poll I am at 5000+ now, how many domains in your "keeper" portfolio?

Nice work @Recons.Com scaling it up. Between the two screenshots you purchased 1077 names, not taking into account other registered names you have at Dyna etc. That is 12 names a day in the last 3 month.

What is the time investment daily usually to filter/check/analyse those selections and choose the investment grade ones?

If you were to remove your tier 1 names from the portfolio what do you think the STR could be with your setup: own landing/Afternic/brandable sites?

freety85 said:

Nice work @Recons.Com scaling it up. Between the two screenshots you purchased 1077 names, not taking into account other registered names you have at Dyna etc. That is 12 names a day in the last 3 month.

What is the time investment daily usually to filter/check/analyse those selections and choose the investment grade ones?

If you were to remove your tier 1 names from the portfolio what do you think the STR could be with your setup: own landing/Afternic/brandable sites?

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Thank you!!

Well, today it is already at 6195 at GD and names bought earlier are keeping coming in. But, yes, roughly around 14/day I think for the period.

Time spent has been around 4 hours a day. Too much for my liking. In fact, the time is the main factor that I might need couple months off buying just to focus on selling aspects, like the website, listings etc.

Tier 1 names STR actually would be lower than for the rest, because a) I tend to price them way more aggressively, as they are hard to replace names; b) It the pandemic era, people are more price sensitive, most sales are below $3K. So, still in 1.2-1.4% range

My goal is to get to 1 million names and STR of 1.5-2.0% with an average sale price of $2.5K. About 8 years away from that if I keep bootstrapping.

Recons.Com said:

Hmm... Almost all? Unless you use their landers, this shouldn't be the case. Normal would be 30% to 60% via Afternic.

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Yep, I seem to be a poor negotiator.

I've been switching back and forth between Afternic landers and Efty landers to see what's most profitable. Still testing, but Afternic seems to be doing better.

Yeah, per @AbdulBasit.com experiments, AN seems to be doing better. And almost no low ballers is a great advantage too.

Recons.Com said:

Yeah, per @AbdulBasit.com experiments, AN seems to be doing better. And almost no low ballers is a great advantage too.

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So out of curiosity how many inquires do you get and what percentage of those will actually turn into a sale?

And have you had any chargeback/dispute issues with taking direct PayPal payments though your site?

Recons.Com said:

Cashbacks are nice, but not the primary thing. Yes, GD has stopped with those, I think, under the new management.

I am fine with $8.47 that I pay with GD.

Sales under 1%: Unless you are pricing aggressively most of your names, I'd revisit the setup/choices/pricing. Are your names listed on Afternic? Do they have landers? Are they too niche? More suitable for non-paying fields, like blogging etc? 1% is the minimum you should be targeting if pricing in the sweet spot.

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At the moment roughly 95% of my names are on my own Efty Landers. Most are Make Offer with a $1,000 minimum offer to eliminate the silly lowballers. I have been contemplating listing at Afternic to get more eyes on my names and start moving inventory.

Perhaps I am too aggressive in my pricing -- but as you said, some names are hard to replace and once they are gone, they are gone (I try not to get attached to anything, but I do have a handful I plan to hold out for the right amount).

One of my goals each year is to have enough in sales to cover renewal fees and new purchases. Thankfully, I've been hitting that goal for the past 10 years. At this point I was simply wondering if I'm missing out on anything at GD on renewals. I pay the $8.49 with a 5% cash back from my credit card. That might be the best I can do. 95% of my names are with GD -- and management is easier with just the one registrar. But I was tempted to transfer out about half my names when another registrar here offered a special transfer fee. Still might do that, but I have to make sure I maintain the requirements to qualify for a GD Premier Services Account. The DTVS they offer for domain transfer verification is a feature I like the most with GD.

Good luck on your goal of 1 million domain names!!! That would make you the next Mann up...

DN_Hunter said:

At the moment roughly 95% of my names are on my own Efty Landers. Most are Make Offer with a $1,000 minimum offer to eliminate the silly lowballers. I have been contemplating listing at Afternic to get more eyes on my names and start moving inventory.

Perhaps I am too aggressive in my pricing -- but as you said, some names are hard to replace and once they are gone, they are gone (I try not to get attached to anything, but I do have a handful I plan to hold out for the right amount).

One of my goals each year is to have enough in sales to cover renewal fees and new purchases. Thankfully, I've been hitting that goal for the past 10 years. At this point I was simply wondering if I'm missing out on anything at GD on renewals. I pay the $8.49 with a 5% cash back from my credit card. That might be the best I can do. 95% of my names are with GD -- and management is easier with just the one registrar. But I was tempted to transfer out about half my names when another registrar here offered a special transfer fee. Still might do that, but I have to make sure I maintain the requirements to qualify for a GD Premier Services Account. The DTVS they offer for domain transfer verification is a feature I like the most with GD.

Good luck on your goal of 1 million domain names!!! That would make you the next Mann up...

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Are you saying your names are NOT listed on Afternic or that you just mean that they are, but no landers?

If the former, that right there explains below 1%, as AN can add 0.3% to 0.6% without any landers just by listing at BIN there.

Mann: well, 1MM would beat his number ) He is at around 300k now and actually went down from 350K. So last year I had around 0.9% of his portfolio size and now I am at around 2.2% ) Who knows, maybe I'll buy him out )

I reached a high of 4,500 this year, but I've been shedding a lot of the dross since that high and will be down to 3,000 by year end. I'm not sure what my optimum is. But I'd guess between 2-3000.

Recons.Com said:

Are you saying your names are NOT listed on Afternic or that you just mean that they are, but no landers?

If the former, that right there explains below 1%, as AN can add 0.3% to 0.6% without any landers just by listing at BIN there.

Mann: well, 1MM would beat his number ) He is at around 300k now and actually went down from 350K. So last year I had around 0.9% of his portfolio size and now I am at around 2.2% ) Who knows, maybe I'll buy him out )

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Correct -- my names are NOT listed on AN at the moment. I understand I could increase my STR, and probably will get around to it at some point. I also know 1MM would more than triple Mann -- I was just playing on the saying "next Mann up..."

Good luck on the buyout -- that will be cool

Recons.Com said:

Don't want to chase transfers, as a) there is a lead time to decision making by buyers and the stability leads to improved results. I believe part of why Mann is successful selling some names at ridiculously high prices is because he conditions potential buyers over years to $25k+ price tag. Initial shock passes and eventually they pull the trigger. b) value of time. For some it might not be much, but for me the cost of my time is $xxx/hr. Transferring each name can take couple of minutes, that would add up to $xxxx loss for me; c) cost of managing. When 95%+ of my names are with one registrar, managing is much easier. Just pay renewals; d) potential loss in sales from losing FT status or even disrupting the flow.

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This idea has been very helpful to me. Thanks. BTW, why do yo still have hundreds of domains at Epik and Dynadot?

stub said:

I reached a high of 4,500 this year, but I've been shedding a lot of the dross since that high and will be down to 3,000 by year end. I'm not sure what my optimum is. But I'd guess between 2-3000.

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My target is that my drop % should drop year on year as my learning curve progresses. In the initial years, you have to experiment with niches, types etc. External sales info is not nearly enough, as you have just one of the variables. You don't know, for example, how many of VR names someone had to have for one cool sale. For all we know, the guy might still be in red and keep bleeding money.

So now I am at point that I am shredding just about 1% of names.

Can you elaborate, why are you shedding so many? How long did you hold them in average?

Kassey Lee said:

This idea has been very helpful to me. Thanks. BTW, why do yo still have hundreds of domains at Epik and Dynadot?

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You are welcome, Kassey!

Few reasons for your question:

- Dynadot offers better pricing on .tv, .org, .net, .co, and considerably, as GD does rip off there. So it makes sense to keep those away.
- Also used Dynadot $6.99 promo to do some hand regs, but I now think that even at $1.5/name it is not worth to deal with regging and transferring next year, while also disrupting FT.
- some names I bought from NP were at Dyna or Epik, so they pushed it there, like baxv.com I bought on days.
- I gave a try to Epik by having some names moved there (around 50), and also used the $1.99 promo on .us to grab some nice names on hand reg and test how that works couple months ago... Probably 120-140 names like that there...

I don't know about others, and my sample size is not big enough, but for me names at Epik or Dyna sell at slower pace than on GD... So, no real incentive to keep/reg there for .coms and with the Federated implementation on Epik, I will be bringing the names to GD as they are up for renewal... I also find it annoying that they put their lander (Dyna too) on the NEXT hour of expiration, while GD will keep it resolving for few days... Not a big deal, but still... small things add up. GD's bugs I have to deal with, don't think I have to learn how to navigate around the issues of others.

DN_Hunter said:

Correct -- my names are NOT listed on AN at the moment. I understand I could increase my STR, and probably will get around to it at some point. I also know 1MM would more than triple Mann -- I was just playing on the saying "next Mann up..."

Good luck on the buyout -- that will be cool

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Yeah, did get the punn

So what is the reason for not listing? It is literally free promotion and sales?

Recons.Com said:

Yeah, did get the punn

So what is the reason for not listing? It is literally free promotion and sales?

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I really hate paying commissions. But maybe I can list them there but still sell in my own market place and avoid the commissions.

My post was not about trying to increase my sales. I simply wanted to ask if there’s anything else where I could save on annual renewals. Just didn’t want to miss out on sometime if there was savings to be had.

DN_Hunter said:

I really hate paying commissions. But maybe I can list them there but still sell in my own market place and avoid the commissions.

My post was not about trying to increase my sales. I simply wanted to ask if there’s anything else where I could save on annual renewals. Just didn’t want to miss out on sometime if there was savings to be had.

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Haha ) got it ) you got more than you asked for

Renewals: not that I know of as of now, besides credit cards, but you've got that.

AN: don't focus on what you lose on commission. Think of it this way: if they add 5 sales for you in a year for names listed at $2000, you net $8000 incremental income, while "losing" $2000 on commissions. Now for that 8000$ you can buy many more names of the same quality and still have a lot of extra cash left...

And if you really are focused on not losing the commission, just add that price on top of listing price on AN (that might reduce the number of sales though).

Recons.Com said:

Can you elaborate, why are you shedding so many? How long did you hold them in average?

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Sure. I have been regularly adding to my portfolio over probably 15+ years. I only accelerated that over the last couple of years, in an attempt to grow. Well my sales have grown to approx $80-100K each year. Not really from any of my recent acquisitions. But when Covid-19 hit, and there was a lot of uncertainly, I decided I had to pare down my renewals substantially. So. I have been reducing my holdings of everything which is not .com, as well as some, obvious com blunders. At it's height that would be approx 33-50% of the expiring domains each month. I started this process at the beginning of this year, and shall probably stop by the end of this year. By then I hope to have a more balanced portfolio. Meaning both less .com than now (to a lesser extent) and less of everything else (to a greater extent).

The length of the hold has been from 15+ years ago (some of my better domains) until last year. With most of the domains sold being between 5-20 years old. So my handreg activity mostly has something wrong with it In these last few years I was a big buyer on NPs, but now it pretty much looks like nothing I would touch with a barge-pole.

rgds
stu

Recons.Com said:

Well, this did not take long... Already crossed 6000 at GD (6172 as of now, to be precise, but around 40 on the way, haven't hit the account yet), plus another 320 with Dyna and Epik, for grand total of around 6500...

I had 5095 with GD on June 6, less than 3 months ago, and had under 200 elsewhere. So around 1200 added since then, which is roughly the rate I need to get to doubling a year goal.

Show attachment 166311

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Domain giveaway

Damn, I'm at 25 domains and 3 sales ...



…I'll see myself out

Tudor V said:

Damn, I'm at 25 domains and 3 sales ...

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Actually, you may have a sell through rate greater than that of OP and probably most of us, so how about educating us on how you did it with such a small pool of domains.

ALso depends on the value of the names. I mean random no meaning 5 and 6 number.symbol ,coms are a burden in my opinion. Especially with godaddy renewal fees. I have about 150 domains, all of them are saleable easily and I have maybe 10 high value domains currently. all keepers

Tudor V said:

Damn, I'm at 25 domains and 3 sales ...



…I'll see myself out

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Depending how long it took for those 3, of course, and the amounts sold for, you might be doing great )

If within a year and for $xxxx each, that means you are beating industry average by 10x.

Now, 25 is a small sample size and no guarantee that it is scalable. As you scale up, your returns will tend to normalize to the averages.

anderow said:

ALso depends on the value of the names. I mean random no meaning 5 and 6 number.symbol ,coms are a burden in my opinion. Especially with godaddy renewal fees. I have about 150 domains, all of them are saleable easily and I have maybe 10 high value domains currently. all keepers

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Many random 5L or 6L are burden as well often. Most buyers look for some meaning in a name.

Primary Names said:

Actually, you may have a sell through rate greater than that of OP and probably most of us, so how about educating us on how you did it with such a small pool of domains.

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I'm not doing anything in particular, just picking 10 - 15 domain names from the daily drop lists that I consider them "solid" (2 words on .coms and single words (category, but not killers) on ccTLDs), + Domain Analyzer to crop lists, and hope to catch it via hand reg. I'm registering like 1-2 domains per month, also I've been following, testing and researching the domain industry for some years, but only this year I started to take action.

Recons.Com said:

Depending how long it took for those 3, of course, and the amounts sold for, you might be doing great )

If within a year and for $xxxx each, that means you are beating industry average by 10x.

Now, 25 is a small sample size and no guarantee that it is scalable. As you scale up, your returns will tend to normalize to the averages.

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I got $300 on the .com after 4 months of registration, I list it on DAN and $1500 on 2 ccTLDs listed on a local marketplace (EUReg) after 2 months of registration. About scaling my portfolio, that's my goal, aiming for 50 by the end of the year (50/50 com/ccTLD) and hope for at least another 3 sales. I know that these are small numbers but I like to be conservative when registering new domains, I mean some are free for a reason right?

Tudor V said:

I'm not doing anything in particular, just picking 10 - 15 domain names from the daily drop lists that I consider them "solid" (2 words on .coms and single words (category, but not killers) on ccTLDs), + Domain Analyzer to crop lists, and hope to catch it via hand reg. I'm registering like 1-2 domains per month, also I've been following, testing and researching the domain industry for some years, but only this year I started to take action.



I got $300 on the .com after 4 months of registration, I list it on DAN and $1500 on 2 ccTLDs listed on a local marketplace (EUReg) after 2 months of registration. About scaling my portfolio, that's my goal, aiming for 50 by the end of the year (50/50 com/ccTLD) and hope for at least another 3 sales. I know that these are small numbers but I like to be conservative when registering new domains, I mean some are free for a reason right?

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That is wise. Proving the concept, scaling up, proving again, scaling up again... That is the prudent way of doing it.

Recons.Com said:

Many random 5L or 6L are burden as well often. Most buyers look for some meaning in a name.

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Agreed. Was on mobile but meant 5L or 6L . With a number as well they are worthless very often. I only have interest in very brandable or keyword based .coms . Very few other extensions except .co.uk are of interest to me.