I am a highly competitive person. Whether I am playing a tennis match against a friend or playing a board game with my family, I always want to win. This competitive drive often shows itself when I am negotiating to buy or sell a domain name. Like when I am playing boys against girls soccer with my family, sometimes it’s better to lose the competitive spirit for the betterment of all.

I regularly find myself in domain name negotiations where a gap exists between the price I’ve set and the “max” price a buyer has in mind. If the gulf is far too great, it’s easy to wish the prospect well and move on to other things. When the gap is more narrow, it sometimes comes down to who gives up first.

Throughout the year, I’ve had quite a few deals that did not come to fruition. Several simply didn’t get over the finish line for one reason or another, and quite a few died when the payment was due. With just a few weeks remaining in the year, now may be a good time to follow up if you want to try and close deals before the end of the year.

Of the remaining weeks in December, this is probably going to be the best week to get deals done. People are still focused on business before the end of the year, but there isn’t always as much urgency as the following two weeks. People may be more responsive to emails this week than they will be for the next two.

With the year drawing to a close, Escrow.com released its 2022 Master of Domains list. This list is comprised of the top 10 highest-grossing domain name brokers of the prior year (2021). Typically, the list is revealed at NamesCon Global in January, but that conference was moved to the Spring. The sales volume is based on deals closed via Escrow.com.

For the fourth consecutive year, the top grossing domain broker of the year is Andrew Rosener of Media Options.

The list has become an annual tradition, with some of the best domain name brokers being honored. Typically, the award ceremony is held at NamesCon, but the conference won’t be held until the Spring.

Within the last few years, I sold a .com domain name for five figures via Afternic. I do not report my sales, and I did not make an exception for this sale. As far as I can tell, this sale went completely under the radar. I am thankful for this because I think it would look super sketchy if I had announced the sale.

The buyer of the domain name used Whois privacy, so I don’t have any idea who acquired it. A short time after the domain name sold, I saw it was listed for sale on Afternic when I did a Whois search of the name. The price was not very much higher than my sale price, so it caught my attention. Why would someone buy a domain name and almost immediately list it for sale just a bit higher than what was paid?