I find the current state of the domain name market confusing. Every week I read about a bunch of domain sales, all at what I consider pretty high prices, yet I have not had much luck lately selling my own domains. I currently have Physical.com up for auction at Flippa.com, but this is the 2nd time I have listed it there and I have also tried selling it through various brokers (it was last listed for $45,000).
Last week I had a buyer approach me looking to make a bulk wholesale type deal. I gave them a list of 75 domains I was willing to part with cheaply, and they made me an offer of $1,200. I thought the list was worth more like $10,000, so I countered removing what I considered to be the 24 best domains from the list, and offering the remaining 51 domains for $1,200. They accepted, and we closed a week later using Escrow.com. I think they got a great deal, and I might have been able to get more like $5,000 if I had waited to sell these domains to retail buyers, or sold them one at a time on Flippa.com or Namejet. But, it really is a huge hassle to deal with 51 individual Flippa sales. 51 different buyers to go back and forth with, 51 payments to keep track of, 51 domain transfers to have to worry about. Selling to one buyer was much much easier, even though I left a lot of money on the table.
In the past I used to get good offers on domains like these, just from people going to my parked page or looking me up in the whois, but in the last few years the offers have decreased. This may be because I sold almost all of my really good domains already (I used to have 9000 domains for sale, now I have less than 100), but even for my premium domains I get less offers.
On the other hand, even though I am not looking to buy domains, I still read all the daily “domains for sale” newsletters, and I visit domaining.com every day and see what sales are taking place, and the domain market seems to be as alive and well as ever. So, I am not sure what to make of things.
Also this week I sold Divorcing.com. I can’t disclose the price (it was half what I was hoping to get for it), but I only get an offer for it once every few years, so I decided the time was right to sell it since I had a good buyer. I know I probably could have sold it for more money, but I did not want to wait a few years for another buyer.
Below is a list of the 51 domains I sold for $1,200. The buyer (Amoskowitz@2bluemediagroup.com) is also looking for more bulk deals like this, so email him if you are looking to sell):
911details.com
amerileads.com
animeplaza.com
bidrocket.com
bigfailures.com
browsecloud.com
canadianfloral.com
celeblaughs.com
cheaperbuys.com
digholes.com
dumbthings.com
extrafunding.com
extramuscles.com
findholes.com
findschoolphotos.com
findstadiums.com
floristhotline.com
gamersgrave.com
gaming4u.com
gaminguk.com
getlifesettlements.com
greatarcade.com
greatgamers.com
infoporn.com
landmarkgame.com
makebets.net
makecountdowns.com
maketranscripts.com
mapspots.com
matchimages.com
musicparodies.com
pagefight.com
pagewatcher.com
predictprices.com
proinsured.com
ratingbands.com
realbreakups.com
redlilyflorist.com
runecasts.com
sitestocks.com
spycamsites.com
superinventions.com
superplayers.com
telephonepets.com
telephoneusa.com
tiptoptens.net
viptimeshares.com
webgeneology.com
wincashmail.com
wowserver.com (as in World of Warcraft)
zanystars.com
Offers are still rolling in, different buyers who are not as honourable, a lot more deadbeats, and people who buy first, and worry how to pay later.
If you state you went down from
9000 to 100 domains, that would describe your offer situation.
Eric, you are one of the most honest domainer and blogger I know. I hope things will get better for you soon, the domain market is indeed great at this time, 2015 is being a good year for me.
Hi Eric
Its been a long time to see your post.
Congrats for the sale even I feel you should have got lot better individually. If you have any more bulk reseller sales like this do let me know as I also actively look for domains. 😉
Anything particular for ceasing to buy domains?
I am not buying any more domains because I find it to unpredictable how much I will be able to sell them for. I still love domains in general, but it is too speculative for me right now.
I also do have an array of domains and if you are interested let know…I have almost lost interest in domains due to pressure at work and i have no time to think of even flipping some of it.
I am not buying any domains right now.
send me your portfolio, i might be interested in your domains.
Aishwin,
Hi,
If you’re looking for .com domains, I’m about to start marketing a portfolio:
http://www.namesell.com/portfolio_sale.pdf
The contact details are on the PDF file.
Also, a word to Eric. I know it’s disheartening when this happens but hang in there. Sometimes a good offer comes out of nowhere for a name in your portfolio.
Cheers
Rod
You have to find your own path through but those are not good names in the list and its just as hard to sell a bunch of crap names as it is to sell a good one.
I’m deleting names that look like those you sold. Divorcing.com is fine but it’s a dreaded “i n g” name and those rarely do well.
Physical is a nice dictionary word but doesn’t get me wet.
The domain name biz is part art part science.. You have to have “the feel” for human instinct to make the money.
With respect to you, none of the names you mentioned are that good.
As they say, one man’s crap is another man’s gold.
I could see names like gaminguk.com extrafunding.com greatarcade.com selling for a few grand each to the right party, not all of is trade in 5 figure sales, a few grand here, and there is usually the case.
I think you are smart to be on the sidelines, new investors are paying more for domains than end users will pay on some exchanges. Then add in 20 percent exchange fees, and most will not know what hit them.
Gtlds are not an issue the good names are held back, and others are marked premium at hundreds per year which a domain investor cannot justify. As well many gtlds have different providers leading to more confusion.
It’s a good time to take a breather. You have nothing left to prove, you made it many moons ago.
Just my view but you saved several hundred dollars annually in renewal fees on a group of domains not compelling enough to attract any serious offers. You can use the proceeds to buy one good domain in a GD or NJ auction.
I think you are settling for these laughable offers instead of negotiating for a better offer in your favor. Although i only seen two names with potential out of the whole group, i think u could have came away with more$$ if u had put these names in a a auction…btw i would not have renewed the majority of those names.
Hi Eric,
Could you clarify: Did you sell 51 domains for $1200 each or for $23.5 each?
Just askin’
$1200 for all 51 domains combined (around $25 per domain).
Did you mention selling 51 domains for $1200 each or for $23.5 each!
$23.50 each.
Eric,
I think it is a very mixed market,
Very short domains – doing well
Numbers – doing extremely well
Popular terms that are very “brandy” – doing well (by this I mean common words that are commonly used to designate a brand e.g. one word singular names like violet.com)
Long domains – Doing badly
Popular keyword domains – Not doing particularly well due to Google changes
Have a look at dnjournal high sales and you can see just how much of it is focused on short and one word singular names,
http://dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm
“Every week I read about a bunch of domain sales, all at what I consider pretty high prices, yet I have not had much luck lately selling my own domains.”
You are not alone in that boat! The problem? Hundreds of millions of domain names are registered, so consider the couple hundred reported sold per week, verses the amount of registrants of domains and the likely hood of your number being picked in general is small!
Quantity helps, quantity + quality will greatly help.
Spot on.
EMDs don’t help you rank in Google any more. Short and brandable domains are in demand now.
Eric, I feel the same way. I’ve been buying and selling domains since the late 1990’s. I’ve got a pretty good predominately dot com portfolio with a number of premium names like Avoid.com, Ingredient.com, ParentalControl.com, etc. I’ve had some very good years and some not so good years since then, but the last two have been awful to say the least. I get a lot of inquiries and low ball offers, but the serious buyers are few and far between. And I’ve probably put more effort in this year to be proactive and sell than any other year since I started. Every week I read the same sales charts and I’m puzzled how many big sales there are. Sometimes I wonder how many of these sales are real, because it just doesn’t seem logical to me how the market could be doing so well and I’ve been unable to make anything happen. But I do know that the huge surge around the new extensions has hurt business, and that surge will die down. I also believe that timing and luck play a huge factor in this business, probably as much as effort, so I’m hoping things will turn around.
Yeah, I did well (for me) last year up until about June and it’s been pretty bad ever since. Apps and TLDs (not necessarily all the new ones but just the success of ones like .co and .io lately) have made it hard to get interest. I’ve had some months with more offers than others but the offered prices have been ridiculous. I’m removing some trash from my portfolio and just waiting as I don’t see a reason to sell for a fraction of the value for my higher quality domains to “poor college students”. One good sale or one heavy month is really all it takes for me to have a good year though as I’m small potatoes.
You’ve had some great names (ones I’ve even made offers for!) but reviewing this list and comparing to my own portfolio, there are fewer than a half dozen of those that I would have held onto (greatarcade, bidrocket, pagewatcher, maybe one or two more) and would have expected to sell in the $500-$1k range each. If I don’t think I can sell it for $500 I usually don’t reg/backorder. I think you did the right thing moving those.
Thanks for the insightful post, as always!
I had an offer of over $2000 for wowserver.com a few years ago, and it went to escrow, but never got completed. Same with Bidrocket.com, which went into escrow for $800 I think. So, out of the 51 domains I think the buyer will eventually sell one for enough to cover all of them.
Yes i know how you feel, tbh Namejet not doing much better unless like another reply said they are either numbers or three letters…
I am even seeing seem of the branded ones go cheap now. what it seems to me is that unless you have a chinese buyer you are going to struggle to get any kind of decent price for a domain, even corporates are not splashig gthe cash.
The truth be known the economy is fucked up, there are lay offs in the big companies in the U.K more than when the recession but they are clever how they word it, they call it restructuring, the biggest supermarket chain Tescos has just lost over 6 billion in the last year, the biggest loss in their corporate history and it goes on.
The governments cook the book .i.e job figures etc to try and get people to spend..It’s going to get worse imho.
China goes the domain market goes…
Very interesting. I have also been sitting on a bunch of names that I think are worth keeping, but don’t get much interest. Of course, I haven’t developed any of them, nor do I do any outbound marketing. I’d be interested in hearing what you think the value might be for this assorted lot of 25 multi-word domains. Key question is… are they worth more than the upcoming renewal fees? Thanks.
MauiWineTours.com
MealFrenzy.com
IndoorAllergySolutions.com
VacationsGuides.com
PackWithCare.com
WillsEstatesAndTrusts.com
NonStickUtensils.com
WholesomeBreakfast.com
RetiredInParadise.com
MildLaxative.com
YeastProducts.com
DirectPens.com
SimulatorRide.com
DriveComputing.com
GrumpyIrishman.com
MenuPlanningIdeas.com
RainbowLeggings.com
RingCleaners.com
RoadMonsters.com
AtlantaGeneral.com
NightEyeCream.com
RobotZombies.com
WickedLoveStories.com
NassauFlorist.com
HowToBuyDrugs.com
I don’t think any of those have any resale value to domainers, but they might sell to end users. It really depends on if you are getting any offers on domains like that. If not, you should try listing them as a package for sale on Flippa.com, before stopping your renewals. They are not bad domains, just not easily marketable.
Good point. I get offers on other domains, but not yet on any of these. Yes, to some end users these would have value … but these end users aren’t out there looking and don’t know what they are missing!
And I have never made any effort at outbound marketing to end users. I think about doing it and have written some scripts (better than the grammatically incorrect ones I get every day) but have never taken the time to research possible end users.
Also, I have never had any luck selling individual domain names on Flippa; (I am currently listing homeheating.guru, CharlotteLoanRates.com and acufootball.com). So I will take your advice and try selling them as a lot. Is there an optimal number to include and do they need to be related to each other?
I understand and agree with you Eric, the domain market is kind of strange these days.
I’m relatively new to domaining but I have had success at the beginning so I went crasy and purchased a bunch of domains.
I even paid quite a lot of money for some of them like lawyer-china.com on NJ and SN but have no luck selling them.
You are lucky you are a Premium broker for Flippa. It give you a head start because now, there are too many auctions going on on Flippa to be found if you don’t go for the Premium option.
best luck
Mario
Thank you for sharing.
“I find the current state of the domain name market confusing. Every week I read about a bunch of domain sales, all at what I consider pretty high prices, yet I have not had much luck lately selling my own domains. ”
I have the same question to myself as well. I actually stop reading blogs that includes sales report, and keep on finding buyers.
I have no success selling with Flippa, at the end I purchased one domain duh! Though I still have few listed in auctions e.g. Frauded.com, etc.
Anyway, I was able to move 10-15 domains out of my portfolio last week through forums fire sales.
Good luck to us all.
🙂
My sales in the last 12 months have been unusually steady! I kept the course on domains that brought criticism over the years but are now coming through handsomely! We are seeing a lot of “filler” domains in this thread and in the past could be pawned off fairly easily…now discerning buyers are holding back. What has been the difference for me is staying with domains that are of actual need not sound.
I want sell these all domains
Directory
1. gautambudhnagar.com
2. gurgaondirectory.com
3. mpdirectory.com
4. nagalanddirectory.com
5. meghalayadirectory.com
6. westbengaldirectory.com
7. udyogdirectory.com
8. varanasidirectory.com
9. roorkeedirectory.com
10. jhansidirectory.com
11. alwardirectory.com
12. budaundirectory.com
13. bijnordirectory.com
14. kutchdirectory.com
15. muzaffarnagardirectory.com
16. fatehpurdirectory.com
17. Thanedirectory.com
18. howrahdirectory.com
Yellow Pages
1. upyellowpages.com
2. mpyellowpages.com
3. doonyellowpages.com
4. shimlayellowpages.com
5. mathurayellowpages.com
6. bijnoryellowpages.com
7. varanasiyellowpages.com
8. budaunyellowpages.com
9. nainitalyellowpages.com
10. muzaffarnagaryellowpages.com
11. gandhinagaryellowpages.com
12. puducherryyellowpages.com
13. puriyellowpages.com
14. unayellowpages.com
15. manipuryellowpages.com
16. jhansiyellowpages.com
17. karnalyellowpages.com
18. kutchyellowpages.com
19. meghalayayellowpages.com
20. panipatyellowpages.com
21. wbyellowpages.com
22. suratyellowpages.com
23. kanpuryellowpages.com
24. Thaneyellowpages.com
25. jammuyellowpages.com
Total – Directory (18) + Yellow Pages (25) = 43 Domains
Premium Name
1. haqeem.com
2. atulay.com
3. farookh.com
4. gulfsha.com
5. omveer.com
6. aamish.com
7. akhlakh.com
8. darkhsha.com
9. jaibun.com
10. kaphil.com
11. panchauli.com
12. savesh.com
13. viniya.com
14. sarmes.com
15. sarmesh.com
16. pranjul.com
4 Characters
1. ofzv.com
2. ublq.com
3. ygvl.com
4. emqz.com
5. ifxv.com
6. onzw.com
7. rzge.com
8. vcjk.com
9. vcsz.com
10. ulkz.com
11. cwyb.com
Total – Premium Name (16) + 4 Characters (11) = 27 Domains
Company
1. pfinfotech.com
2. pfinfotech.in
Education Portal
3. admissiondirectory.com
Payment Gateway
4. weatm.com
News Portals
5. upcitynews.com
6. cityindianews.com
Real Estate
7. pfinfratech.com
Business Search Engine
8. bigmudra.com
Human Resources
9. onenaukri.com
Domain Sell & Re-sell
10. askmedomain.com
11. inoutdomain.com
Internship Program
12. nowintern.com
13. nowinterns.com
14. nowinternship.com
SEO Company
15. seodoot.com
Matrimonial
16. navvivah.com
Recharge Portal
17. todayrecharge.com
Website Designing & Development
18. webslook.com
Hosting Company
19. 50tb.com
20. 50tb.net
21. fiftytb.com
Porn Site
22. 18pro.com
Staffing Company
23. sustale.com
Training & Placement
24. ranktimes.com
25. virtualtpo.com
Thanks for reminding me to unsubscribe to this post 🙁
With only a few hundred domains, my view might be skewed, but the past 6 months have been among my best since I started (5 years ago). Sales and offers are both significantly up. I don’t have any names as good as physical.com, and I’m not looking for 6 figure sales. On the other hand, I’m not sure I would have kept any of the names on your list of 51 names.
Definitely the landscape is changing (doesn’t it always?). Longer tail keywords are tough sells, even the shorter ones (unless they can also be brandable). And when we get to brandables, trends change all the time. When too many companies brand with a -ly, -ster, or z (instead of s) suffix, those will lose demand. Considering a brand is supposed to stand out, there is a lot of sheep-like following of brand trends like this.
Aside from the names, I’m thinking another issue is one of expectations. Those are hard to get over if our expectations are based on what we paid for a name (if we bought at the wrong time and overpaid).
All that said, there are clouds in economy, and a domain name is something people will often postpone buying when things get rough. I’m expecting rough seas, and trying to cull out all the deadwood beforehand. I would be delighted if I could pick up $1000 for 50 of my least valuable names.
I think the buyer got an excellent deal!!
With respect, the names in your list simply are not great names. Just throwing two works together and thinking they will sell won’t work. You have to think, why would someone need that name? Are there good alternatives? Now that keywords are not important in names for search, it’s all about, pretty simply, what sounds great, and non-cheesy, and right for a business.
Almost every name in comments on this post are not sellable either.
I’ve sold about 50 names so far this year. I’d say 80% are sold through Sedo with a Buy It Now price. I believe that for mid-level nice names that sell for between $500 and $5,000, BIN is the way to go. Most are names I’ve bought for between reg free and maybe $100 at auction. I was able to pick them up because they don’t fit the “keyword in name” formula — they just sound like something someone would want. I can’t explain it well, it’s just a feel.
And every month I’m letting go of names that years ago I thought were worth thousands, which I now see are simply silly to hold.
One of the reasons that names have to be so strong today to sell, is that many companies are okay with names with other extensions. For example, .io is extremely popular with tech startups.
Other than really strong names like broadband.org and 3Dprinting.net, I’m not holding many non com names.
But I’m not buying any new names any more. Just selling off names I have. It’s too uncertain, and at my age too much work. 🙂
i looked thru your whole domains for sale list…most of your names are garbage, that’s why you aren’t selling any.
I sold domains for five figures that had been previously ignored by others. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Nuno