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!

 

[kaz2]

Interesting thread. Mine was $1,250 for a domain I hand-registered 2 years earlier.

Great ROI Aceimages! How did you sell the domain was it via your own landing page or through a 3rd party platform? Thanks.

 

[kaz2]

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

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

 

[Aceimages]

Great ROI Aceimages! How did you sell the domain was it via your own landing page or through a 3rd party platform? Thanks.

Thanks so much. It was a two-word name which I sold through GoDaddy's Premium Listings.

 

[kaz2]

Thanks so much. It was a two-word name which I sold through GoDaddy's Premium Listings.

What type of name was it? Generic keyword domain name or brandable?

 

[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!

 

[kaz2]

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!

Really interesting stuff, appreciated.

Apart from this and DNF what was the 3rd forum?

Also, has your strategy been to buy names at auction rather than hand register domain names for sale?

 

[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!

 

[BTCWhale]

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

 

[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.

 

[Josytal]

The first domain I sold was yowl.co for $999, after 9 months hand regged.

So I'm short of your criterion by just $1.

 

[kaz2]

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

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

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?

 

[kaz2]

The first domain I sold was yowl.co for $999, after 9 months hand regged.

So I'm short of your criterion by just $1.

I think we can (using golf parlance) call this a gimme Josytal, you qualify.

 

[DNScholar]

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

 

[kaz2]

Hi SpareDomains, interested where yousay "they redirect to my own landers so most offers land direct where I receive name, email, phone, ip address".

Do you get a lot of enquiries via direct navigation or type in traffic? If yes does this apply to even keywords that do not seem to get much search traffic? Thanks.

 

[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...

 

[SpareDomains]

Do you get a lot of enquiries via direct navigation or type in traffic?

Some domains get 5+ offers a month and others not so much. Have around 450 domains on them so that brings a good handful of leads in each month across them all.

If yes does this apply to even keywords that do not seem to get much search traffic? Thanks.

Those make the most sense to have on sales pages as since traffic is low you wanna make sure it's obvious it may be for sale as advertisements on domains without traffic is like paying 5k for a roadside banner on a dead end street. Domainer's run to whois to email offers and ask about traffic stats end users might not know about whois and most could care less about traffic stats so they type it in to see what's on the domain and if an offer form is there makes it easy for them.

 

[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.

 

[kaz2]

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...

Fantastic reply Legendary full of great advice. You mentioned that it is more of a crap shoot - is this because the market for keyword domains has tanked?

Really interested to know how you bought Marilyn.com - was this a parked page and who owned it? I assume it was a non domainer. How did you go about approaching them?

Thanks.

 

[kaz2]

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.

Thanks infosec3, if this was a hand reg then it was a great ROI.

You are right about leaving money on the table but I suppose a lot depends on what you bought it for and how long you held it. Great name.

 

[loredan]

My first sale was $280 . Same day I used the money to hand reg a bunch of names and pay Afternic membership fees (old members should remember you had to pay some sort of fee to list names at Afternic). I listed the names at Afternic and within 30 minutes or so I received a $4k offer for one of them. That was about 11 years ago if I remember well.