Buying Domain Names

I feel pretty old saying this, but when I first started buying domain names in 2003-2005, it was purely a volume game for me. I hand registered large amounts of domain names with the hopes of quickly flipping them. Success, to me, at that point, was selling a group of 10+ names for $500, which would be somewhere around 5x profit.

Sometime between 2006 and 2007, the volume business turned into more of a value business. I was hand registering fewer domain names and focusing on higher value acquisitions. Instead of trying to sell many domain names, I would target my efforts on just a few high value domain names each month. There was greater risk with this strategy, but the payoff was far greater.

In today’s business, I think it’s more difficult to sell in volume, since most buyers aren’t all that interested in purchasing large groups of domain names. I haven’t really tried this approach in the last couple of years, so that is pure speculation on my part. I am interested in knowing if you have success selling names in volume.

The issue I see with focusing on value vs. volume is that in a time where cash is king, domain names aren’t as liquid as they once were. Yes, you can still sell many types of domain names quickly, but there isn’t as good of a market as there once was. For instance, if you need cash and want to sell a 2 letter .com domain name made up of any letters, you can almost certainly sell it for $100,000 today. A few years ago, you could have probably sold it for $150-200k. That’s a pretty significant spread, especially if the domain name cost 6 figures.

The purpose of this post is to generate some discussion on whether you are more focused on volume or value these days.

I’ve found that many people don’t have an interest in selling their domain names to domain investors. Many seem to think they are either going to see their name re-sold for a huge profit or that they are getting a raw deal. I want to share some insight in when it might be advantageous to be a domain investor and how that can help you acquire a domain name.

More often than not, I buy domain names from people who have either never done anything with a particular domain name or have ceased operations on a domain name. These people tend to be happy to make money by selling names that aren’t making any money for them. Most don’t really care about the domain name after and are just happy to have made some cash for something that had basically been lying around.

On occasion, I will come across a domain name that is owned by