Brokering is a touchy subject for me. I have yet to come across many that I like and I have never had a broker successfully sell a name for me. If you are asking about the rejected offers I mentioned above then know that only the first two that I named were related to the brokerage that approached me unsolicited. The rest of the rejections I mentioned but did not name were inquires and negotiations that I handled myself.
I have tried nearly every broker around and they are almost all terrible. They will insist that every name you own is worthless. When that happens you have to sit back and ask yourself if you should re-evaluate your portfolio or if something else is up. I have sold enough names now and at high enough prices to recognize that I know how to do this as well as anyone. If anything I am selling my names for prices that are far too low. This should be the void that a broker fills, but most of them only seem to deal with the low hanging fruit.
Look at people like Rick Schwartz, Michael Berkens, and especially Mike Mann. They don't push their names through brokers or do any outbound work. Frank Schilling doesn't either; all of his outbound work is spent relentlessly harassing previous inbound inquiries. I would love to use stronger language here, but I would recommend that you forget about using brokers. They only seem to leech a cut out of names that are already good enough to sell themselves.
I started building my platform back in 2012 after experiencing this nonsense. This was back when DomainNameSales (now Uniregistry) was exclusive to a few limited high end sellers and BrandBucket was the only game in town in its niche but with its notoriously outrageous fees. So while I am reluctant to recommend a competitor that has come along well after I conceived a similar idea, Doron Vermaat is a good dude and I would recommend using Efty. Self-brokered names at Uniregistry and Epik are also solid ideas. If I can ever get time to give my own platform legs and release it to the public then I think it will undoubtedly make a solid impression as well.
If you want to know the brokers that I have so far found to be decent then here is my list:
- Lumis: Hobi and Slade Michalec, formerly of Domain Holdings, are polite and courteous enough to reply to you even if they decline to broker your names. I have found that quality to be rare among brokers.
- NameExperts: Joe Uddeme, also formerly of Domain Holdings, is just as polite and willing to be honest with you about your names. He is also one of the Masters of Domains: https://www.escrow.com/cn/masters-of-domains
- NameConnect: John Daly seems to be a good dude and lacks the pretentiousness so common in this field.
- Evergreen: I have never tried them, but I am a fan of Adam Strong. He seems like a sincere guy and someone worthy of trust. I wouldn't hesitate to work with him.
That's it. I have talked to over a dozen brokers and brokerages, some now defunct, and that is all I would personally recommend at this time. There are some truly bad ones out there and some of them are surprisingly considered top dogs. Color me less than impressed.
I owe all of my success in domain investing to watching what Mike Mann does and ignoring all of the other noise out there. Margot Bushnaq's BrandBucket also opened my eyes to the opportunities that exist with made up words and while I owe some of my success to following that path I absolutely hate their business model.
