Payment Plans: Cover Your Costs and Use an Escrow Service

Elliot Silver
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6

I read AbdulBasit Makrani’s thoughts about payment plans on NamePros, as well as the commentary added by others. I thought I would share a couple of additional pieces of advice that I think could be helpful based on my own experiences.

I have done somewhere around 10+/- deals using payment plans. For all of them except for one, I used either Escrow.com, DAN.com, or John Berryhill for the escrow / holding service. There are other companies that offer payment plan deal facilitation, but I have not used any other services. Based on my experiences, there are two things I would suggest – use a third party provider to facilitate the deal and do your best to ensure all of the fees are covered with the first payment.

Payment plans can be beneficial for several reasons. The buyer will be able to purchase a domain name that might not be affordable without a payment plan, and if they buyer fails to make payment in full, the seller keeps the payments and gets the domain name back. Aside from not getting paid in full upfront, I don’t see many drawbacks that can’t be worked out in the payment plan agreement.

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GreenStreet.com Sold for $100,000 via Kate Buckley

Elliot Silver
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13

This afternoon, domain broker Kate Buckley of Buckley Media announced that she brokered the sale of the GreenStreet.com domain name for $100,000:

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You Can’t Look at Sales in a Vacuum

Elliot Silver
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18

Although I do not report my own sales, I appreciate when other investors and companies share their sales. Some of the benefits I get out of seeing other people’s sales include the following insight:

  • Types of domain names that are selling
  • Who is buying domain names
  • Where domain names are selling (venues/landers)
  • Pricing strategy
  • Keywords that are selling and the value of comparable domain names
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Report: Meal.com Was Acquired for $1 Million

Elliot Silver
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6

A reader sent me a link to an article from a Dutch entrepreneurial website, and the author reported that he spent $1 million to acquire the Meal.com domain name in 2019. On the about us page on Ondernemer.nl (dutch for Entrepreneur), the Publisher, Mitchel van Duuren, reported that he acquired Meal.com after founding MealPlanner.com and rebranded the business under the shorter domain name.

Here’s the excerpt from the page, with the English translation courtesy of Google Translate below the original excerpt:

“Ik kocht de domeinnaam mealplanner.com en huurde developers in om mijn visie tot leven te brengen. Deze visie bleek steeds groter te worden en dat zorgde ervoor dat ik in November 2019 de domeinnaam meal.com kocht voor het astronomische bedrag van 1 miljoen dollar voor wereldwijde expansie.”

“I bought the domain name mealplanner.com and hired developers to bring my vision to life. This vision was getting bigger and bigger, which meant that in November 2019 I bought the domain name meal.com for the astronomical amount of 1 million dollars for worldwide expansion.”

I reached out to Mitchel via the Meal.com contact page, and he confirmed that he acquired the domain name last year for $1 million. He also told me the domain name was purchased with a two year payment plan. I presume the deal has not yet been paid off.

Because the Whois information is “REDACTED FOR PRIVACY” at Enom due to GDPR, I am unable to see the current registrant of the domain name. I sent an email to the registrant via Enom’s website asking about the deal, but I did not hear back. The Whois record says, “Registrant State/Province: DC,” and the only domain escrow service in Washington DC I am aware of is facilitated by IP attorney Stevan Lieberman. I reached out to ask Stevan if he is handling escrow for this domain name, and he told me he could not confirm or deny.

Although this million dollar sale is self-reported and has not been verified by an outside source, it definitely seems well within the realm of possibility for Meal.com to be a million dollar domain name.

Assuming the domain name is paid off and also assuming Ron Jackson from DNJournal and/or Michael Sumner from NameBio are able to independently confirm the sale, it could become one of the top domain name sales of 2021. In the meantime, operating the business on Meal.com is a pretty nice upgrade for the company that was founded as MealPlanner.com.

“The Problem Is…”

Elliot Silver
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23

I don’t know about you, but in domain name sales negotiations, I regularly receive a reply from a prospective buyer that attempts to devalue my domain name by pointing out its flaws. “The problem is…” and then the prospect lists some of the potential issues with the domain name that, in their opinion, would reduce the value or the utility of my domain name.

How do I typically respond when someone points out some of the potential drawbacks of a domain name in my portfolio?

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Report: Sleep.com.au Sold for $100,000

Elliot Silver
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8

According to a report on Domainer.com.au, the Sleep.com.au domain name was sold for $100,000 AUD on the Drop.com.au domain name auction platform. (Update: It would appear that the sale is in AUD rather than USD. Assuming it is AUD, that would be approximately $66,559 in USD.):

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