In a previous posting, I pondered What To Do With My 9000 Domain Names?. It has been 6 months since I wrote that, so I though I would give my readers an update:
1. Yesterday I sold a package of 4000 of my domains for $1.3 million. These domains were all parked (i had no plans to ever develop them) and made $1500/month total, which was significantly less than the $2800/month in registration fees, so that was my main motivation for selling. I did make an additional $50,000-$100,000/year from selling 15-20 of these domains a year, and $1.3 million was a lot less than I was hoping to get from selling them all, but since I was never going to do much with them, where was really no upside for me to keep them.
2. Aside from the big sale I made yesterday, I have sold around 50 other domains for $500,000 total over the past 6 months. This is double the number I usually sell, because I have been trying to make more deals, especially for domains that are making no money for me.
3. I switched almost all of my domains from being parked to having actual content on them. An example one of these sites is buywine.com.
They are still a work in progress, and soon I will add a lot more content and make them look nicer, but I at least wanted to get them all launched as soon as I could. Right now they are making about the same as when I had them parked, but over time search engine traffic should go up, which will increase income significantly.
4. My 350 florist related sites that I launched, as listed at FindFlorists.com, are now making enough to pay the $3000/year in domain registration fees, whereas before they were losing money. Hopefully over time they will get listed better in the search engines and I will make a profit on them, but as long as I at least break even I am fine with it.
5. I have not developed any more “big” sites, like I had listed in my plans, but that is mainly because I have been focusing on the various things listed above. Also, I have been working on adding to and fixing bugs on a bunch of my existing sites. Over the rest of this year I plan to actually create some good new sites.
So, overall I am happy with my progress in the past 6 months. I still have not solved the problem of how to make a profit from my remaining 5000 domains, but now that I have basic sites setup on them there is a good chance income will grow over time, plus I can play around with different ads and different site formats and different SEO strategies to try to optimize the sites, so at least instead of sitting on the bench I am now in the game.
Thanks for sharing Eric! I always enjoy reading what you write!
Can you share who you sold the 4K domains to?
The 4000 domains were all adult domains, and the buyer was somebody in the adult industry. Unlike me, they can actually develop all the domains, so it was a great deal for them. The majority of the domains were hand registered by me in the 1990s and the rest were all at least 7-8 years old, so they should do well in the search engines.
Great News and congrats on those nice sales.
I have almost 15000 domains and almost in same situation as you were.
Can you “PLEASE” share how do you sell domains?
I have them listed at sedo/afternic and get offers almost daily but 99% of the time there are no sales which may perhaps be because I am always asking decent money and not selling cheap.
I will really appreciate the tips.
Thanks.
The 4000 portfolio I sold yesterday was through a broker: huntingmoon.com
although it turns out the buyer was somebody who bought domains in the past for me. I still had to pay a commission though.
Other than that, a few sales are through sedo.com, the rest are just people who email me directly because they see I am listed as the owner of the domain.
Thanks again Eric, for the update.
You made this 4000 domains sale yesterday, is it all cash deal? If not, how does it breakdown? Have you been paid?
Thanks again.
It was all cash. Yes, I received the wire this morning. HuntingMoon.com handled the escrow.
Thank you for your response Eric.
Please keep us posted like this.
Very informative and helpful.
Congrats on the Sale…
Were the 4000 domains your adult domains or was it a mix from your portfolio?
It was all of the adult domains that I owned.
Congrats on the sale!
Congrats on the big sale.
I’m curious about your definition of “a lot more content” on your minisite experiment. I was surprised (pleasantly) at the amount of content on your BuyWine.com example. When I looked at a few of the sites a few months ago, they were all 1 page of content, then a 2nd page of games. The amount of content on BuyWine.com is a serious upgrade. All unique and outsourced?
I am not going to add more articles, just additional types of content like a news feed and an ecommerce feed. Yes, I just launched this new version yesterday which has 5 times more content than my previous version, but it is all still very rough and can use a lot of improvement.
Yes, all article content is unique and the games / puzzles / stories are unique. News feeds, photos, etc. won’t be unique, but will still make the sites better.
congrats eric. nice bulk sale to focus on other things rather than renewing all the time. will sav eyou time and money and focus on the gems
had you listed the portfolio of 4000 domains or were you approached about what adult domains you owned/
maybe themed portfolios is the best way to list large holdings?
I listed my entire adult domains portfolio for sale around 6 months ago with HuntingMoon.com. They went looking for buyers for me. They specialize in selling adult domains.
Well getting 4k domains off the books makes it easier to focus on the rest of your portfolio, and having the cash security isn’t a bad issue as well, after tax you are probably left with 1M or so.
So it works out to about $325 per domain, on a per domain level it doesn’t look all that great, but say the average domain is 10 years old, you would on the low end spent $400,000 on renewals offset by any income during that period. Well done, end of the day you still have 5K domains and a couple of million to boot.
Actually, after the broker’s fee and taxes I will net around $750,000. Yes, I still have 5000 more domains, so if domains shoot up in value, I will still make out well.
congrats to you eric. nice sale .
congras to evan and huntingmoon as well.
there goes $30k in annual renewals !
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Joe@DomainHoldings.com
Eric Your doing such a Great job Congrats 🙂
Right move….. go and spend some money, Thailand perhaps. Enjoy life.
Congrats on the sale and Good Luck for your future projects and sales…
Great insights. Thanks for sharing. Might I point out the insanity of this business? You invest in names and struggle to carry them knowing there will be sales over time. Meanwhile your parking company is making $1500 a month off you ($18,000), their feed makes $3000 ($36,000) a month off you and a bunch of people make $36K a year on the registrations. All with no expenses, investment or risk. That’s about $90K a year your money is making for others. The same you have to do 15-20 sales a year to match. (And then there’s the broker whom you also support). And we all do this every day.
Meanwhile there’s a 23-year-old kid I know that was good was a camera and editing on the MAC. Was making wedding videos etc. Then one day he met two hot girls on campus and decided to see if his skills could make a porn video. He set up a subscription site promising two original movies a week and posted a clip from his film on x-tube or porn tube with a link. Within hours he had 100s of “you’ve got money” notices @19.95 with automatic rebill. One of the first visitors wrote a porn blog and reviewed the site. The traffic and income exploded. He hired some crew and wannabe models started banging on his door. Rumor has it that he grosses over a million a month, the same that you got carrying and nurturing 4000 domains, one of which will probably earn this kind of money if connected to original content.
Just fruit for thought as you look to reinvest your proceeds.
Congratulations on your purchase. Go now for a month vacation in Bali, industry, and all return with new power. Good luck!
Congrats…
Hello, i have sms-mms.mobi, feveradio.com,applephones.eu,bestimplants.info, grants.so, inn.so for sale.
Lexassime@hotmail.com
Hi how r u..datz good hering about ur 9000 domains article..i want to sell these domain names….i want a suggestion what should i do…Domains Names List
superbdomainname.com
superbbrand.com
hotdomainauction.com
businessavenues.com
getinn.in
stockexchange.name
narrow.in
businessarticles.in
businessprofessionals.in
businesscareers.in
businessportal.in
onlineadvertisement.in
onlineadvertisements.in
internetadvertisement.in
webadvertisements.in
softwaresale.in
searchbutton.org
searchbutton.in
telephonebook.in
worldgames.in
wirelessproviders.in
I have a few hundred domains that I need to do something with. I need my domains to work for me rather than me work to support my domain habit. I am looking for the best way to develop those domains and am wondering about the cost involved. Is there a more feasible way to develop more of them rather than one at a time.
Parking is not working at all and I really need some viable ideas.
I would appreciate your comments and suggestions.
Thank You,
Sheila
domains@performancenames.com
I find workers to create content for me on sites like guru.com and odesk.com.
Congrats on your sale Eric…it’s also wonderful how willing you are to share and help/educate others….BRAVO!
To your success!
@AndrewHazen
Well Done!
Thanks for sharing!
Cheers, Mars
Thanks for the good info.
One domain at a time!!!
Great job Eric
You certainly are a classic,amazing how you tell the truth and it works.
Everyone I know believes every word you say.
Wish you had taken me along for the ride.
website domains and all. http://www.GayDomains.com
Wow. I wander how much it took to populate all 5000 sites with content (ballpark)? Thank you.
It took me a few months. I paid writers to write the articles.
Congratulations on your very nice sale. It’s tough to manage so many domains, especially when parking revenue has been so poor lately. It takes a lot of hard work and focus to develop out even one name properly. We decided to choose one of our 500 quality domain names at RedTruckDomains.com and really work on creating a profitable website. We chose ZipQuote.com
It’s now well ranked and earning money every day, but a lot of work was necessary to achieve this. Your 1M cash payout was a smart move!
That’s a lot of domains – I am still learning in this business but one thing I know. It seems right now only cheap people are making offers, which is why I have my domains priced so low .. Heck, someone sent me a $5 offer for newrouter.com … I mean, really ??
With an extension like .in I can understand why people only want to pay $15 per lll names, which is why I have them priced there and they are selling .. slowly but surely. Only problem is renewal fees come up in 6 months and then $15 pretty much kills any profit, so to stay competitive will be difficult. Got in the long term hold market (India) when I should of been finding good domains like one of the best I feel I picked up for $50 siriussportster.com
I am selling 2/3rds of my .in as I can only afford to pa renewal fees for 150 or so them for the 3-5 years needed to see high $XXX – $xx,xxx on the ones I consider the most valuable of all.
M, email me about telephonebook.in with your asking price. Also interested if either worldgames.in or wirelessproviders.in are getting any type in traffic ?
Encouraging writup. It’s good to see people still willing to inverse in high quality portfolios, especially in a down market/economy.
Congrats!
-Matt
Hello and thanks for sharing this post. Great news to see domain names selling in lots like this. I am looking to sell some of my names. I currently own around 600. I am looking to sell about 300-400. If anyone could share with me the best place to find a buyer of a portfolio of names that would be great. I have names like PatriotAct.com, UnionCity.net, SofaLove.com and SofaLove.net, PhdUSA.com, PTSchools.com, OnlineExecutiveDegree.com, SoberFarm.com, BloomingtonIndiana.org, DallasLeases.com, PaloAltoCa.org, AlbanyRealtors.com, and several others. I also have a few nice adult names like BlowBlow.com, XXXAvatar.com, AllNakedPics.com, AllNakedVideos.com, AdultSexPic.com, AdultEroticGaming.com and ComputerGamesForGirls.com. Any suggestions?
Hi Eric,
Hope you don’t mind me asking for a little advice… I’ve got about 300 .co keyword domains. If they were .com domains (which obviously they’re not) they’d together be worth $133 Million.
I’m not really a domainer (I just saw an opportunity when .co launched, and jumped on it), and don’t really have time to develop them (I’m running two other businesses in addition to this).
I’ve made more than enough to cover registration fees from sales here and there, but I know these have a lot more potential than that.
I’m trying to figure out what to do with them… I’d be open to selling them as a whole portfolio, but I’m not really sure where to look for a buyer. I’d also be open to partnering with a developer (perhaps allowing them to keep all profits beyond registration fees?), but I’m not sure of the best way to find someone, or if someone would even be interested.
Do you have any suggestions on what to do with them or where to look for someone?
If anyone else reading this post would be interested, feel free to contact me at adk365 at yahoo dot com.
Sorry, but I don’t know anything about .co domains.
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Joe@DomainHoldings.com
Oh, man, you’ve sold them too early…
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4000 domains should bring you about $40K a month.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. As I made clear in my posting, I sold 4000 sex related domains. Your parking service does not allow those, and even if you did allow them you can’t use any of the ad codes from those ad/affiliate networks you listed on adult sites.
Hi!
Nice blog and nice domaining advice. In the recent year and last year I’ve been trying to get and start domaining myself, but without a fixed/big budget and without to much info. I did mistakes, but learned a couple of things.
Do you think that a domainer starting in 2011/2012 can gain an impressive portofolio too? Can you recommend some useful resources for learning more about domaining?
Do we need a big budget to create a nice portofolio (tons of domains expiring everything).
I know you might be busy or not willing to share your secrets, but decided the best way to learn is to ask an experienced one in this field. Any blogs you recommend to read besides this?
Thanks!
I haven’t hand registered any domains in over 5 years, so I really don’t know how good that market is right now. I would think you are better off buying some better domains from other people instead, and then trying to develop them or reselll them. I have 5000 domains mainly from the 1990s and i can’t even make back the registration fee on the vast majority of them, but there are many domainers who do make money from that, I just have not found the secret to it yet.
For info about the domain business I recommend you look at http://www.domaining.com and http://dnjournal.com/resources.htm
– Eric
Hi Eric,
Can you please tell us how the domains are taxed in terms of whether it is a long term or short term gain.
Thanks.
I am not a tax expert, but I treat my domains as expenses at the time I buy them and then when I sell them I report 100% of the sales price as income. I don’t report the sales as capital gains. One factor in all of this is if you are a domainer or a website developer. I am both, but I mainly buy domains to develop them, not to resell them.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for a quick reply. I really appreciate your advice.
a) So let’s say you had hand registered a couple of domains ten years ago, and you are not a domainer per say and you have another business or occupation, you can sell one or more of these domains and pay taxes on the sale at long term capital gain. Is this correct? What would be the case if you did have another job for say first 8 years and for the last year or so, you got into developing your old domains. Would you be required to pay the taxes on the domain sales at regular tax rate or long term capital gains rate. Keep in mind that these domains were bought about 10 years ago.
b) However, if you are a domainer whose only job is buying and selling domains, you have to treat all your domain sales as regular income. Is this correct?
c) Lastly, even if you are a domainer, if you sell your company (llc), you would pay long term capital gains and not at your regular tax rate. Is this correct?
There are no clear answers from the IRS on all of these issue. For more info, see:
http://www.taxforum.us/break-room/t-domain-name-tax-treatment-4693.html
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1032021/
http://www.domainrich.com/2008/02/domain-name-sales-tax-irs.php
http://dnjournal.com/columns/tax_tips.htm
http://www.taxalmanac.org/index.php/Discussion:Domain_names_-_how_to_treat_them
Yes, if you sell your company, you are selling shares of stock, not specifically your domains, so most of the gain can be treated as a capital gain. For more info see http://www.gallingerlaw.com/selling-a-business/ .
I am not a lawyer, accountant, or tax professional, so any of the info I give is just suggestions for you of where to look for more advice.
– Eric
I can’t believe how much you are willing to help strangers. Thank you so much for your help and wish you the best of luck on all your ventures.
Hi,
Hows it working out?
“3. I switched almost all of my domains from being parked to having actual content on them. They are still a work in progress, and soon I will add a lot more content and make them look nicer, but I at least wanted to get them all launched as soon as I could. Right now they are making about the same as when I had them parked”
Is the revenue increasing?
We are in the same boat as you ;o)
Ian.
They are still making the same as when I had them parked. Traffic has not increased any for them in the past 6 months since I changed them to minisites. But, hopefully at some point they will increase in the Google rankings. Maybe it just takes time.