, I'll have saved almost $5k in commissions at the point my Efty plan comes up for it’s annual renewal.

Over the last eight months, I also had 14 BIN Escrow transactions from the Efty landers and not a single one of these went onwards to make payment. Most look like spam or people that don’t understand what they’re doing :(


Here's a bunch of things I learnt and other observations:

  • After changing to Efty landing pages, Afternic continued to produce sales but offers/sales via Sedo came to a grinding halt. I finally clocked in one sale on Sedo almost seven months later in December 2018, but unsurprisingly, it was a domain that I’d accidentally missed out when applying Efty nameservers.

  • It’s a cold reality that only 3% of the inventory even received an offer inquiry through the Efty lander in eight months. Even more important was that only 1-in-5 of those inquiries turned into a sale. I may reduce prices to see if I can increase sales but I'm not sure that lower prices always means more profit. Yield can be a tricky thing to tweak with accuracy on a portfolio with high inventory churn. I’m optimistic that in the future, a smaller (but higher quality) portfolio could receive landing page inquiries on 5% of inventory per year and convert around half of all legitimate inquiries into sales. Including sales coming through email, marketplaces and registration paths, I could have a 3% sell-through-rate across all channels.

  • Having a price on a domain gives a better chance to sell it (especially below $10k). It sets a starting point for negotiation and makes it easier for interested parties to make a reasonable offer.

  • At times I was rigid with my acceptance price (vs. the asking price). The completed sales then had to compensate for all the times I said ‘no thanks’. For every two offers I rejected at 20% of the asking price (BIN), I needed to close at least one at 60% of the asking price. Obviously, this also varies on a domain by domain basis. And several other factors come into play, such as the number of offers the domain has had in the past and the price that has been paid for it.

  • I've realised that a lot of potential buyers confuse the minimum asking price with the lowest price that I'll accept. When I had a $500 minimum set across all domains, it made negotiations harder because the potential buyer had anchored themselves to $500 from the outset. I found myself negotiating upwards from $500, rather than downwards from the asking price.

  • I recently left the Minimum Price field blank… this not only increased the volume of inquiries, but surprisingly, many of the starting offers increased towards 25% of the asking price. The change did bring in a few more lowball offers, but I don’t mind that.
    In the future, I also plan to test out the Samir theme, which removes the MakeOffer amount option and replaces it with a contact form.

  • Of the 21 inquiries that never replied to me, several were offers I had accepted without countering. There’s something that makes buyers uncomfortable when their first offer is accepted. It could be a feeling that they haven’t completed the process of price discovery and/or feel regret that they may have gotten away with offering less. The absence of any resistance somehow detracts from the psychological value attached to the domain itself.

  • For offers that were close to my target price (considering accepting), my counter offer strategy evolved into a conditional acceptance: I’m happy to take an offer that’s good, but not perfect, and in return I want the buyer to reciprocate by covering the Escrow fees.
    I think this was more successful because it shows a reasonable give-and-take towards a win-win for both sides.

  • It’s worth following up with an email when you don't hear back from someone. Three of the twelve sales were as a result of a second (sent three days later) or third follow up email (sent seven to ten days after the second). I normally stop after three emails.

  • I suspect that a large portion of those that don't reply are also disheartened by a counter offer. Perhaps they expected that the minimum price was the price they’d be able to pay. Going forward, I might start using the phone more often where a contact number is provided. Maybe I’ll have one initial reply, a follow up email and then try to call.

  • I closed one sale from a potential buyer who made an offer but didn’t understand the verification email that was sent to their inbox. I eventually disabled email verification (for Make Offer) but if you have it enabled, it’s still worthwhile reaching out to unconfirmed inquiries.

  • It’s handy to set up a unique email address to be displayed on the Efty Landers and Efty marketplace. I had thirteen other inquiries that came direct to my email inbox (not through the form on the Efty lander). I’m pretty confident that ten of those got in touch with me through the email address written on each landing page. For three, I couldn’t prove this - so they’ve been omitted from the data.

  • I use the ‘Labels’ function in Gmail as metadata labels on email threads, to identify successful and unsuccessful negotiations. I then go back periodically and read through my emails to review the words/language that I use and tweak my templated responses.
    Reviewing old negotiations sound like watching paint dry - but I can often spot patterns and inconsistencies that lead to underperformance or failure. It’s not a perfect science but I like to think that it’s the domainers equivalent of a sports player reviewing/ analysing their historical games.


Onwards and upwards...

Ultimately, having control over the landing pages also meant having control over the whole sale process. For me that means:
  • Being able to build relationships with buyers during negotiation to seek out win-win scenarios
  • Having the flexibility to choose a variety of payment mechanisms (bank-transfer, escrow, PayPal, Stripe, crypto, barter, etc)
  • Owning customer service and support - and taking pride in making every transaction as smooth as possible for the buyer.
  • Following up with buyers (post-sale/completion) to get feedback and ask why they chose that particular domain or went with that ccTLD. If a buyer hasn't mentioned during negotiations, I ask what they plan to do with the domain - is it for a marketing campaign, a defensive purchase or maybe a rebrand? Once the sale has completed, buyers are much more willing to talk openly and it's a great opportunity to learn about what drives demand.
  • Hearing back from a potential buyer after a period of time, and being able to reference their previous negotiation history... or carry on the same email thread.
  • Having access to richer data for each domain (traffic, geo, inquiries etc) - which is useful as an input when considering which domains to drop/renew.
As a final note, I appreciate that managing the inquiry, sales and transaction processes creates an additional burden on the seller but I had the time to invest and have really enjoyed learning. Aside from the commission savings, the other advantages (transparency, autonomy and customisation) outweighed the downsides.
Becoming comfortable negotiating in the low four-figure range is like training on a regular basis to prepare for the bigger negotiations.

It’s always worth repeating that I work as an independent, without agenda or any other hidden motive. I’m not an expert or a seasoned professional. I have no affiliation with any blogger, registry, marketplace, registrar or vendor. I trade domains part-time, to learn about myself and to earn a little extra money for my family. If it’s not fun for you, don’t do it. I try to share my experiences on NP with high transparency - so that we can learn from each other.
And whilst I think that the Efty team is awesome, I have written about their product without prompt, permission or approval. Nonetheless, as a happy customer, I hope I get to buy them a beer at NamesCon to say thank you 🙂

As always, I’m looking to hear from your experiences too. Feel free to comment or ask me anything below.

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Links below to the 12 referenced sales...

https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-622#post-6787370
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-626#post-6800600
https://www.namepros.com/threads/gaya-dot-co-sold-for-2500.1095910/
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-637#post-6863667
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-644#post-6899589
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-669#post-7017318
 
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Thanks for sharing!

Great read and will be coming back to read this regularly

Must read for anyone who is serious about sticking around the long term........
 
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I know there must be lot of information on this thread about registering a domain and putting it on sale. but if you can answer my question or just provide me link to read that article here. my question, can you put domain on sale just after registering it on any registrar, I read somewhere that you have to wait 60 days before selling, In that scenario I cannot put that domain on sale? or if I can what if someone bid on that, what will be the result if something happen like this.
thank you
 
0
•••
I think what you are referring to, is that for some extensions like .com/.net/.org you cannot transfer to another registrar within 60 days. So if you sell the domain within 60 days of registration or transfer you have to push it to their account at the same registrar.


I know there must be lot of information on this thread about registering a domain and putting it on sale. but if you can answer my question or just provide me link to read that article here. my question, can you put domain on sale just after registering it on any registrar, I read somewhere that you have to wait 60 days before selling, In that scenario I cannot put that domain on sale? or if I can what if someone bid on that, what will be the result if something happen like this.
thank you
 
2
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Awesome post sir, Thanks for writing this appreciate your efforts!
 
1
•••
I've still got another three months to go for the full cycle - but I plan to write another follow up post in April/May about the profitability of that .CO hand-reg test in particular.

@Nikul Sanghvi , thank you for sharing such valued info in such detailed way! Do you plan to write mentioned follow up?
 
2
•••
Thank you to those of you that have been following this thread and welcome to anyone reading this AMA for the first time.

I’d had a few people reach out to ask for an update, so I wanted to give a general overview and talk about how 2019 performed. I’ll also try to connect back to the journey so far, to give context where I can...

So without further ado, here’s a summary of my trading last year:

  • $108k of total revenue
  • Minus $11k in commissions and fees
  • Minus $35k renewals, further registrations and acquisitions
  • Net approx $60k (before tax)
  • 48 sales in total (an average of 4 per month)
  • 25 sales via DAN ($36k) - mostly MakeOffer
  • 9 sales Afternic ($41k) - mostly BIN
  • Remaining sales were inbound via Efty, Emails and DomainAgents... one via outbound email
  • Extensions: 43 .CO, three .COM, one .UK and one .EU
  • Average sales price of $2252
  • Average hold time per domain sold was 21 months (at least 1 renewal)
  • Average purchase price of domains sold was $78 (removing a $2k outlier, this drops to $35)
  • Average portfolio size around 1200 over the year, now at 1500
  • Annual sell-through rate at 4%

Below, you can see how 2019 stacks up against the previous two years:

ZmxYnuV.png

Let's dig into each year in a bit more detail...

2017 and earlier

Prior to 2017, my portfolio size was only a few hundred domains. I hadn’t bought many domains but my acquisition costs per domain had also been higher than at present (mostly between $500 and $10k).
My spend across 2015 and 2016 had been around $175k, but I hadn’t really been buying smart.

(You can read more about 2009 to 2017 here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/)

Despite the heavy spending on acquisitions, I hadn’t had a single sale in the previous year (2016).
I didn’t want that to happen again, so I looked for something that would create some regular cash flow, but with lower upfront risk. I had the bandwidth, so also didn’t mind putting in any additional hours. Having had some success with .CO domains, I decided to try out bulk buying using discount coupons.

Moneyman[.co] was one of the few hundred .COs bought at $1.50 each. It was bought in July 2017 and sold a few months later in October.

The image below shows 2017 broken out further (ordered by sale date, descending):

VZxPXkd.png
2018

By mid-2018, the discounted .CO registrations had continued to make a steady stream of sales. I'd spent $9.5k spent on 1262 .CO handregs and had already reached around $37k in sales and a profit of $23k.

(You can read more about this here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/page-3#post-6786857)

That experiment went on to generate an additional $41k of sales without any additional spend, bringing the total revenue to $78k. Taking away commissions, the process yielded $68k of pre-tax profit from the initial investment of $9.5k.

September came quickly, and Neustar killed off the discount strategy with the introduction of the premium tiers on .CO. By then, I wasn’t registering .co in volume anymore but it suddenly became a lot harder to buy good quality .CO domains on the cheap.
5ErUC6Z.png

2019

By early 2019, my portfolio had reduced from a peak of 1700 down towards 1000. By the middle of the year, I’d reached around 800 domains.

I had also started buying the premium tier .CO to test the water. By April 2019, I’d spent around $6k across 50 domains at $120(ish) each… of those, only three have sold so far, generating $13k in total. It was still profitable, but the pricing tiers had seriously shifted the margins.

I continued to test out discounts for .CO but they had been limited to only non-premium domains.
Since the premium tiers kicked in, I’ve registered around 600 .CO domains between $3 and $7 using discount codes. Out of those, I’ve only sold 1 so far! So although it’s still possible to buy hundreds or thousands of .CO for a few dollars each, their quality has drastically reduced compared to doing the same in 2017… and this is reflected in the overall sell-through rate.
2Vuq0vs.png
My sales volume in 2019 was higher than 2018 but I also saw a dip in average sale price.
  • In 2018, it was $2670 - removing the outlier $19k sale brings it down to $2144.
  • In 2019, it was $2252 - removing the $15k sale and $9k sale brings it to $1809.
This was partly deliberate: after analysing the deals I couldn't close or lost in 2018 due to countering too high or sticking to a BIN, I knew I was leaving money on the table. In 2019, I started to lock in more sales and accept slightly lower offers - especially for inventory that I wouldn't miss.
HOLDING DURATION

Below you can see holding time (Number of Months) for the 90+ domains sold over the last three years.
  • Half of all domains sold were held for less than a year.
  • 80% of all domains sold were held for just under two years.

ZVwjOW0.png

When I split this out showing sales grouped by year, it’s clear that sales in 2019 primarily originated from purchases in 2017 and 2018.

YQvN8gx.png


WHERE DID SALES ORIGINATE FROM?


The image below shows revenue (2018 and 2019) from the four main sources for me. I also had sales from inbound emails, DomainAgents and one from outbound, but removed them for a cleaner overview.

tDjdT4h.png

In 2017, I was using Sedo landers across most of my domains. And in May 2018, I began using Efty servers. I detailed my experiences of the first 100 inquiries here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/page-4#post-7053359

Almost a year later, I started testing out Undeveloped (now DAN.com) landers too. I think they perform very similarly to Efty, but take up less of my time in negotiations and the sale process. In return, you lose the information about the potential buyer that comes through Efty (such as telephone and email) - and the ability to engage in a deeper dialogue through email and phone.
It’s an interesting trade-off - but my time commitment to domaining had started to reduce, so it was worth it for me.

Another interesting thing to note: after switching to DAN, I started to see more regular sales coming from Afternic. Using Google Analytics, I can see that at least three of the transactions on Afternic occurred immediately after a buyer had spent several minutes looking at the DAN lander. In all three cases, the buyer chose to pay a higher price for the safety of GoDaddy/Afternic (or other syndicated venue), instead of buying through DAN. I don’t think this is alarming, but does show the advantage of having a domain listed in multiple places.

SALES MULTIPLES

Lastly, a quick take on sales multiples - comparing the purchase price against the final sale price.

Below are all of the sales across the last three years... I had to plot this out using logarithmic scale for clarity.
The X-axis shows the purchase price. The Y-axis shows the multiple at which it sold (5x, 10x, 100x etc).
In top left for example, you can see Moneyman bought for $1.50 and sold for $1600.
In the bottom-right corner, you can see data dot science - which I bought for $12k and sold for $12.5k.

GqI67Cz.png

In the past, I’ve tried to use a tiered structure based on the acquisition price - https://twitter.com/hypernames/status/1122780585125130245

The table in that link is outdated and needs some updating, but I’ve tried to show how these groupings manifest on the graph below:

k9gf5cU.png

You can get a rough idea here…
  • The $1 to $6 promo codes sold mostly between 100x and 1000x
  • The $9 and $10 handregs sold between 50x and 500x
  • The three sales of premium tier .CO registrations were roughly 10x to 75x
  • All purchases that I’d made at $1k or more were generally grouped at 5x or less
Keep in mind, that most of these sales came through make offer. So whilst they were sold within those ranges, they were priced above those ranges to allow room for movement.

There’s a lot of mess outside of these neat rings - so they’re not perfect as groups and there are always outliers. I don’t pick many names to be priced wildly outside of these ranges - but there are always a few in play. You can’t rely on them, but if they sell, it’s a great outcome. I tend to pick names that I really like and then stick a solid BIN on them or hold firm if an offer comes. Qrypt, Qubit and Tempus are three examples of this working with a higher price which is outside the normal range.

WRAP UP

I’d love to conclude with some type of insight into what I’ll be buying over the next few years… but in all honesty, I don’t know at the moment.
Premium .COM domains continue to accelerate in price and demand - getting further out of reach from the vast majority of small businesses and startups. In the void, there’s still demand from these startups and SMEs for alternatives like .IO and.CO, but a wider set of competing extensions (like .AI) and investors now vie for this space.

Registries are also getting smarter, and continue to eat-into the margin that previously existed solely for domainers. The .CO registry’s premium tiers continue to evolve, and break away more frequently from the entry point prices that they’ve used until now. The lines between premium and non-premium have been pushed down so low, that the non-premiums are barely worth the risk, even at $3 each.
These shifts will drive two important elements of my strategy going forward. Firstly, I'd like to focus back on quality over quantity - and secondly, the obvious need for me to diversify my portfolio.

Thank you for reading! Wishing everyone health, happiness and plenty of sales in the year ahead!
As always, feel free to comment or ask me anything below :)

LINKS TO REPORTED SALES THREAD...


Sales thread references (2017):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-516#post-6211749
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-536#post-6334962
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-543#post-6378438
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-547#post-6395575
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-567#post-6484675

Sales thread references (2018):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-582#post-6544938
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-586#post-6566162
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-615#post-6742809
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-622#post-6787370
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-626#post-6800600
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-628#post-6815419
https://www.namepros.com/threads/gaya-dot-co-sold-for-2500.1095910/
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-637#post-6863667
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-643#post-6899589
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-669#post-7017318

Sales thread references (2019):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-692#post-7137179
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-698#post-7168378
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-706#post-7209959
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-713#post-7252044
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-725#post-7311390
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-736#post-7376284
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-749#post-7447361
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-756#post-7500272
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-765#post-7572842
 
Last edited:
84
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Thanks for your detailed summary of .co experiment, I was one who waited for this post.
A couple of questions from me:

1. I noticed you had no sales on Sedo at all in 2019. Do you have any suggestion about the reason of this?

2. Your sales at Dan started only after your switched to their servers. We're your portfolio listed at Dan before this switch?

3. Do you plan to invest in premium .co?

4. Do you see any value in non-english single word .co? What about surnames and given names in .co?
 
2
•••
Thanks for your detailed summary of .co experiment, I was one who waited for this post.
A couple of questions from me:

1. I noticed you had no sales on Sedo at all in 2019. Do you have any suggestion about the reason of this?

2. Your sales at Dan started only after your switched to their servers. We're your portfolio listed at Dan before this switch?

3. Do you plan to invest in premium .co?

4. Do you see any value in non-english single word .co? What about surnames and given names in .co?

Thank you! Answers below:

1. I had nearly all domains listed on Sedo in 2019 but did not use Sedo landers. Without the landers, Sedo doesn't produce any sales for me.

2. I didn't have any domains on DAN until I started using their landers.

3. I have been buying some premium .CO domains but as mentioned in the post, they haven't produced the return I expected for the higher price point.

4. Yes, I do value in some non-English words and certain names - but it really depends on the word and the surname. If it's a surname that has a range of businesses (end-users) using the same name, then yes. The key focus across most of my buying has been looking for domains that have a decent size pool of commercial end-users who might be interested.
 
12
•••
Thank you to those of you that have been following this thread and welcome to anyone reading this AMA for the first time.

I’d had a few people reach out to ask for an update, so I wanted to give a general overview and talk about how 2019 performed. I’ll also try to connect back to the journey so far, to give context where I can...

So without further ado, here’s a summary of my trading last year:

  • $108k of total revenue
  • Minus $11k in commissions and fees
  • Minus $35k renewals, further registrations and acquisitions
  • Net approx $60k (before tax)
  • 48 sales in total (an average of 4 per month)
  • 25 sales via DAN ($36k) - mostly MakeOffer
  • 9 sales Afternic ($41k) - mostly BIN
  • Remaining sales were inbound via Efty, Emails and DomainAgents... one via outbound email
  • Extensions: 43 .CO, three .COM, one .UK and one .EU
  • Average sales price of $2252
  • Average hold time per domain sold was 21 months (at least 1 renewal)
  • Average purchase price of domains sold was $78 (removing a $2k outlier, this drops to $35)
  • Average portfolio size around 1200 over the year, now at 1500
  • Annual sell-through rate at 4%

Below, you can see how 2019 stacks up against the previous two years:

ZmxYnuV.png

Let's dig into each year in a bit more detail...

2017 and earlier

Prior to 2017, my portfolio size was only a few hundred domains. I hadn’t bought many domains but my acquisition costs per domain had also been higher than at present (mostly between $500 and $10k).
My spend across 2015 and 2016 had been around $175k, but I hadn’t really been buying smart.

(You can read more about 2009 to 2017 here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/)

Despite the heavy spending on acquisitions, I hadn’t had a single sale in the previous year (2016).
I didn’t want that to happen again, so I looked for something that would create some regular cash flow, but with lower upfront risk. I had the bandwidth, so also didn’t mind putting in any additional hours. Having had some success with .CO domains, I decided to try out bulk buying using discount coupons.

Moneyman[.co] was one of the few hundred .COs bought at $1.50 each. It was bought in July 2017 and sold a few months later in October.

The image below shows 2017 broken out further (ordered by sale date, descending):

VZxPXkd.png
2018

By mid-2018, the discounted .CO registrations had continued to make a steady stream of sales. I'd spent $9.5k spent on 1262 .CO handregs and had already reached around $37k in sales and a profit of $23k.

(You can read more about this here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/page-3#post-6786857)

That experiment went on to generate an additional $41k of sales without any additional spend, bringing the total revenue to $78k. Taking away commissions, the process yielded $68k of pre-tax profit from the initial investment of $9.5k.

September came quickly, and Neustar killed off the discount strategy with the introduction of the premium tiers on .CO. By then, I wasn’t registering .co in volume anymore but it suddenly became a lot harder to buy good quality .CO domains on the cheap.
5ErUC6Z.png

2019

By early 2019, my portfolio had reduced from a peak of 1700 down towards 1000. By the middle of the year, I’d reached around 800 domains.

I had also started buying the premium tier .CO to test the water. By April 2019, I’d spent around $6k across 50 domains at $120(ish) each… of those, only three have sold so far, generating $13k in total. It was still profitable, but the pricing tiers had seriously shifted the margins.

I continued to test out discounts for .CO but they had been limited to only non-premium domains.
Since the premium tiers kicked in, I’ve registered around 600 .CO domains between $3 and $7 using discount codes. Out of those, I’ve only sold 1 so far! So although it’s still possible to buy hundreds or thousands of .CO for a few dollars each, their quality has drastically reduced compared to doing the same in 2017… and this is reflected in the overall sell-through rate.
2Vuq0vs.png
My sales volume in 2019 was higher than 2018 but I also saw a dip in average sale price.
  • In 2018, it was $2670 - removing the outlier $19k sale brings it down to $2144.
  • In 2019, it was $2252 - removing the $15k sale and $9k sale brings it to $1809.
This was partly deliberate: after analysing the deals I couldn't close or lost in 2018 due to countering too high or sticking to a BIN, I knew I was leaving money on the table. In 2019, I started to lock in more sales and accept slightly lower offers - especially for inventory that I wouldn't miss.
HOLDING DURATION

Below you can see holding time (Number of Months) for the 90+ domains sold over the last three years.
  • Half of all domains sold were held for less than a year.
  • 80% of all domains sold were held for just under two years.

ZVwjOW0.png

When I split this out showing sales grouped by year, it’s clear that sales in 2019 primarily originated from purchases in 2017 and 2018.

YQvN8gx.png


WHERE DID SALES ORIGINATE FROM?


The image below shows revenue (2018 and 2019) from the four main sources for me. I also had sales from inbound emails, DomainAgents and one from outbound, but removed them for a cleaner overview.

tDjdT4h.png

In 2017, I was using Sedo landers across most of my domains. And in May 2018, I began using Efty servers. I detailed my experiences of the first 100 inquiries here: https://www.namepros.com/threads/almost-a-decade-of-domaining.1056328/page-4#post-7053359

Almost a year later, I started testing out Undeveloped (now DAN.com) landers too. I think they perform very similarly to Efty, but take up less of my time in negotiations and the sale process. In return, you lose the information about the potential buyer that comes through Efty (such as telephone and email) - and the ability to engage in a deeper dialogue through email and phone.
It’s an interesting trade-off - but my time commitment to domaining had started to reduce, so it was worth it for me.

Another interesting thing to note: after switching to DAN, I started to see more regular sales coming from Afternic. Using Google Analytics, I can see that at least three of the transactions on Afternic occurred immediately after a buyer had spent several minutes looking at the DAN lander. In all three cases, the buyer chose to pay a higher price for the safety of GoDaddy/Afternic (or other syndicated venue), instead of buying through DAN. I don’t think this is alarming, but does show the advantage of having a domain listed in multiple places.

SALES MULTIPLES

Lastly, a quick take on sales multiples - comparing the purchase price against the final sale price.

Below are all of the sales across the last three years... I had to plot this out using logarithmic scale for clarity.
The X-axis shows the purchase price. The Y-axis shows the multiple at which it sold (5x, 10x, 100x etc).
In top left for example, you can see Moneyman bought for $1.50 and sold for $1600.
In the bottom-right corner, you can see data dot science - which I bought for $12k and sold for $12.5k.

GqI67Cz.png

In the past, I’ve tried to use a tiered structure based on the acquisition price - https://twitter.com/hypernames/status/1122780585125130245

The table in that link is outdated and needs some updating, but I’ve tried to show how these groupings manifest on the graph below:

k9gf5cU.png

You can get a rough idea here…
  • The $1 to $6 promo codes sold mostly between 100x and 1000x
  • The $9 and $10 handregs sold between 50x and 500x
  • The three sales of premium tier .CO registrations were roughly 10x to 75x
  • All purchases that I’d made at $1k or more were generally grouped at 5x or less
Keep in mind, that most of these sales came through make offer. So whilst they were sold within those ranges, they were priced above those ranges to allow room for movement.

There’s a lot of mess outside of these neat rings - so they’re not perfect as groups and there are always outliers. I don’t pick many names to be priced wildly outside of these ranges - but there are always a few in play. You can’t rely on them, but if they sell, it’s a great outcome. I tend to pick names that I really like and then stick a solid BIN on them or hold firm if an offer comes. Qrypt, Qubit and Tempus are three examples of this working with a higher price which is outside the normal range.

WRAP UP

I’d love to conclude with some type of insight into what I’ll be buying over the next few years… but in all honesty, I don’t know at the moment.
Premium .COM domains continue to accelerate in price and demand - getting further out of reach from the vast majority of small businesses and startups. In the void, there’s still demand from these startups and SMEs for alternatives like .IO and.CO, but a wider set of competing extensions (like .AI) and investors now vie for this space.

Registries are also getting smarter, and continue to eat-into the margin that previously existed solely for domainers. The .CO registry’s premium tiers continue to evolve, and break away more frequently from the entry point prices that they’ve used until now. The lines between premium and non-premium have been pushed down so low, that the non-premiums are barely worth the risk, even at $3 each.
These shifts will drive two important elements of my strategy going forward. Firstly, I'd like to focus back on quality over quantity - and secondly, the obvious need for me to diversify my portfolio.

Thank you for reading! Wishing everyone health, happiness and plenty of sales in the year ahead!
As always, feel free to comment or ask me anything below :)

LINKS TO REPORTED SALES THREAD...


Sales thread references (2017):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-516#post-6211749
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-536#post-6334962
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-543#post-6378438
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-547#post-6395575
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-567#post-6484675

Sales thread references (2018):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-582#post-6544938
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-586#post-6566162
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-615#post-6742809
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-622#post-6787370
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-626#post-6800600
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-628#post-6815419
https://www.namepros.com/threads/gaya-dot-co-sold-for-2500.1095910/
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-637#post-6863667
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-643#post-6899589
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-669#post-7017318

Sales thread references (2019):
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-692#post-7137179
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-698#post-7168378
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-706#post-7209959
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-713#post-7252044
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-725#post-7311390
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-736#post-7376284
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-749#post-7447361
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-756#post-7500272
https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-765#post-7572842

Best NP post of the year! Thank you for sharing with us Nikul.
 
15
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5
•••
Thanks for your sales information and great analysis...

I see you took time to put all in detailed graphs and stats...that is not required but adds more authenticity to your words. Thanks for your efforts.

I want to know... diversify means what other extensions you are looking into or already went ahead with...

Do you have any names in
.TV/.in ??

Do you plan to use payment plans for your names...if already used did you see any improvement..

Thanks,
Ravi
 
0
•••
I want to know... diversify means what other extensions you are looking into or already went ahead with...

Do you have any names in
.TV/.in ??

Do you plan to use payment plans for your names...if already used did you see any improvement..

Thanks Ravi - for now, diversify simply means reduce the weighting of .CO - it's above 90% of my portfolio. It'll definitely include .COM but I don't know what else yet. And I don't think I have any .IN or .TV at the moment.

Re: payment plans - yes I have used them via DAN. I kept them relatively short (3 or 4 months) for domains above a threshold of $1950. This year, 5 sales have come through payment plans (total of $8.9k). What I don't really know is whether the buyer would have chosen not to buy the domain if the plan wasn't available or whether their offer would have been lower.
 
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Wow!!!!!

I am in total awe of the depth you shared, @Nikul Sanghvi

So many aspects so interesting - I particularly liked the data on holding time and where the names sold at, and the scatterplot re acquisition prices and sales price ratio.

So you are currently very heavy in .co and planning to diversify somewhat. Is the model to get really expert In one area that you feel has great potential and opportunity, and then after that has been successfully done diversify into other areas, one you recommend to others?

Thanks again for sharing all of this with us.

Bob
 
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Hands down one of the portfolio analysis, and sales reports I have ever seen.

Are you putting 100% of your profits back in, including renewals, or are you taking a % off the table?
 
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Love it! Great stuff, Nikul.
 
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Insanely valuable stuff, Nikul. Very impressive, honest, and candid.

Wishing you further success in 2019!
 
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