analysis Exploring Optimal Prices for 4L .com Domains

[4L.com]

Hello everyone,

As some members of this forum may know, I have an extensive portfolio of 4L com domains. Starting from October 1, 2024, I’ve decided to embark on a series of experiments to determine the most profitable pricing strategy for selling these domains. Currently, I own over 16,000 4L domains that contain one or more of the letters J, Q, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z. These are the domains I’ll be using for my pricing experiments. I plan to continue buying domains, so the number will gradually increase.

I aim to find out which approach will be more profitable: selling fewer domains at a higher price or selling more domains at a lower price. Initially, I wanted to start this experiment on September 1, but due to the issues with Afternic, which compromised the accuracy of any data, I decided to wait until October when most of these issues were resolved.

At the moment, I’ve set the price for all my domains at $14,999 each. The nameservers are configured to ns1.afternic.com and ns2.afternic.com. I’ve disabled Boost as I don’t find it useful. I’ve chosen the "Custom Lander" option, and all domains have a Lease-to-Own (LTO) option available for a 12-month term. The "Make Offer" option is disabled, and I will be ignoring any inquiries through Whois during the experiment to ensure that potential buyers can only purchase the domains at a fixed price without the opportunity to negotiate discounts or terms. This also prevents them from contacting me directly, as well as avoiding back-and-forth with brokers who often try to negotiate regardless of the set price. The same applies to Afternic brokers - I will reject any offers or discounts they send through the dashboard unless the domain is purchased at the current fixed price.

My goal is to achieve the best possible pricing strategy that minimizes the time I spend managing this process. Therefore, there will be no brokers, no email negotiations, no personal landing pages - just a fixed price on Afternic.

The planned schedule for the experiment is as follows:

• From October 1, 2024, to November 30, 2024, the fixed price for all domains will be $14,999.
• From December 1, 2024, to January 31, 2025, the fixed price will be $9,999.
• From February 1, 2025, to March 31, 2025, the fixed price will be $6,999.
• From April 1, 2025, to May 31, 2025, the fixed price will be $4,999.
• From June 1, 2025, to July 31, 2025, the fixed price will be $3,999.
• From August 1, 2025, to September 30, 2025, the fixed price will be $2,999.
• From October 1, 2025, to November 30, 2025, the fixed price will be $1,999.
• From December 1, 2025, to January 31, 2026, the fixed price will be $999.

I believe that two months per pricing stage and a pool of >16,000 domains should provide enough data to draw meaningful conclusions for future decision-making.

I plan to post monthly updates on the results in this thread, assuming it doesn’t violate any forum rules. I know that many forum members actively invest in 4L domains containing these letters (J, Q, U, V, W, X, Y, Z), so I believe the results could be valuable for others as well. I haven’t come across any detailed statistics on pricing for these domains, which is why I’ve decided to conduct this research myself.

If anyone has any insights or ideas to make this experiment more beneficial, both for myself and for other forum members, I’d be happy to hear them.

 

[4L.com]

Thanks. I think you should run with the same pricing levels for at least a couple more months so we can see if there is any meaningful pattern. I.e. this month obviously showed a much better STR for $888 compared to $999. I hadn't expected such a difference, so I'll be very interested to see if that repeats or if it's just an anomaly based on the particular letter sequences that sold this month.

Yes, I plan to test the current prices (888/999 and 1999/2488) for at least 2 more months (May and June), and then I will decide based on the results.

 

[Future Sensors]

Statistics Day is here again tomorrow!

 

[4L.com]

May 2025 Sales:

May 2025 Results:

At the end of May, I transferred all my domains that are part of these experiments to the registrar Spaceship, because it was time to renew them (before that, I renewed them for $9.99 when Dynadot had a promotion). The transfer (and renewal) cost $8.17 per domain. Unfortunately, this registrar does not support Fast Transfer, so I have to get auth codes manually in case any domains are sold, but the savings were significant. So now we’ll also see how much the lack of Fast Transfer affects sales.

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.86, which is my current price at Dynadot (Because almost the entire month, the domains were being sold on this platform with Fast Transfer enabled). As I already mentioned earlier, this price is only for easy comparison, because I renewed almost all my domains for $9.99 more than a year ago, and now for $8.17 until 2027-2028. But I use the price that I would potentially have to pay if there were no discount promotions for renewals and transfers between registrars, so it’s clear whether there is a profit or a loss in such a situation each month.

Additionally, I calculated Gross Profit, where only the Afternic commission (15%) was deducted from the domain sale price, and Net Profit, where both the Afternic commission (15%) and the cost I paid to acquire each domain were deducted from the sale price.

Starting in June, I decided to try changing the sales platform for domains with the letters J and Q from Afternic to Atom. To do this, I increased the prices for these domains on Afternic from $888/$999 to $1888, and on Atom I set the prices to match the ones I previously had on Afternic, which were $888/$999 for each group. I also changed the name servers for the domains to point them to Atom. I want to test how much sales will decrease in this situation and whether Atom's lower commission will make up for it.

The second reason I did this is the regular drops in sales on Afternic. For several months now, I have noticed a strange pattern (if I consider all my domains, not just the ones I share data about in this forum topic): 5-6 domains sell in 1-2 days, and then there is complete silence for 5-7-10 days with not a single sale. The same thing happens the next month, and so on. I think it shouldn't be like this - domain sales should be more evenly spread out over the month. So now I also want to test whether the same pattern will repeat on the Atom platform.

Domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, and Z are still listed on the Afternic platform, and nothing has changed for them, except that Fast Transfer is now turned off (as far as I understand, without Fast Transfer, these domains will get fewer views on some registrars that work with Afternic).

Below is the final distribution (as of 31.05.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:

 

[Ostrados]

It would be interesting to see aggregate data from last 6 months to see the big picture.

Trying Atom landers is also very interesting, I can't wait to see the results.

 

[AEProgram]

The second reason I did this is the regular drops in sales on Afternic. For several months now, I have noticed a strange pattern (if I consider all my domains, not just the ones I share data about in this forum topic): 5-6 domains sell in 1-2 days, and then there is complete silence for 5-7-10 days with not a single sale. The same thing happens the next month, and so on. I think it shouldn't be like this - domain sales should be more evenly spread out over the month. So now I also want to test whether the same pattern will repeat on the Atom platform.

First of all, thanks for sharing all this great data.

Second, the strange pattern is something people in sales, including domainers speak about a lot. It's like the "when it rains it pours" saying. For some of us with smaller portfolios, we can sit months or even years, with little or nothing, and then in a short time frame a few sales.

 

[NicTraders]

May 2025 Sales:
Show attachment 276489
Show attachment 276490
May 2025 Results:
Show attachment 276491
At the end of May, I transferred all my domains that are part of these experiments to the registrar Spaceship, because it was time to renew them (before that, I renewed them for $9.99 when Dynadot had a promotion). The transfer (and renewal) cost $8.17 per domain. Unfortunately, this registrar does not support Fast Transfer, so I have to get auth codes manually in case any domains are sold, but the savings were significant. So now we’ll also see how much the lack of Fast Transfer affects sales.

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.86, which is my current price at Dynadot (Because almost the entire month, the domains were being sold on this platform with Fast Transfer enabled). As I already mentioned earlier, this price is only for easy comparison, because I renewed almost all my domains for $9.99 more than a year ago, and now for $8.17 until 2027-2028. But I use the price that I would potentially have to pay if there were no discount promotions for renewals and transfers between registrars, so it’s clear whether there is a profit or a loss in such a situation each month.

Additionally, I calculated Gross Profit, where only the Afternic commission (15%) was deducted from the domain sale price, and Net Profit, where both the Afternic commission (15%) and the cost I paid to acquire each domain were deducted from the sale price.

Starting in June, I decided to try changing the sales platform for domains with the letters J and Q from Afternic to Atom. To do this, I increased the prices for these domains on Afternic from $888/$999 to $1888, and on Atom I set the prices to match the ones I previously had on Afternic, which were $888/$999 for each group. I also changed the name servers for the domains to point them to Atom. I want to test how much sales will decrease in this situation and whether Atom's lower commission will make up for it.

The second reason I did this is the regular drops in sales on Afternic. For several months now, I have noticed a strange pattern (if I consider all my domains, not just the ones I share data about in this forum topic): 5-6 domains sell in 1-2 days, and then there is complete silence for 5-7-10 days with not a single sale. The same thing happens the next month, and so on. I think it shouldn't be like this - domain sales should be more evenly spread out over the month. So now I also want to test whether the same pattern will repeat on the Atom platform.

Domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, and Z are still listed on the Afternic platform, and nothing has changed for them, except that Fast Transfer is now turned off (as far as I understand, without Fast Transfer, these domains will get fewer views on some registrars that work with Afternic).

Below is the final distribution (as of 31.05.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:
Show attachment 276488

Loving this data.

Another month of testing will be interesting to confirm, though I think it’s becoming clear that there’s no difference between the price points of $888 and $999 – it’s just the luck of the draw for the particular month.
However, the difference between $1,999 and $2,488 may still be a factor…

It'll be interesting to see how things go with Atom (though I think maybe I would have set the Afternic prices on those domains to $1,299 or $1,499 rather than $1,888 to make it a bit fairer comparison (and maximise sales).

 

[4L.com]

It would be interesting to see aggregate data from last 6 months to see the big picture.

These are the results if we count the renewal cost as $10.86, which is the current price at the registrar Dynadot, where these domains were:

If we count the actual renewal cost I paid this year, when I renewed all the domains at once for a year (they were all renewed until 2026-2027 while at Dynadot mostly in 2023, and when transferring to Spaceship, they were extended by one more year accordingly, $8.17):

Here is the picture if we count the renewal cost as the current price at the registrar Spaceship ($10.16 per domain):

 

[4L.com]

Second, the strange pattern is something people in sales, including domainers speak about a lot. It's like the "when it rains it pours" saying. For some of us with smaller portfolios, we can sit months or even years, with little or nothing, and then in a short time frame a few sales.

The thing is, when the domains were sold on the Dynadot and Dan.com platforms in 2023 and 2024, there were no such problems - sales were evenly spread out over the days of the month. That’s what’s frustrating, and I want to see how it will be on Atom.

Another month of testing will be interesting to confirm, though I think it’s becoming clear that there’s no difference between the price points of $888 and $999 – it’s just the luck of the draw for the particular month.
However, the difference between $1,999 and $2,488 may still be a factor…

I think this spike ($888) happened because potential buyers saw the price increase on the domains ($499 > $888), noticed that the prices had been lower before, and decided to buy them before the prices went up even more.

It'll be interesting to see how things go with Atom (though I think maybe I would have set the Afternic prices on those domains to $1,299 or $1,499 rather than $1,888 to make it a bit fairer comparison (and maximise sales).

First, I just want to see how sales will go on the Atom platform in general, because it might turn out that there won’t be any sales there at all for a month, and all the domains will be bought through Afternic At the same time, I’ll test a combined approach - where those who can type the domain name directly into the browser pay one price, and those who rely on searching through their favorite registrar or marketplace pay a higher price.

Maybe I’ll even remove these domains from Afternic completely so they are sold exclusively on Atom, if the results aren’t much worse, and so on. In short, I want to watch the trend for a month or two first, and then decide what to do.

 

[Ostrados]

@robosapien
thanks for the summery update

1999 is clearly the best pricing point for your domains

I don't know how you did calculate the Net Profit, but it shows that (J,Q) domains are not performing well in general, if I was you I would try to liquidate them fast (maybe at $199, $299, $399 pricing points) and focus on the other group of domains (x,y,z...etc)

 

[4L.com]

1999 is clearly the best pricing point for your domains

At the moment, I’m still testing high prices for domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Based on my experience over the past three years, prices above $3,000 don’t work at all for such domains - in the long term, they only bring losses. There may be a few good individual sales, but if you have as many domains as I do and don’t do active marketing, the results are poor with such high prices.

I also plan to test lower prices like $1,888, $1,777, $1,599, and so on. But right now, even the $1,999 price gives good results (at least in my case). If we count the real costs, the P/L for this group of domains from January to May 2025 is +$21K (around 2.2% yearly ROI). This is probably the level where profit begins. As I’ve shown in the data I posted earlier - at $2,999 there’s no profit, even with a renewal cost of $8.17 per domain. At $2,488 the profit is very small. At $1,999 there is already profit. As the price per domain goes down, the profit should increase to a point, until we find the lowest price where the overall profit starts to fall - meaning more sales, but too little total profit. That’s exactly what I plan to test across the full range, if I have enough time and motivation, to find the best price that lets me sell domains almost on autopilot.

I don't know how you did calculate the Net Profit, but it shows that (J,Q) domains are not performing well in general, if I was you I would try to liquidate them fast (maybe at $199, $299, $399 pricing points) and focus on the other group of domains (x,y,z...etc)

I’ve already said in this topic that my situation doesn’t apply to 99.9% of forum members. But for tax reasons, it’s much better for me to make sales for the highest possible amounts (even if there’s no profit in the end or even losses). So of course, I won’t be getting rid of the domains with the letters J and Q - I’ll be looking for the best prices for them to bring in as much money as possible from sales without large losses.

Because the amount saved on taxes will more than cover even small losses from selling the domains at a loss. Although it’s clear that domains with the letters J and Q are the worst compared to all other domain categories I own. I also plan to test lower prices with them, like $777, $588, $500, and so on. Domains with the letters J and Q showed fairly decent results at a price of $499.

Overall, from the results I have so far, it’s already clear to me that investing in domains with the letters J, Q, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z can be profitable (It depends on the purchase price of such domains, the renewal cost, and so on), but the profit will be similar to the returns from U.S. Treasuries or even lower.

An obvious benefit is protection against inflation, since the number of such domains is limited. A clear downside is the rising renewal prices. I think that if renewal prices for .com domains keep increasing, it may lead to negative trends and a drop in overall profit due to competition from alternative domain zones and so on - but that’s clearly outside the topic of this thread.

 

[4L.com]

June 2025 Sales:

June 2025 Results:

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.16, which is my current price at Spaceship.

Starting in July, I moved all the domains back to the Afternic platform, as using the Atom platform did not show any good results. The prices remain the same: 888/999 for domains with the letters J and Q, and 1999/2488 for domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, Z

Below is the final distribution (as of 30.06.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:

 

[NicTraders]

June 2025 Sales:
Show attachment 278182

Show attachment 278183

June 2025 Results:
Show attachment 278184

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.16, which is my current price at Spaceship.

Starting in July, I moved all the domains back to the Afternic platform, as using the Atom platform did not show any good results. The prices remain the same: 888/999 for domains with the letters J and Q, and 1999/2488 for domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, Z

Below is the final distribution (as of 30.06.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:
Show attachment 278181

Thanks @robosapien
We continue to see that the 999 group sells easily as well as 888, and in fact a few sales went through @ Afternic for $1,888. Interesting to see a lot more 2,488 sales this month compared to 1,999. I'll be keen to see if that's an anomaly, or if it might be repeated going forward.

 

[4L.com]

July 2025 Sales:

July 2025 Results:

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.16, which is my current price at Spaceship.

At the moment, in the $888/$999 group (letters J and Q), here is the data (these are real numbers considering my actual renewal costs):

Cat	Price	Qty	Sold	Days	Annualized STR	Total Renewal Cost	Sales	Gross Profit	Net Profit	Annualized ROI
J,Q	$888.00	14362	19	122	1.59%	$9,805	$17,872.00	$12,319.00	$2,514.17	0.36%
J,Q	$999.00	26411	33	243	1.50%	$17,927	$34,745.00	$24,505.40	$6,577.96	0.26%

As can be seen from this data, the results are very close. The $888 group has slightly better ROI, but it is still very, very low. I decided to test a lower price = $599. So, I changed the price for one of the $888 groups to $599, and I want to observe for 2-3 months to see if this price will show better ROI, considering all costs, compared to $888/$999.

​

For the $1,999/$2,488 groups, I’m continuing the experiment because the results are still unclear:

Cat	Price	Qty	Sold	Days	Annualized STR	Total Renewal Cost	Sales	Gross Profit	Net Profit	Annualized ROI
U,V,W, X,Y,Z	$1,999.00	36778	30	243	0.98%	$24,962	$59,970.00	$44,149.50	$19,187.51	0.35%
U,V,W, X,Y,Z	$2,488.00	20726	13	122	0.75%	$14,151	$32,344.00	$24,442.40	$10,291.11	0.68%

Although the $1,999 group has a higher STR, the final ROI turns out to be higher for the $2,488 group, because last month there were as many as six domain sales in this price range. I want to wait another 1-2 months and see the results.

Below is the final distribution (as of 31.07.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:

 

[4L.com]

Unfortunately, this registrar does not support Fast Transfer, so I have to get auth codes manually in case any domains are sold, but the savings were significant. So now we’ll also see how much the lack of Fast Transfer affects sales.

Good news - I don’t see any drop in domain sales at all, even though Fast Transfer is now disabled for all domains (because the Spaceship registrar doesn’t support it). According to the information on GoDaddy’s website, the potential buyer reach should be smaller because of the lack of Fast Transfer. But it seems that for my domains, this doesn’t play any role at all.

 

[4L.com]

I found that I made a typo in the formula, so the Annualized ROI was calculated incorrectly. Here is the correct data (I hope ) for the 888/999 and 1999/2488 groups:

​

Cat​	Price​	Qty​	Sold​	Days​	STR /yr​	Renewal $​	Sales $​	GP $​	NP $​	AVG PPD $​	ROI /yr​
J,Q​	$888​	14362​	19​	122​	1.59%​	$9,805​	$17,872​	$12,319​	$2,514​	$0.18​	1.46%​
J,Q​	$999​	26411​	33​	243​	1.50%​	$17,927​	$34,745​	$24,505​	$6,578​	$0.25​	2.08%​
U,V,W,X,Y,Z​	$1,999​	36778​	30​	243​	0.98%​	$24,962​	$59,970​	$44,150​	$19,188​	$0.52​	2.82%​
U,V,W,X,Y,Z​	$2,488​	20726​	13​	122​	0.75%​	$14,151​	$32,344​	$24,442​	$10,291​	$0.50​	2.74%​

Qty = # of Domains
STR /yr = Annualized STR
Renewal $ = Total Renewal Cost
GP $ = Gross Profit
NP $ = Net Profit
AVG PPD $ = AVG Profit-per-Domain
ROI /yr = Annualized ROI
​

 

[NicTraders]

I found that I made a typo in the formula, so the Annualized ROI was calculated incorrectly. Here is the correct data (I hope ) for the 888/999 and 1999/2488 groups:

​

Cat​	Price​	Qty​	Sold​	Days​	STR /yr​	Renewal $​	Sales $​	GP $​	NP $​	AVG PPD $​	ROI /yr​
J,Q​	$888​	14362​	19​	122​	1.59%​	$9,805​	$17,872​	$12,319​	$2,514​	$0.18​	1.46%​
J,Q​	$999​	26411​	33​	243​	1.50%​	$17,927​	$34,745​	$24,505​	$6,578​	$0.25​	2.08%​
U,V,W,X,Y,Z​	$1,999​	36778​	30​	243​	0.98%​	$24,962​	$59,970​	$44,150​	$19,188​	$0.52​	2.82%​
U,V,W,X,Y,Z​	$2,488​	20726​	13​	122​	0.75%​	$14,151​	$32,344​	$24,442​	$10,291​	$0.50​	2.74%​

Qty = # of Domains
STR /yr = Annualized STR
Renewal $ = Total Renewal Cost
GP $ = Gross Profit
NP $ = Net Profit
AVG PPD $ = AVG Profit-per-Domain
ROI /yr = Annualized ROI
​

Thx!
I really think it's just about proven that you could optimise your income by repricing all your J/Q domains to $999 rather than $888, though it will be interesting to see how things go with the $599 group.

 

[4L.com]

Thx!
I really think it's just about proven that you could optimise your income by repricing all your J/Q domains to $999 rather than $888, though it will be interesting to see how things go with the $599 group.

Yes, it looks very much like the most optimal price (best ROI) for my domains with the letters J and Q is $999 at this moment. But I still want to test the $599 price for at least a couple more months, and later also test the $499 price one more time for a couple of months. The $499 price showed very good results (almost twice better than $999), but there is still too little data to know whether this was really that successful or just some fluctuations caused by the initial price drop ($1999/$1499/$999 -> $499).

 

[4L.com]

August 2025 Sales:

August 2025 Results:

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.16, which is my current price at Spaceship.

In September, I decided to list all domains on the Spaceship platform by changing the NS from Afternic to Spaceship. I also kept all these domains on the Afternic platform, but I set a fixed price of $2,499 for all of them to guarantee covering the commission in case of a sale. I also decided to finish testing the $2,499 price group for domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, Z and reduced the price to $1,499. I want to test this group in more detail and see the results compared to the $1,999 group and overall.

Below is the final distribution (as of 31.08.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:

 

[NicTraders]

August 2025 Sales:
Show attachment 282132

August 2025 Results:
Show attachment 282133

For all calculations, I used the renewal price for .com domains set at $10.16, which is my current price at Spaceship.

In September, I decided to list all domains on the Spaceship platform by changing the NS from Afternic to Spaceship. I also kept all these domains on the Afternic platform, but I set a fixed price of $2,499 for all of them to guarantee covering the commission in case of a sale. I also decided to finish testing the $2,499 price group for domains with the letters U, V, W, X, Y, Z and reduced the price to $1,499. I want to test this group in more detail and see the results compared to the $1,999 group and overall.

Below is the final distribution (as of 31.08.2025) by letters and the number of domains in each of the category/groups:
Show attachment 282134

Thanks. It will be interesting to see if the change to Spaceship causes a marked decrease in sales.
To date, $999 has been optimal for J,Q and $1,999 tends to be better for U,V,W,X,Y,Z. It will also be intriguing to see whether the lower pricing for one group in each set increases the STR enough to keep the ROI in an acceptable range.

 

[4L.com]

While I was preparing the report for September, I noticed that I forgot to include one of the domains in the August report. Here are the correct data (I forgot to include the domain ozzr.com, sold for $2,488).