1 year Anniversary as Full Time Domainer

[DN BROKER]

Well, what can I say. It's been 1 year since I last posted about my full time Job as a Domainer.

100+ .com's Sold. Have made enough money to pay bills. August, October was a though month basically 0 sales. December has been good so far. Have several end user sales pending.

As mentioned in the past, I buy expired domains and sell them for $50 to $300. Rarely, I get an end user that pays over $300-$1000.

Market is very though, end users are not spending money. Several mistakes I have done which I will share with you. If a end user emails you with a counter offer, take it. Cause once you counter offer back, they will not reply back. Even if you email them back to accept their counter offer, they will not email back. I've experienced this several times now and very unhappy about myself. Think about it, you renew an expired domain for $20-$40 US, even if you make an extra $10, you are a winner! Just to get end users to reply back to your emails is hard enough, so if they counter offer, take it!

Several other issues that have caused me to loose money is paypal, it seems a lot of end users are scared using paypal! I don't blame them, paypal is scammers merchant tool to steal money from honest people. I always remind end users, that I own a business account that has been around for several years with positive ratings and zero negative ratings. Yet, it seems to be an issue. Several small sales were never closed due to paypal, end user got scared and never emailed me back even though I offered other escrow options.

They key in selling domains is knowing what to renew or reg! Anyone and everyone can make money from domains!

The minute the expired domain becomes yours and is in your account, you will need to make a sale with in the first week. If the domain does not sell in the first week, then the domain will sit and dust in your account. You should have a list of end users already on your notepad before you reg/renew a domain name for end user sale! Do not go and purchase something and then start looking for end users. It is very important to know what the market holds for you to take advantage off!

I've mentioned it several times now, how to you find end users? Simple, Google it!

Google the keywords of your domain name and see how many of the search results return end users who could benefit from your domain name! and only focus on .com!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Most end users use ugly combined words or letters in their domains, this is your chance to pitch your well combined keyword/letter domain to them for $50-$250 US!

Yes I said .com only, why would an end user pay you for anything else? .com should be your number 1 focus in building your portfolio. any other extension is only good for the aftermarket that Domainers use for trade! End User are rare for purchasing anything other then .com

Domaining is fun and profitable. Do not give up on yourself because you have not been able to make a $1.... I have purchased about 2000+ domains since I started... everytime you sell one domain for $250, that pays for 25 domains/Reg Fee cost! do the math and you can make money.

I wish everyone the best and hope the new year brings you a healthy profit. Remember, don't be greedy and you will be a successful Domainer. You don't have to make millions to be a Full Time Domainer.

Happy New Year to all.

 

[nielsencl]

Thanks for posting about your experiences. I had a couple of thoughts, and I have to admit I have sold nearly as many domains as you, but I also have not been working at it either like you have, I have been mostly letting them come to me. I park my domains, so I make some money of many of then while they just sit there.

You said people should accept the buyer's counter offer. This sounds like they have seen your domain listed or contacted you and you have given them a price. They counter back and then if you counter again, they go away? It may not be the fact that you are countering, but how much you are countering with.

You are at a disadvantage with what you are doing. I say this because your customers are not contacting you, you are contacting them. This means that they don't need the domain you are selling, but it would be nice to have. If your countering is not done carefully, they could be put off and then go away.

Sometimes you can't get a buyer to offer more. I got an offer for one of my domains of $600 this week. It was a good price for a reg fee domain , but it was also a nice domain and should have sold for closer to $1,500 to the right buyer. I countered back, but the buyer would not budge and while I could have tried to get more because I felt they really wanted the domain, I also did not want to lose the sale, so I gave in.

If people are not comfortable with Paypal, suggest they use their credit card to pay at Paypal. They get buyer's protection with their credit card and the risk should be small to none. The other thing that would help is for you to set up a company website if you don't have one. This does a couple of things: 1) It provides some means for them to see you are a real business and not just some guy selling domains who may or may not be honest, and 2) it gives you a place to list your domains. You may get some buyers that way who just happen to be looking, or someone that is looking for a specific domain name that you have.

The other option is to have them use Escrow.com or another service like it and ask them to pay the fees for their piece of mind, or just pay the fee yourself if you get a good price.

 

[wwwweb]

Congrats, on your first year, did I read correctly when you said you aquired 2000 domains during this period? So you are registering 40 domains for every 1 you are selling... As holding a 2000 domain porf for someone who flips is quite costly, I have seen many drop catchers holding 4-5K inventories, but I also know a few very successful ones who carry 400-500 domains, and have very high turnover rates even if they only make 300% off a $7 reg, keep up the good work, and hopefully demand starts to outpace supply.

 

[DN BROKER]

Congrats, on your first year, did I read correctly when you said you aquired 2000 domains during this period? So you are registering 40 domains for every 1 you are selling... As holding a 2000 domain porf for someone who flips is quite costly, I have seen many drop catchers holding 4-5K inventories, but I also know a few very successful ones who carry 400-500 domains, and have very high turnover rates even if they only make 300% off a $7 reg, keep up the good work, and hopefully demand starts to outpace supply.

I started in 2000, got serious in 2004.

 

[JesusFreak]

what's your experience with hyphen dot com names 24?

do they sell ok

 

[DN BROKER]

what's your experience with hyphen dot com names 24?

do they sell ok

I've owned few of them, I own one now that I considered to be a big one for real estate. Unfortunately none of them have resulted into end user sales. Not sure what to tell you, other then that end users would only purchase a dash domain, only when they can reg it on their own for reg fee. I've had 0 luck with end users.

 

[garptrader]

Congrats 24 Hour on more domain sales than I have had in my entire domaining career Just curious how many emails on average you have to send out to generate an average sale and what the average .COM sale runs (you said less than $1000 but often under $300). Also, I suspect you aren't acquiring many domains at Snap/Namejet or else it would be difficult to make much money with a resale price of a few hundred dollars. Last question - do you exclusively reg .COM or is it just your experience that other TLDs are much more difficult to sell?

 

[malcarada]

I agree that not .com are hard to sell to personal end users, but if you target businesses it is perfectly possible to sell them a .net /.mobi or .biz

It seems to me that your main selling market are personal end users and if that is the case then you are right, I dont see end users wanting anything other than a .com

 

[dtagr]

Congratulations on your accomplishment, and it is an accomplishment. I am many miles away from being fulltime, but still enjoying myself.

Good luck to your future endeavours!