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Selling a Domain Name for $1 Million

Subscribe to Elliot's BlogI was thinking about the disconnect between domain owners and end users today and trying to think of ways to bridge the gap. While it may be a bit of an unrelated tangent my mind went on, I came to a simple but accurate conclusion about selling a domain name for a lot of money.
The only way you can sell a domain name for $1 million is by walking away from $500,000. It’s a simple statement, but I believe it’s true.
Several years ago, I was playing Double Down video poker on a cruise. If you’d win a hand, the game would show 5 cards. One card would automatically flip for the player and the player had to choose the game’s card. If you win you get a certain payout, and if you lost, you would lose everything you had earned. Every time you got it right, your winnings would double. You could either double again or collect your winnings.
The long of it is that I won $1,200 by doing this several times, and when I stopped and got 3 buckets full of quarters (and a Jackpot t-shirt). Instead of thinking about how cool it was to win, I only could think about what could have been if I hadn’t stopped. A couple hours later I was playing and had winnings of $1,600 by doing the same thing – only to lose at $3,200.
Point of this is, you never know what you can ultimately get for a domain name if a buyer is motivated enough to buy it. It takes guts to turn down a $500,000 offer, but you won’t get a million dollars for your domain name if you don’t walk away from $500,000.

Domain Investors Face Liquidity Problems

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Subscribe to Elliot's BlogAny way you look at it, the economic situation is impacting nearly all domain investors. Less PPC and somewhat lower sales means even less revenue for the many in the industry. Without these two revenue streams being at full strength, it’s getting more difficult for domain investors to pay bills. Since you can’t pay your bills with domain names, liquidity problems are something that many domain investors are facing.
If this is the case for you, there are at least two viabile options – both of which involve using your domain names as leverage. Domain Capital and Digipawn are two companies that are willing to give loans to many domain owners with their domain names as leverage. These companies are domain experts, and they are able to value your domain names for lending purposes.
If you are in need of a loan, visit these companies’ websites or drop me a note and I will send you an introductory email.   I don’t work for either company, nor do I receive a commission for referrals.

Part Two: So What is a Click Really Worth?

Subscribe to Elliot's BlogWith apologies for stealing Mike’s title, I wanted to show another example of the great point he made (and one that many others have also been saying). The main reason why I am developing some of my websites is because I want to generate the most revenue per visitor.   I believe there are 4 levels of doing this – the top 3 of which can only be harnessed by developing a domain name rather than parking.

  1. Selling your product or service to visitor
  2. Selling another company’s product or service and earning a commission
  3. Selling advertising space directly to a company who sells that product or service
  4. PPC advertising

While I was reading Mike’s post about what a click is worth, I received the following email from one of my developed websites:

Hotel Name: Doubletree Hotel
Note: There may be a time delay for this reservation to be reflected in the property’s reservation system.
Map/Driving Directions Local Weather

Reservation Details
Check-in date:: Friday, October 10, 2008 Check-in time: 1500
Check-out date: Sunday, October 12, 2008 Check-out time: 1200
Number of rooms: 1
Number of nights: 2
Number of adults: 2
Room description: 2 Double Beds Non Smoking Non Refundable
Rate Information
Room #1
Rate type:
Rate breakdown: 134.10 USD for Friday, October 10, 2008
134.10 USD for Saturday, October 11, 2008
Total rate: 268.20
Taxes and fees: 42.90
Total (1 Room): 311.10
Payment Information: $311.10 USD charged to your credit card to secure this special rate. This amount includes room rate, tax recovery charges and applicable service fees and extra person charges, if any. Hotel rates are based on double occupancy unless otherwise noted. Charges for extra persons and / or children may apply and will be due directly to the hotel at the time of check-out.

It can be very difficult (if not impossible) for a domain investor to build and manage a completely separate company on one of his domain names (see Bobbleheads.com as a great example of a business run by a domain investor). A business owner needs to be passionate about his industry, and running a business takes a tremendous amount of time and effort.
However, there are happy mediums between running a full business and operating a pay per click website. Mike illustrated how a click that would have earned him $1.00 turned into a $300 sale. Likewise, my hotel reservation would have yielded a $1.00 click, but now I made 10-20x that on the sale. While obviously the conversion rate needs to be 10% or higher for this particular sale to make sense, most of my hotel reservations yield greater returns.
Depending on the product or service our sites promote, we really could be giving away the house when we park domain names.

Structuring Domain Deals With Long Term Considerations

Subscribe to Elliot's BlogI’ve heard a lot of mixed views about structuring deals that don’t require 100% payment upfront. Instead, the owner typically receives a payment upon closing and either a profit share or structured payments over time, depending on the success of the company who buys the name. If you can afford to wait to be paid, I think these types of deals are fantastic.
When I was at AIG (accident insurance sold via direct mail, phone and web), many of our deals were structured to benefit the marketing partner more on the back-end in exchange for concessions on the front end.   Our partners knew our group’s track record, the LTV of customers, and they knew a back-end deal could be more lucrative. This allowed our group to spend more on testing and helped our current P&L. Only if the campaigns were successful would we have to pay a greater share of the long term revenue.
For domain deals, I think this could work in the same way. The caveats, of course, are that the buyer has a track record of successful Internet companies and that you retain control of the domain name if the business fails. While the upfront profit may be less, the back-end potential should be set up to be far greater than if someone would pay all cash. Doing a deal like this really requires you to not need the cash upfront, but it could be beneficial if structured correctly.
Many of the largest domain companies and domain venture capital companies have been successfully structuring their deals with less cash upfront and greater back-end considerations. If someone with a proven track record and a solid deal were to approach me, I would strongly consider a mutually beneficial deal structured in this manner.

Impetus for our Economic Woes – "Free Money"

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Subscribe to Elliot's BlogAbout 10 months ago, I wrote a  post about people who were “lucky” enough to receive lines of credit by accident at K-Mart. While everyone is pinning the credit problems the country is facing on Wall Street greed, I think the blame needs to be shared. I believe this is a good illustration about how Main Street needs to share the blame with Wall Street.

“‘Free Money!!!’ was what some Wauwatosa, Wisconsin residents were yelling as a Kmart computer glitch caused all credit applicants to be approved for lines of credit between $850-$4,000 this past weekend.
So many people got excited about the available credit that the store ran out of applications, and someone was selling applications from another Kmart for $20 in the parking lot. From an outsider’s perspective this is both sad and foolish. The sad part is that people were crazily exclaiming “free money” simply because their credit applications were approved. The foolish part is that these people somehow believe credit is “free money.”
As we have been learning, the United States economy is facing some difficult times due to an abundance of companies giving mortgages, loans, and other forms of credit to undeserving citizens. Sure, the reward is much greater for these higher interest borrowers, but the risk was too great. It’s clear that Americans view credit as something other than what it is.
Marketers jam our mailboxes with credit applications. Telemarketers call us and offer us lines of credit over the phone. Department stores practically beg us to apply for a card to save 10% on all purchases we make that day. It’s about time we become responsible for the credit problem and not continue to enflame the situation.
As corporate citizens, we need to think beyond the next quarter or fiscal year. We need to realize the impact of our decisions and how they will impact us down the road. Maybe denying high credit risk borrowers is a bad business decision today, but doesn’t it make sense?”

You Choose the Topic

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Subscribe to Elliot's Blog I am working very hard on re-launching a completely new Burbank.com, so my brain is fried. A number of people have asked me various questions about domain investing in the past few weeks and I’ve tried to post responses when possible. Today I am asking people to submit questions to me which will become the topic of a post next week.   I will choose the question/topic, and if I have the time, I will try to write more than one post from the submitted topics.

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