Domain Sales

It’s been said that high value domain sales help improve the domain aftermarket, and I don’t disagree. This has led to the question about why I don’t report my domain sales if it can help other domain investors. I want to share a few reasons about why I don’t generally report the dollar amounts for my sales and/or acquisitions.

Let’s start with the easier question of why I don’t report my domain acquisitions. When I purchase domain names, I usually have a plan to re-sell them, and quickly. If I emailed Ron Jackson or had the seller email Ron to let him know my purchase price, it makes it much more difficult to make a nice profit margin on the sale side of things. Who wants to pay $25,000 for a domain name they know I bought last week for $15,000?

The more difficult question to answer is why I don’t report my domain sales. It could be a “feather in my cap” as they say to report high dollar sales, and it could also help the industry. For instance, if I were to sell a travel domain name for $xxx,xxx, I am sure that would give a comp for someone else to use for their domain sale prices and it might also seem neat to see my name in the DNJournal sales report.

There are a few reasons why I keep my sales quiet. First and foremost, my buyers generally want to keep their acquisitions private or they wouldn’t even know about the DN Journal sales report. They either don’t want people to know what they paid and what they’re buying, or they don’t really care about reporting a domain purchase.

Secondly, since I make my living selling domain names, I don’t want to report sales and have others start buying names in the same areas I am buying/selling. Similarly, if people see me selling high value names in a certain vertical, it will increase my acquisition costs for other similar names that are on the market. To that point, I still don’t understand why those high value long tail insurance domain sales were reported last year because it likely made them all the more expensive for the buyer.

Thirdly, I don’t want a seller to know I just flipped a domain name I bought from him or her for a significant profit. It’s no fun knowing you could have sold a name for more, and I don’t want to cause someone to feel that way. I also don’t want my future acquisition cost to go up if we do business together in the future.

Finally, I don’t want people to know how much money I earn.  That’s for my wife and accountant to know. No offense, but my income isn’t your business, much like you wouldn’t expect to speak with your co-workers or boss about their salary. The only thing I have said and will say is that I make my living off of domain sales, and there was no “family money” involved with my business.

I apologize if this doesn’t help the domain industry as a whole, but I can’t compromise my own business. I do list some of the domain names I have owned and sold, but that’s pretty much it. I trust you understand.

I am a big fan of art. One of the downsides of living in Manhattan is that I don’t have a whole lot of wall space for art, although I could certainly fill them up if I did. Ironically, when I was in graduate school (before domain names) I bought and sold art. I didn’t do it to make money, but I did it to finance my art obsession (ie buying a bunch of limited editions at wholesale cost and selling them for a small profit each to keep an edition for free).

Some of my favorite artists include Agam, Sol Lewitt,  Charles Fazzino, Peter Max, Keith Haring, and several others. Most of these guys are more mainstream artists, but a couple of my favorites are not.

One such artist that is not really mainstream yet is Mr. Brainwash. He is known as a street artist, but also has some very cool non-street works.  He had a very cool exhibit/show in NYC for a while, and I am a fan of his work.

When I was looking into some street art, I saw that Buy Domains is selling StreetArtist.com and StreetArtists.com, each of which is priced under $3,000. I was close to buying them, but I felt that I would have to build websites to sell art in order to make the most from these domain names, and I am not interested in getting in the art biz right now

In its recent sales RSS feed, Sedo just announced the sale of StreetArt.com for $12,000. I think this was a pretty good price for the seller, and the buyer should look into acquiring the other two domain names, which are pretty cheap  comparatively. If you happen to like art, perhaps you should look into buying these two names. If you have an interest, connect with Sonia and ask her to set you up with a good price for the pair.