Buying Domain Names

Promise I Can’t Keep When Buying a Domain Name

On occasion, I will get a special request while negotiating to buy a domain name. A domain owner will occasionally ask me to keep an email address active for a period of time or continue forwarding or resolving a domain name to a website for a set period of time. Depending on the length of time requested and my desire to buy the domain name, this is an easy request to fulfill.

One request I have heard several times is that the domain name is not allowed to be used in a specific manner once the sale is completed. For instance, the owner may be a large accounting firm and they require that the domain name is not used for another accounting firm. Even if this request is fairly easy to complete, it is a promise I can never make.

The Hunt is Fun, but Validation is Critical

Every morning, I spend around an hour going through lists of domain names that are coming up for auction. When I say every morning, I mean every morning. I do this on weekends, when we are traveling, when we have friends or family over (in non-Covid times), and all those times in between. I review lists from auction platforms, Dropping.pro, and I recently added ExpiredDomains.net to the list of tools I use daily. This is the hunt, and it is probably the most enjoyable part of domain investing.

As I and others have discussed many times, the prices achieved in expiry auctions have grown in recent years. It has become much more challenging to find what I would consider to be a deal, so the hunt has expanded. I never focused much on pending delete auctions, save for the occasional gem, but I have been focusing on that area a bit more.

First Purchase of 2021 and Last Purchase of 2020

There aren’t really any days off for a domain investor that buys and sells domain names for a living. Each day, regardless of whether it is a holiday or not, thousands of domain names come up for auction or completely expire and become available for registration. I was working minimally on New Years Eve and New Years Day, and I thought I would share the final domain name I purchased in 2020 and the first domain name I purchased in 2021:

Keep on Touching Base

When it comes to domain investing, people tend to focus on the domain name sales. Outbound sales is a hot topic, and it is an important topic for people who rely on it to sell their domain names. There are various threads covering everything related to outbound sales – from the sales pitch to the subject of the email to the number of times to contact someone about a particular domain name.

Sometimes a person wants to buy a domain name but they don’t have the budget or need at the time of contact. Touching base with a counterparty is a great way to keep the conversation going. People’s wants and needs change over time, and staying in communication is how to get deals done.

Check All Marketplaces for the Best Price

As I recently mentioned, I have been using ExpiredDomains.net quite a bit lately to search for domain names to buy. Others have touted its great search functionality, and searching it has become a part of my daily routine.

After doing many searches of the different domain name sales marketplaces with various filters set, I have noticed there are pricing discrepancies at different marketplaces. A domain name may be listed for sale on GoDaddy for $14,999 and listed on Sedo for $4,000. It may also be listed via Epik for $14,999. The domain name landing page may have a different price altogether. There are quite a few domain names that have come up that are listed on different marketplaces at different price points.

Set Up Backorders on NameJet

About a year and a half ago, I sold a domain name that was quite replicable. I don’t want to give away details about the domain name I sold, but it was the type of domain name where I could change keywords and similar types of names would also hold value. I wanted to buy similar domain names, but they’re all owned already.

One issue I faced is that these domain names were valuable to end user buyers in the mid 4 to possibly low 5 figure range, but they don’t exactly hold a ton of liquid value. It wouldn’t make much sense for me to reach out to the registrants to try and buy them because I would need to spend in the low to mid 3 figures for them on the buy side, and not too many domain registrants are willing to sell in that range when emailed out of the blue.

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