Hi, congratulations!!!
I'm astonished by your achievement!
This post is such a huge inspiration
I just started 1 year ago. Had 4 lowball sales in the first year. I guess it's not that bad for a beginner.
If you pay 9.5$ with GoDaddy, I think you have some kind of discount, since they are charging 19$/y for renewals, I'm transferring out everything before my domains expire.
I own now 250 domains, mostly .coms, this year I slowed down the acquisitions and trimmed my folio to dump the worst ones. I was looking to create a similar website for my collection, I will probably start with the SQ WL and if it goes well, I might develop my website.
I have a couple of questions for you:
1) Are you seeing a better STR with your own marketplace?
Where do most of your sales come from?
Does it benefit also your average profit with fewer commissions from the other marketplaces?
2) Can you please share your preferred method and the average cost of acquisition?
3) And why do you price most of your domains within a certain range?
Also about pricing which one do you think could be more effective? 2450, 2488, 2495, 2500?
I see most of your prices are straightforward but you still have some other prices like that.
4) I usually see very high prices for some domains, but yours are mostly ranging between 25k and 1.5k. Is avoiding pricing high on your domains a deliberate choice to sell them faster and reinvest in new domains? I mean instead of holding them for a long time hoping to sell them at the highest price possible.
Any general advice would you give to your younger self when you were just starting out?
Thanks!
Paolo
Hi, Paolo
I wish you success in your journey )
The number of offers, especially, low ball ones, doesn't mean much. Even accepted higher offers often don't close. What matters is the actual sales and the bottom line (if those sales pay for renewals and leave sufficient profit).
The problem with small portfolio is that having 0 or 4 sales with 250 names could just be the matter of luck, not skill or quality of names. Basically, if I were to randomly split my 27k+ names into the batches of 250 and track sales there, I'd have batches with zero to 4 or more sales. Just by pure randomness.
So you might want to have few "second opinions" on your portfolio and if overall you are on the right track and the names are investment grade with adequate pricing.
GD renewals: yes, I pay around $9.5 and that price is not exclusive. You need GD discount club membership that nowadays costs around $240/year, if I am not mistaken. With small portfolio, that could add $1/name for you, but with large portfolio it doesn't add much. You could also look for coupons or buy it for a month, renew and discontinue until next year, if you are not using GD auctions.
own marketplace: I am taking it slowly. I won't start testing the conversions and STR until I am fully satisfied with it. But, yes, when fully ready, it should provide STR of 1.5% to 3%.
Sales: since 99% of my names use Afternic landers and are listed at Afternic FT, of course, most of my sales come from there.
cost: I don't do handregs, so my names are either auctions and private buys at low, mid $xxx average or closeout at low $xx.
Pricing: most my names are priced around $2500. Anything above for good brandable names seem to affect STR negatively although I haven't done proper a/b testing on this yet. Just empirical observation. This seems to be even more the case since the start of 2022. $2500 also happens to be the "magical' pricing point where the math works fine. Meaning, STR is near 1% (if names are desirable for businesses), and after commission you have enough to pay renewals and make an adequate return for the level of risk involved. And, if I don't think a name is worth $2500, I normally just don't buy it.
I also haven't done proper testing for the ending digits (00, 99, 88, 50 etc.). I use 00 a lot, because I read that for the large impulse buys it might help, as anything "scientific" make buyer question the price and its fairness. Not sure if it really works that way for domains, but generally it works fine for me.
Pricing higher: yes, I do have some names priced higher, but that is not some random numbers. If I price the name high, it might mean that the name is expensive to buy, hard to replace, I might have an own potential use for it or all of those.
Advice to myself: hmm... buy bitcoins? ))))) For domains, I think I had good systemic approach from the beginning and there is not much I'd change. I have always been business-centric in my choice of names. I.e. a name should have utility for a business, should be able to contribute to its growth, be good "brand equity vessel" for it. So that criteria alone has helped me avoid costly mistakes.