Domain Sales

I have been in a negotiation with a buyer, and it seems like we are close to an agreement on a domain name sale. The domain name is priced at $4,999, and I sent the buyer a GoDaddy checkout link to help expedite the sale. That’s where we ran into a payment snafu.

The buyer needs additional levels of authorization to approve a purchase above $5,000. With GoDaddy and its checkout link, the $21.99 domain name renewal is tacked on to the $4,999 purchase price, bringing the total amount over the $5,000 level. After a phone conversation, I understood the buyer could seek that approval, which would take an unknown amount of time, or the price could be modified. I opted to reduce the purchase price to get beneath the threshold.

A few years ago, I privately closed a very substantial domain name sale. Following the sale, the buyer did absolutely nothing with the domain name. The Whois was made private, but the nameservers remained the same as before. To this day, the domain name resolves exactly where it resolved prior to the sale.

Around that same time period, I sold a different domain name for $12,000 via Afternic. Within a few weeks, the domain name was relisted for sale on Afternic for around $15,000. My guess is the buyer chose a different brand name and relisted it for an amount that would make him whole. The domain name is now being used, but I don’t know if it sold again or if that buyer decided to use it.

I generally don’t report my domain name sales for a variety of reasons. Had I shared either sale publicly, some people probably would have claimed that they were fake sale or that the deals were not completed and I didn’t want to provide an update.

When some of my domain names are approved for Premium listing status at Atom.com, I’ve noticed the suggested prices don’t always seem to follow a clear rationale. In some cases, it looks like the suggested prices are influenced by the asking prices I have for the domain names at Afternic, but the exact numbers often feel somewhat arbitrary and contrary to what I’ve generally assumed.

In reviewing my last 13 approved Premium listings, 3 of them came in just above what I would have considered a natural pricing threshold. For example, one domain name was suggested to be priced at $3,099 instead of $2,999, which I would have expected. With a relatively small portfolio, I don’t have enough volume to test this in any meaningful way, but I’ve always assumed that “charm pricing,” prices just under round-number thresholds, was the smarter strategy for listing domain names. Some sellers even prefer -88 endings for their domain names.

I asked Atom CEO Darpan Munjal about the pricing, and he shared some insights about “precise” pricing rather than charm pricing:

San Francisco Business Times (behind a paywall) and TechCrunch wrote articles about Kyte shutting down. Kyte was a car rental service that operated on the brand matching Kyte.com domain name.

According to a Public Notice of Intellectual Property Sale listing on DailyDac.com, the company paid $550,000 to acquire the Kyte.com domain name in 2021. A total of 31 domain names are available as part of this listing.

Over the weekend, I received a $1,000 offer for a $1,997-priced domain name via Afternic. After a bit of negotiating, I agreed to sell the domain name for $1,500 on Sunday and the buyer agreed but has not yet paid. Yesterday afternoon, I agreed to sell a different domain name via Afternic for $2,500, and the buyer immediately paid and that deal is done and dusted.

I am curious to know how long other people tend to give buyers to pay for a domain name once a deal has been reached.