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]

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!

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[TheLegendaryJP]

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.

I call combos a crap shoot because frankly what could have been a $15k-$25k name 7-8 years ago would struggle to see as much today if at all. Still worth thousands but resellers are not paying the big money for them over all (always exceptions to the rule). The smarter or should I say safer bets are acronyms and numbers. The good stuff, dot com, dot net, dot org. You can ride the wave of other extensions but staying power has not left the top three for the most part.

I acquired Marilyn.com many years ago by getting a list of the top 250 names or so over the last century and attacking it, one by one! I ended up getting around 12 or 13 "top" names, including Jacob.com and many more. In fact I would safely say no individual has sold more the last 10 years.

It was a risk but one I felt comfortable with when looking at the few past first name sales at the time...I think this was 2006ish or so.

All my generics, acronyms, numbers and first names I ever flipped for the best margins have NOT been purchased from other domainers, rather original owners usually and out of date sites or unused. Lots of tracking people down and offering good amounts but knowing I have room for profit. I have competed on a few with other known domainers and won out for peanuts...never give up! It only takes a handful a year to make you more than any 9-5 full time job you hate

 

[MisterSoft.com]

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!

That's, one small step for @kaz2, one giant leap for domain industry

 

[ivey]

My first 4 figure sale came few years back. I sold ClassBook.org for 1000 pounds via sedo... I think that was a little over $1300 US. But my lightbulb came on when I sold a domain for $500 via sedo.. I don't use sedo much these days though. It was those sales that really kept me in domaining this long.

 

[MisterSoft.com]

My biggest sale for the PinkNation.com for $17K few years back

 

[AndrewJK]

My first sale $2k a few days ago.

 

[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%

 

[Sebastien Staub]

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!

Hi I was lucky enough to pick up Tablet.io for $800 and sold it for $1500 a week later on flippa - !! It was a great feeling but I believe I should of waited and let the auction and bidders to go quiet. Anyhow it sold now to a lucky owner. I am expecting that eTech.io will also go for $1000 + this week currently sitting at $505. If you looking for great domains .IO I have some great one.

 

[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..

 

[MrComputerSaint]

Some good posts here. It's getting me fired up for flipping domains.
I'm very new to domain selling, I've owned several domains over the years, but not sold one. I have a few up for sale now though.
Yeah I'd love to sell one for 4 or 5 figures, don't know how good the domains are however.

I'm going to need to do a bit of searching for valuing a domain.

 

[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.