Follow Up on 2022 Sales Leads Before EOY

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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.

2022 Master of Domains Announced by Escrow.com

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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.

Jenni Makes $20k Defensive Domain Name Purchase

Jenni AI is an artificial intelligence based writing tool helmed by CEO David Park. The company operates on the Jenni.AI domain name. Late last week on Twitter, David shared that his company reportedly acquired the typo Jenny.AI domain name for $20,000:

This Looks Super Sketchy

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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?

Bear Grylls Acquires Outdoors.com

Bear Grylls, a popular outdoor adventurer, writer, and television personality announced that he and partners have acquired Outdoors.com and relaunched the website with Grylls-related branding:

This wasn’t simply a great domain name purchase. In looking at Archive.org, it looks like Outdoors.com was already an established outdoors-focused brand. With Grylls’ background, it is a perfect opportunity for him to grow the brand and expand his own personal reach. It looks like articles from the original Outdoors.com website have been ported over to the new website, and the design has been modernized and updated with Grylls’ personal branding.

Using the Whois History tool at DomainTools, it appears that the domain name changed hands in September when it transferred from Namecheap to GoDaddy under Whois privacy. Outdoors.com utilized Whois privacy for quite a long time – since 2015, so the exact date the domain name sold is unclear.

Terms of the deal do not appear to have been announced. Because it looks like the entire business was acquired, this wouldn’t be considered a domain name-only transaction.

Friction with LTO + Make Offer

I use Dan.com landing pages for a great deal of my portfolio. Many of these domain names, particularly at price points above a few thousand dollars, use the Buy It Now (BIN) + Make Offer + Lease to Own (LTO). I have been running in to a bit of friction with this setup.

The way it is suppose to work is that someone can either buy the domain name immediately for the list price in one payment, buy the domain name in monthly installments of their choosing, or submit an offer to buy the domain name. If a prospect submits an offer and the owner accepts it, the buyer is sent to a payment page to submit payment for the agreed upon amount.