My Favorite Kind of Sale

Every morning, regardless of where I am or what I have planned for the day, I spend an hour or so looking through lists of expired domain names that are either scheduled to be auctioned or pending delete. I use several different tools to analyze names, including Dropping.pro, ExpiredDomains.net, and personally curated lists using auction platform-provided search tools.

From these lists and tools, I hone in on a small group of domain names I want to buy. Some already have many bids and others have not received any bids that I can see. Using DropCatch and NameJet for pending delete domain names, I place backorders based on my risk tolerance. If I really want a particular name, I place a $79 bid at NameJet and a $59 bid on DropCatch and let them fight it out. For names I am less certain about, I use the Discount Club at DropCatch.

Depending on the day, I might win no auctions or I might win a handful of domain names. The prices I pay vary from $10 to thousands of dollars.

The most enjoyable type of sale for me is one involving a domain name I acquired in an uncontested auction. These are domain names that nobody else liked enough to even place a bid. There was something that caught my eye – usually the keywords or term made sense to me and seemed like a good opportunity to take a gamble at a low cost.

Individually, these low cost domain names have little risk. Collectively, though, my company spends into the five figures annually on uncontested domain auctions and renewals of these previously acquired domain names. Nearly all have little to no traffic to validate the purchase, and the only thing going for them are my gut feel at the time of purchase.

Selling one of these domain names at full retail price is the ultimate validation for me.

Picking domain names in auction that have many bids is pretty simple. At that point, the crowd has helped choose the domain name and it becomes a pricing and risk tolerance exercise. Buying blue chip assets is also fairly easy because they are pretty easy to identify and the purchase is also a risk tolerance exercise. Uncovering valuable domain name assets that everyone else has passed over is a challenge and selling them makes the effort pay off.

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

4 COMMENTS

  1. Love these type of sales. $89 spend in 2022 so far turned into $13,527 (net). Opportunities exist every day, just have to look for them.

  2. congrats Elliott. I got the same feeling when I married my 400 pound wife nobody wanted 8 years ago is is smoking hot 130lb now who keeps me erect at all times bro. Elliott you are a domain Guru, 1st ballet domainer hall of fame bro!!!! Love you Elliot, you are a star!!!!!

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