It Can Take a While to Sell a Domain Name

I am regularly impressed and often surprised by the large sales reported by Mike Mann. Konstantinos from OnlineDomain.com regularly aggregates and shares Mike’s publicly reported sales, and it really seems like Mike maximizes the amount of money he is able to get when he sells a domain name.

Mike gets well-deserved accolades for his domain name sales, but one thing people should understand is that it can take a long time to sell a domain name for a lot of money. Take for instance, Mike’s exceptional reported $20,000 sale of JSPP.com, which he shared on Twitter earlier today:

Selling a name for $20,000 is pretty good. Selling a domain name for $20,000 that cost $113 is great. You will note that Mike included his purchase date – December 1, 1998. Mike waited more than 20 years to sell the domain name.

Because it is a 4 letter .com domain name without any “bad” letters, it is likely that Mike turned down dozens or maybe even hundreds of offers over the years. It can take a great deal of time to sell a domain name for the right amount, whatever that amount is. I am sure there are plenty of names in his portfolio from around that time that have not yet received an offer that is good enough to get Mike to sell.

Mike is one of – if not the best at selling a domain name at its maximum price. People who follow Mike and his sales should realize it can take a long time to get a great offer.

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. Any quality dot com domain will take multiple years to garner the best price. You have to be prepared to wait at least 5 or so years, more in most cases. You can sell much sooner, but it won’t be at the level of Mike’s reported sales. Of course there are exceptions, but those are rare. Also, I am pretty sure that Mike is very proactive when it comes to domain sales. That includes a well-made marketplace website. It comes down to overall salesmanship. Knowing you are selling a great product that will bring great value to the buyer and knowing how to communicate that.

  2. Yes, it can take awhile to sell a domain name, unfortunately.
    2-3 years seems to be my holding time, which isn’t too bad, but it’s still too long.

    End-users are starting to realize the value of domains. Offer amounts have doubled or tripled, but so have domain aftermarket prices.

    I am just glad i picked up some good domain deals in the past.

    • If you are averaging 2-3 years then the selling prices are far too low (reseller prices?). May need to increase prices by 10X because in 2-3 years you will have nothing left to sell.

  3. “Because it is a 4 letter .com domain name without any “bad” letters, it is likely that Mike turned down dozens or maybe even hundreds of offers over the years.”

    Unless you are talking about $50 offersit is highly unlikely that it got dozens or hundreds of offers. A good 4 letter domain will only very rarely get a non domainer offer. These are names with huge supply and very low numbers of suitors.

  4. It comes down to your sales strategy. The typical domain flipper who is trying to get a quick sale is, (99% of the time), selling to other domain flippers. No flipper is going to pay retail for anything. But a company looking to actually use the domain for their business will pay top dollar. It often takes months or years for that business to come along.

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