Daily Poll: What Rate of Return Do You Expect on Domain Investments?

When buying or registering a domain name, most people have a sales price in mind. Some people hand register names they hope to sell for a few hundred dollars and others buy names for thousands of dollars and hope to get a 50% ROI (less than 1x) on their investment.

Today’s poll question asks what rate of return you expect to achieve on your domain name purchases. You are invited to vote in the poll below and I encourage you to post additional thoughts in the comment section.


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

9 COMMENTS

  1. Wholesale prices have certainly increased in the last few years but retail/enduser prices have remained somewhat flat, so the ROI is being squeezed. I have simply grew a bigger set of balls and ask for more.

    The bigger balls is part buying better names and matriculation.

    Your 10X return is a good dividing line.

  2. I’d have to say it all depends on the first paragraph you posted. There are hand regs that I have gotten 10x the investment while a premium domain I would expect much less of a multiple.

  3. I think domain names are much riskier than most investment alternatives (e.g., stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.) and expected returns need to be risk-adjusted accordingly. I would expect a 10x ROI at a minimum to compensate sufficiently for the risks.

  4. Almost every domain I’ve sold was an $8 acquisition held for a a few years of renewal fees. x,xxx-xx,xxx is where all of my sales fall. I buy nothing from auction houses. My last 2 sales produced over 19k in profit both hand regs held for a few years.

  5. More info is needed. If the domain is a new gtld, it would be reasonable to actually expect a negative return (ie, to lose money). If it is a good .com, a 10x-100,000x is definitely possible. Motto: gtlds suck, stay away.

  6. Your question asks what Rate of Return you want, but the answers are expressed as total return.

    That’s a big issues with a lot of domainers. They might hold onto a domain for an extra few years to make an extra 15%, but is that worth it?

    What kind of annual rate of return do people expect?

    Might be a good future poll question.

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