Afternic experiment of August 2020

[AbdulBasit.com]

Hi everyone,

When I first started sharing the January experience, I wasn't expecting to continue sharing for this long but with the feedback I've received until last month has been exceptional. The main purpose of sharing my Afternic experience was for others to judge and decide for themselves whether to try their service the way I do or not. I know many of you have opted for Afternic ns3/ns4 along with BIN and found it more productive and few not as well.

Overall, I'm happy with my own results and others as well who were able to increase their sales which is what we need. SALES.

This is the 8th post of the Afternic experiment series after I published January, February, March, April, May, June and July results which I believe you'll like it.

So July was the slowest month for me but August really covered everything and I'm very happy with that. Even though I'd no complaint that month as well but was slightly disappointed.

So coming back to the sales of August are as below:

The first sale happened on 12th of August (once again started late) in the shape of MicroBladingTraining.com for $3,500. I'd kept this for $3,988 BIN but after going back and forth, the Afternic broker was able to get $3,500. The buyer came in via GoDaddy.

Second sale happened on the very next day of GeoComm.com for $13,500. I remember having $15,888 BIN. The buyer came in with a $9,000 initial offer and $12,500 as final offer. The interesting and best thing about Afternic brokers is that you can easily trust them and they'll give you the best in return. I actually said of accepting a $12.5K offer but requested to try once again and see if the buyer comes up... And fortunately he raised to $13,500. This is not something new for me as I've seen multiple times for myself and my fellow domain investors where the Afternic brokers have helped them get more than what the seller has accepted to sell it for.

Then again the very next day I'd another sale but this time the buyer hit BIN and acquired it. The domain was HarleyClinic.com which sold for $1,988.

And the best sale of the last month happened on 20th of August in the shape of BIN which was LivingLabs.com for $25,888. It's a great feeling to have BIN sales happening at such price range. I'd this domain for many years and declined several offers including the highest of $5,000 when I used Uniregistry landers.

And then there was a sale of $5,000 which unfortunately I cannot share due to TM reason. I admit of acquiring the wrong domain but totally unintentionally so when the initial offer came in of $2,500, I requested to try and see if we can get anything above that mark or else accept this offer. So once again the Afternic broker did their job what they're best at and got the buyer to $5,000. Apologies for not sharing the domain.

And the last sale of the month via Afternic was WeAreLiberty.com for $2,988 where the buyer hit BIN and purchased it.

All the domains were sold via GoDaddy except the GeoComm.com sale which happened via Afternic lander. Surprisingly no sale came via partner registrars. This shows the power of GoDaddy which is enough to make a good amount of sales for anyone holding good quality and quantity of domains.

The number of inquiries for the August was close to 550 and total number of domains at the end of last month were 4,170+/-

Total cost of acquisition was under $4,000 and total amount of sales was $52,864.

On the other hand, my friend Muhammad Aamir from DotCorner was happy to share once again his August sales via Afternic which I've copied below:

HavenGallery.com for $1,800 (Registerd $7.45 on 29th Jan, 2008).
ToonJam.com for $1,600 (Purchased for $10 back in March 2020).
PlasticRoad.com for $7,850 (12+ years old name - hand reg).

He also sold Peter.org for $8,855 privately which is another fantastic sale IMO. And the last sale was IronDecks.com for $2500 (registered for $5.99 on August 26, 2020 and Sold on August 28th DAN).

Aamir is a well experienced domain investor and he knows the ins and outs of this business so please don't go on buying spree just because he sold IronDecks.com which was hand registered last month itself. He hand registered around 500 domains in a small period of time and from that this particular domain sale happened. It's all about the quality, quantity, experience, timing, etc which matters in this business.

One fellow investor @Yusupbabay, the owner of Presiden.com shared one sale he made last month IndustrialHeart.com for a whopping $25,000. He acquired it for $59 and paid for 2 years of renewals. The reason behind this particular acquisition was that "I bought this domain because it was sold:
INDUSTRIALHEART.COM last sold for $ 22,500 on 2015-07-12 at DomainMarket".

Honestly speaking, I would've never sold for that price, let alone asking that price. I just don't get this domain but a sale is a sale and I'm happy for the seller. Congrats and thanks for sharing!

And I've a couple of answers to share which my Afternic manager was happy to share with me:

Q1) Does price reduction send any kind of alert to the past inquirer for that particular domain?

A1) We have measures in place within our automated email system to keep buyers engaged after expressing interest in a domain, but we do not automatically send emails to past inquirers when a domain's price is reduced. This is an interesting idea, I will send it along to the team to review. As of right now if a seller is significantly discounting a sought after domain, they can reach out to our Partner Seller department at [email protected]. We will be happy to review past inquiries on the domain and have the brokers reach out to drum up interest.

Q2) Also adding categories for domains make any increase in sales?

A2) Adding categories to listings does not have a measurable significance to sales velocity. The category information is not pushed out to our partner network. This feature can be used by our sellers to help keep track of their different verticals and can be seen on Afternic.com, but not across the network where the domains are distributed.

I believe this will clear out many of the investor's doubts who were looking out for this and I'm very happy to see the detailed answers.

Thank you Afternic, my relationship manager, the brokerage team and everyone involved in making the overall experience so wonderful.

Feel free to give your feedback no matter how good or good it is

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Thanks and that's a good question!

B is the answer and that's how exactly it's done. Also if there is any offer close to your BIN/Floor, the brokers of AN do contact the domain owner to see if there is any change of mind. I'm not sure if they do in all cases but I'm sure they do it as I'm regularly experiencing this.

And when there is BIN set, you don't receive price request because there is already price attached with your domain.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks very much for the continued post in the series @AbdulBasit.com and congratulations on the sales - I particularly like LivingLabs - such a vibrant and positive name, not surprised it got a great price.

So you mention that adding categories at Afternic did not seem to matter. And the CEO of SquadHelp reported not long ago an analysis that showed on their platform adding categories and descriptions both resulted in higher sell-through rate. At first I thought it was perhaps the difference between a brandable and general purpose market, or perhaps type of buyer on two sites, but I think your finding simply reflects the fact that as far as I can tell the average user can't search by category from the basic Afternic search page? Or am I missing something? So the categories would only make a difference perhaps in agent finding alternatives, and i would expect what you find, not much difference with or without categories.

Thanks for your many insights, and for sharing at NamePros so positively and so fully.

Best wishes for continued success.

Bob

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

Thanks very much for the continued post in the series @AbdulBasit.com and congratulations on the sales - I particularly like LivingLabs - such a vibrant and positive name, not surprised it got a great price.

So you mention that adding categories at Afternic did not seem to matter. And the CEO of SquadHelp reported not long ago an analysis that showed on their platform adding categories and descriptions both resulted in higher sell-through rate. At first I thought it was perhaps the difference between a brandable and general purpose market, or perhaps type of buyer on two sites, but I think your finding simply reflects the fact that as far as I can tell the average user can't search by category from the basic Afternic search page? Or am I missing something? So the categories would only make a difference perhaps in agent finding alternatives, and i would expect what you find, not much difference with or without categories.

Thanks for your many insights, and for sharing at NamePros so positively and so fully.

Best wishes for continued success.

Bob

Thank you so much for your as always valuable feedback and commenting which is appreciated

As you can see that AN itself have said adding categories doesn't make any significant difference in sales. It may make difference at other platforms like you've mentioned for SquadHelp. But every platform differs.

Also to be frank, I don't see people buying domains directly using Afternic search as they either purchase via GoDaddy.com, partner registrars or the domain lander itself which of course changes to the Afternic.com but someone purely going directly to Afternic.com and searching for a domain and sales to happen is not very common... That's my assumption.

Best wishes