Over the weekend, I received a $1,000 offer for a $1,997-priced domain name via Afternic. After a bit of negotiating, I agreed to sell the domain name for $1,500 on Sunday and the buyer agreed but has not yet paid. Yesterday afternoon, I agreed to sell a different domain name via Afternic for $2,500, and the buyer immediately paid and that deal is done and dusted.
I am curious to know how long other people tend to give buyers to pay for a domain name once a deal has been reached.
It is helpful to see what domain names are being used by companies that are growing and receiving funding. One way to do this is to read articles about fundraising on publications like TechCrunch and The Verge. There are many fundraising rounds that are shared in press releases and redistributed in industry-specific publications and not on the mainstream tech news websites I follow regularly.
To bridge this very large gap, I have found it helpful to follow two accounts on X that do a great job of uncovering funding rounds and sharing the domain names associated with these companies.
When someone decides to acquire a domain name, the process usually falls into one of three main paths: they have a brand already in mind and want to secure the matching or a similar domain name, they start their search from scratch using a platform to generate brand and domain name ideas, or someone reaches out to sell them a domain name.
In the first scenario, a buyer has already established (or is in the process of establishing) a brand name. They might be launching a company, introducing a new product, or rebranding an existing business. The brand name is already chosen, and they want to buy the matching .com domain name.
While looking through my DomainTools Whois alert emails (Name Server Monitor and Registrant Monitor) this morning, I noticed the Ton.com domain name appears to have changed hands.
Ton.com has long been owned by Digimedia and registered at Tucows. The domain name transferred to the Cloudflare domain registrar, with much of the Whois record redacted. One of the few things that isn’t redacted is the registrant location of Zug, Switzerland. The Name Servers also use Cloudflare nameservers.
I shared my observation on X:
I like how Atom.com has a feature that allows prospective buyers to track the price of a domain name listed for sale on the platform. If the price is decreased, the buyer is notified of the updated price via email. This means Atom has the buyer’s email address and the domain name that is of interest, which is a perfect combination for opening a conversation.
One bit of feedback I provided to Atom is that their brokerage team should be able to directly contact people tracking the prices of domain names to open a dialog. For instance, I have someone tracking the price of Navigator.ai, a domain name I have priced in the $200k range. It would be helpful for me to know if the buyer is interested in the $125k – $175k range or if the buyer has a completely different price expectation. This personalized engagement could help facilitate a deal.
My educational background is in the field of direct marketing. Following my undergraduate degree, I went to NYU and earned a Master’s degree in Direct and Interactive Marketing. I then worked at a direct marketing agency called Wunderman, followed by a corporate direct marketing role at AIG.
One of the hallmarks of direct marketing is testing. I recall one of my professors telling the class about the “test everything” mantra in this field. Testing is the most important thing, and once you have a winning campaign or strategy, you keep testing to see if you can iterate and improve your results. All of this is to say that I am a big believer in testing.
I read a blog post about testing written by GoDaddy’s Adam Ramsdell. While I agree with the testing sentiment, I think it would be very difficult for most domain investors – myself included – to accurately test in a way that will create actionable results.
