Whenever I sell a domain name, I use the funds to acquire new assets. Domain investing is a cash-heavy business that requires enough liquidity to continue to improve a portfolio. Sometimes suboptimal deals are made to free up cash to fund additional acquisitions.
Selling a domain name for less than its value can cause some regret. Selling a domain name to an unknown entity only to find out it was acquired by a massive company for a new brand can also cause some regret. Some people don’t have any regrets after selling their domain names because they set their prices and if they sell they are content. Others regret leaving money on the table or having to sell for below value because the need the funds for something else.
Do you regret any of your domain sales? You are welcome to share examples if you would like.
I don’t like regrets. If anyone went back in time, he’ll be with the same mentality and knowledge he had when he did whatever he regrets now and he’ll do the same thing/mistake again. I just try to think how to be better next time.
Definitely. Made a huge mistake not long ago. Buyer was anon email using fake name. Turned out to be billion dollar company. Still made good money but could of made much more.
JZ,
We get around this issue by replying to any and all offers from email addresses with Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, and the like with something akin to the following:
“Thank you for your offer. We are unable to consider your offer because it violates one of our firm’s policies: we only consider offers from potential buyers using their corporate email address. Please resubmit your offer using your corporate email address. Thank you.”
If they re-submit their offer as instructed, you discover what large company they represent and negotiate from there. If they don’t resubmit their offer, you avoid having to deal with an unethical buyer who would surely never behave in such a shadowy manner if you were the owner of a piece of physical real estate they wanted to buy from you. Due to the potential for anonymity on the Internet, they feel they can behave in bad faith and disguise themselves. Your enforcement of a policy targeting the issue makes them have to correct their behavior, making them behave normally as they would for a standard real estate transaction.
Why not use simply other tools to try and figure out who they are? Try to collect a phone number or see if the email can be traced to a social media account. Google + is great for that, as is putting these emails into Facebook.
Worse comes to worse, just quote a very high price and don’t take anything less. Whether it is Joe Shmoe or Microsoft inquiring, you’ll be content with the deal if that’s your approach.
Making someone expose their identity, when they don’t want to do that, may make them choose an easier path.
I think the email was created just to buy that domain. It was all very quick. Agreed to a price in less than an hour after being contacted. There was no haggling. I put a price out there and they accepted. I still got five figures but could of got mid instead of low had I known. Quoting a high price every time isn’t going to result in sales. You will sell the odd one but lose out on a lot of others. I paid very little for the domain. 10 bucks plus renewals. 7 years with zero offers. Its not terrible I just know they would of paid more had I only asked. Its not every day or week or month that you get someone that big with interest in what is essentially just a ‘regular’ domain.
I will have to try that. Thanks.
“just quote a very high price and dont take anything less”
If a seller is willing to do this regardless of buyer behavior, why not just put that same very high price out there on a BIN landing page and go about your day? There’s no need to consider offers or deal with buyers at all — just make ’em use the BIN button if they want to buy it.
Thats not usually my approach.
Remember cultural differences inertia is part of a societal change that takes a very long time to catch up Italy is a classic example v-e-r-y slow to catch up.
Well I used to own around 250-300 3 character .com domains long ago. I sold most in the low to mid $XX range. I also had bought a 3 letter .com for around $400 and reselling it for around $800. Anyway hindsight teaches me I lost out on a low $XXX,XXX in revenues flipping them way back then.
You sure it wasn’t more like 7 to 8 figures you missed out on?
Well only if I resold all of them at $5-$10K. When I see some of these 3 character .com names sold for $2K, $3K or some much higher… I refuse to check to see if I had owned them in the past.
Larry,
Let me know when you want to sell. We are looking to build our porfolio.
mike@hillsbay.com
Thanks!
I sold all my 3 character .com names long ago
I don’t regret the sale because it was still nice ROI from my purchase price, but believe I could have gotten more if I’d have held CashAdvance.loans for another 5 years. I sold it for $2,500.
Scriptability.com wish I had done a little more work before I sold it. Got what asked but I’m sure know I left a ton on the table.
Damn near all of my sales over the last 15 years are x-1xx expenses into x,xxx-xx,xxx sales so can’t really regret much as I know of no other investment where an initial $8 investment has turned into 1k, 3k, 5k, 7.5k, 16k, etc…
It happened to me last week. I was contacted by Godaddy/Afternic with an offer of $1200 on a domain I hand registered about 4 years ago. I responded I was looking for $5k and my reasoning behind my pricing. They wrote back 30 minutes later with “Sold”..and I had the money in 3 days. (I received $5k net)
I found out that the company that purchased the domain recently raised $5 million. I can’t complain because I received my asking price…but in hindsight I probably could have gotten a decent 5 figure amount.
“Only the ones I didn’t make”
Samit
This is the best answer! My sentiments exactly. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of buy, hold, and don’t sell.