showcase First domain sale over $1,000?

[kaz2]

Hi, we are a mix of domainers here - some experienced, some not so experienced. What I'd love to know is who, if anyone, sold their FIRST domain name for over $1,000 and how much was it sold for?

I'll kick off by saying that I sold my first name for $11 so way below a grand - however, it was a thrilling feeling nonetheless.

It would be interesting to see who, whether by beginners luck or shrewd domain trading, had a first sale of over $1,000.

Look forward to hearing from you!

 

[Silentptnr]

My first sale over $1000 was years back. It was a 5L .com domain that sold for $2500. Funny thing is, could have been anywhere in the world, but the buyer happened to be local and brought a cashiers check to my office for $2500. It was really cool.

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

Not sure I can mention the other forum

All my business in terms of flipping has been buying already registered premium names I come across via my work either unused or out dated. Very little if any mentionable money is made off of dropped names tbh.

Main reason is everyone saw what it sold for in the industry so up side is many years and low margin, second issue is any real profit must now be via and end user, not easy stuff.

Best to buy good acronym/number/word(s) already aged, desired (market exists already to buy) and never been offered before

Roughly from recall I have sold 4 LL.com NN.com, dozens of LLL.com, Hundred(s) of generic word dot com, dozens of 2 word dot com and many great First Name dot com, millions and millions in sales and it all started with a $500 LLL.net!

 

[SpareDomains]

My first sale was exactly for 1k on a hand registered domain I hadn't developed yet back in 2003 as started as a developer. After that sale decided to invest in domains strictly for resale along with my developed sites since ROI was insane. Most of my sales since that first one have all been reg fee expired .coms in the 1-10k range as 1k is kinda my starting point. Don't sell a ton of domains as I play the passive game and wait for the right buyer as busy working on revenue generating websites and the domaining is really no work other than responding to inquiries from sales pages. Easier to be patient when busy with websites that bring in revenue. So that first sale is what started the madness. Wish I had dorked out earlier and gotten into domains a few years earlier than 2003.

 

[SpareDomains]

Hi SpareDomains, thanks for the post, much appreciated! Not surprised that the light bulb moment came for you when you sold that first domain.

Really interested as well to hear that most of your domain name sales are in the 1-10k range and, more importantly, hand registered domain names! Wow, that is a real eye opener.

From a new comers point of view it would be good to know when you hand registered most of these domain names - was it over 10 years ago and then you just sat on them passively selling a domain name now and then?

Or, do you still actively hand register hand domains even now and still manage to sell these hand reg domains in the 1-10k range?

This last point is important for us new domainers as the perceived wisdom these days is that there is no point in hand registering domain names as all the good names have gone!

Would love to know your thoughts in this area SpareDomains, thanks.

Primarily hand registered expired .coms meaning ones that dropped and didn't get sucked into auction houses, have purchased these every year but yes it does trim down each year as the years go on as busier with more websites so don't have the hunting time and each year more competition is hunting the same domains as myself. Due to being a passive seller honestly don't need to buy much these days as still hundreds in the vault from previous years and when your starting from $8 you can afford to sit on it so not unusual for me to wait 2-10 years to turn $8 into 1k,5k,6k,7k etc... as even if I wait for the right end user buyer holding costs are minimal based on return as not in this to turn $8 into $50 as a flipper equals a job and I don't wan't a job as my work is in building more income producing sites so the domain sales income just goes into more development/advertising as don't need the income to survive so I use it to continually expand/increase my recurring monthly income from websites. Good domains no hurry to sell as they can't be replaced as easily/cheap these days so I try to capitalize on them. If I don't think a business would pay 1k+ for a domain I try not to own it as that's basically my starting point for any sale to take place. Only exception to that was recently when I let a few random 4 letter .coms go for 400, 500, 600 etc... but I picked those all up for $15-$20 so I let them go as ROI was there and not really my thing more of a keyword .com guy.

 

[AEProgram]

2002 sold domain a bit over 1k, 2006 domain drops I hand reg lol sometime in late 06 or early 07 he contacts me asking why the domain is registered to me again, I explain to him he forgot to renew, however I will give it back to him free. He is in the gift business or whatever, he sends me a real nice box of chocolates and cookies as a gift, I eat them up as I add the name to my watch list once again, still no site, he still seems to be renewing.

 

[Haroon Basha]

An interesting name, I would like to tell here, I hand registered one new domain name cheership.com for 99 cents with Godaddy. I totally forgotten it. Two months later, I got one email from Godaddy telling me that someone is interested in buying this domain offering $500, I told them I have no problem with the offer, just try to give me a net $ 500 for it. Two days later, I got another email from Godaddy, the domain is sold for $ 600. After a week I got payment $ 600. I dont know how much it was sold, but I got $600 net. Return On Investment (ROI) was 60,506%

 

[frank-germany]

my first sale was 3000 € minus sedo fees for a handreg .com in 2003

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

That is a great return for a dot net. Was it a dictionary word?

I believe the letter combo was dba or bda would have to look.. or something like that, at the time we would have considered them all premium letters I would say it was above market average for sure but the buyer was some what an end user/domainer.

I took that $3XXX profit and bought bs.net and flipped that for $15,000 not long after and on and on ...

I had a very short and cheap learning curve when I started and owe that to this forum, another forum and dnjournal. Knowledge is power!

 

[infosec3]

My first sale over $1000 was a name I purchased from GoDaddy closeouts. It was a short phrase: iam....com

The buyer sent me an email and called me soon after, before I had a chance to respond to the email. I sold it for $1900. I was then still a newbie. and could not find a better way to justify my price other than the fact that Estibot appraised it at that.

The client bought it without hesitation. At the time he told me he needed it for non profit women organization, but after he purchase, the site was being used for an expensive women store.

Anyways, I was and am very proud of that sale.

 

[frostify]

When I was just 16 years old I found nup.com listed at a $250 BIN price on GoDaddy auctions, I thought it was an error of some sort but none the less I decided to pay the $250 assured that I would get my money back when the domain doesn't go through. Sure enough I DID get the name and I sold it on Flippa.com through Shane Bellone's "Almost Inc" for $25,000 (I received $21,000 after all the fees).

 

[GoKaizen]

Easier to be patient when busy with websites that bring in revenue.

True, and the majority of members here will say building sites is a waste.

Wish I had dorked out earlier and gotten into domains a few years earlier than 2003.

Everyone thinks that.

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

First domain buy was $500 for a LLL.net I flipped for $4XXX if I recall correctly and the rest is history.

 

[ALBROKER]

my first good sale was in 2002 sold two names .com for same buyer for 8750 US$ both was handreg
he contacted me for first name and we agreed 5k for it and then i offered him the other name for 3750$ so he take both
didnt used any escrow at that time ,, he sent me two western union payments

 

[GravityEleven]

first $1k plus sale was handregged GlobalContentSolutions dot com to a freelance writer in late 2013 afair.. afterwards never sold a domain for less than $1k anymore..

 

[SpareDomains]

It is not easy and takes time/work. How long does it take before you see decent revenue and returns @SpareDomains? What sorts of services/stores are these?

hosting company
domain sales/brokerage
ticket brokerage

and a handful of other real sites, the rest are simple stores, white labels or lead generation which works better for those without coding skills and easier to manage multiple sites, some make dollars a day and others pay up to $400+ per lead, so nothing knocks me out of my chair daily but when you combo the income of 50 sites it's enough to not need domain sales income so I reinvest the majority of it

As far as return time depends on how profitable the niche is as some things pay really well insurance, loans etc... reason PPC parking income is high on those categories and others not so much. One advantage today over yesterday is I can throw backlinks from 50 sites to anything new I start along with all my domains for sale pages so close to 500 free backlinks/traffic instantly to anything new I start.

 

[Doron Vermaat]

My first domain sale was Obria.com which sold for $4,696 - got me hooked on domaining and especially brandables!

 

[vital]

Hi, great sale for a .info - ironically my largest sale has been a .info although in volume more .com's sold.

What is your strategy in terms of (a) registering domain names (eg hand reg) and (2) selling them?

I started by registering a dozen and buying like 2 - 3 domains for more than reg.fee, but still in low $xx. After I realised there is an actual aftermarket for domains, I sold what I had at the time, bought few more, regd few more, and it's been a long distance run, but my domains have been slowly selling over the time. After some time, I improved my taste for domains, and I was buying and registering more. In numbers, my handreg investments were yielding ~500 - 600% profit. Even though these figures were nothing for old time domainers, it was great for me. Also, had some luck with liquid domains (LLL.net, LLLL.com etc.). Last year I changed my strategy for a last few months, when the chinese premium goldmine started. I've been able to flip ~20 in the beginning making around $15 - 20k profit in a month, which was really cool and helped me a lot. I am domaining full-time since September 2015 and now I quiet focus in ccTLD of my country, while still being active in gtlds (not the new ones),

To answer your questions:
a) I do some automated searching for domains. Since I have background in computer science, I am able to do my own stuff, and automate it a lot. It makes a whole lot of work for me (that I wouldn't be able to do even in 8-10 hours a day) in a few minutes/day, so I just check results and register what I like.
b) I don't do outbound, so for me selling is all about maximising exposure. DNS, Sedo, Afternic, GoDaddy premiums... Getting your domains in front of your buyers is the key, imo.

 

[Bram C.]

Thanks Bram, really informative post. Very interested to know that you have your own portfolio site. I take it that:

(1) when you list your domains at 3rd party marketplaces you do not park them there - you just list them?

(2) how do most of your buyers find your domains - is it from the 3rd party market places or do they navigate directly to your own landing page?

(3) do you incorporate escrow integration in your BIN or do you just redirect buyers to Paypal for example? I was just wondering how you deal with trust issues for buyers who do not know you.

Thanks Bram, really appreciate you taking time to look at this.

(1) Yeah I normally don't park them at marketplaces, I simply list them.That said, I do have a few domains parked at DNS, basically the ones that are making good money parked. But 95% of my portfolio is not parked and just uses my own landing pages instead.

(2) I'm pretty sure most buyers find me through the landing pages on my domains, not the marketplaces. But that doesn't mean they will buy through my landing pages. Some find me on my landing page and then buy the domain for example on Sedo (I assume for an added level of security). But I have a decent amount of yearly sales on my landing pages.

(3) Yes, Both Escrow and Paypal are integrated on my landing pages (for example http://miniskis.com/ ). So a buyer has the option to choose.

 

[SpareDomains]

How do you market your domain names? I know you are a passive seller but do you have a landing page on them and, if so, is it one of your own design?

All listed at Sedo, Afternic/Godaddy, DomainNameSales but they redirect to my own landers so most offers land direct where I receive name, email, phone, ip address, if I was to use someone else would probably be Bodis as mine are pretty similar, prefer to use my own to have the power of hundreds of backlinks to any of my other sites, affiliate programs and full server side statistics.

Also, would be most grateful to know what type of domain names you hand register for sale - is it more generic keyword domain names you or are they brandable names?

Primarily keyword .coms and a few keyword brandable .coms

Are you at liberty to give a couple of examples of names you sold?

Technically I could post 90%+ of all sales since 2003 but I prefer not to do that as it usually leads to others emailing buyers of my domains with lower quality names trying to make a sale from my previous leads and some have made more than 1 purchase so annoying them with 25 sales pitches of "since ya bought this name I have a similar name except it's a triple hyphen premium" probably wouldn't go over too well if I'd like to keep them in my database of warm leads.

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

Incredible reply TheLegendaryGP, this is what makes this forum so amazing; a successful domainer like yourself taking time to educate and inform others.



Intrigued by what you mean when you say "never been offered before". Are you referring to situations where you approach domain owners directly to buy names? Wouldn't this be expensive?

Of course they cost more than reg fee

This is where knowledge and experience come into play and making a bad buy in terms of price can wipe out a new domainer. For example I purchased that first LLL.net when premium letter combos saw $1k+, I paid $500. It was (still is) an easy niche to attack, market prices are easily seen so any purchase under X is a given profit.

I purchased all my first name dot com once I sold my first 2, Marilyn.com etc and set a market price or gauged it. Depending upon how good the name was (rank) I knew roughly what its market value was. As long as I knew my margins I was comfortable paying 5-6 figures (Like the LL and NN dot com) for names knowing I should see a profit. I would say over the first 12 years+ I only lost money on 1 name!

I used to buy premium 2 word dot com years ago, pre 2008 and without a thought spend 4-5 figures for them, like schoolprojects.com for example. AT that time those names saw $10k-$30k all day long during the auction boom, now its a crap shoot and I avoid the risk.

Many ways to approach this business but ultimately no matter how tempting an investment is, say a LLL dot com unused never offered before for sale but owner wants $21k, do LLL with a V or vowels get more than that now, sometimes, worth the risk for small margin, no. Some would buy and hold, I flip so where I pass others buy buy buy. Depends on what your plan is...

 

[BrandZen]

My first sale was for $3000 back in 2014. The name was r/e/n/e/w/m/y/p/a/s/s/p/o/r/t/./c/o/m

Purchased it on GoDaddy just a few weeks before for around $350 if I remember correctly.

 

[raubin]

I think very few people would able make $1000 on their first deal. Mine was after 15 deals.

My first deal was 1,000€ - the domain wasn't even for sale, it was going to be developed into a proper website but as most things ... time never allowed me to begin work on it. Within 12 months of registering the domain and being sat there on it's "under construction" page I received an email with an offer which was 250€ or 500€ which I went back to them and said I would only sell if it was 1,000€ or above. They agreed and domain was sold! Then I saw there was money to be made (and lost!) from buying and selling domains.

 

[TRY]

My first sale was a hand reg for $7500, was asking for more but the price and more importantly the timing was right. It was a suburban + Keyword in com.

 

[main]

My first $1,000+ sale was a $5,000 sale of a .org. Bought it for $69. My first time in DNJournal. It was the domain that got me from dabbling in Internet marketing to focus on domains instead.