Five Figure Domain Sale in Q1 2014
Typically, I don’t report any of my domain name sales, but having seen recent articles of fellow domainers has led me to do just that. With that being said, last year in Q1, I sold the domain name innovations.org to an end-user for $12,500. I approached the end-user with a simple email stating that the domain name is available at a premium and if they were interested, they should let me know as soon as possible. They replied asking for the price which I in turn replied with the asking price of $19,000. They wanted to know what justified my price since an automated appraisal tool called Estibot states it is worth $7,200.
I explained that these tools were not very accurate and proceeded to show him comparable sales such as that of the .COM which sold for $108,000 a few years ago. I also emphasized the importance of this domain name for their brand. He then countered with $10,500. After some back and forth e-mails, we agreed on $12,500 through Escrow.com, buyer pays fees. The negotiation and transaction took approximately 2 weeks time.
A few things to note are 1) I wanted a quick sale to cover other expenses, hence the cold-emailing and 2) This was just one of the many replies I received with interest. I prefer contacting numerous qualified prospects at once (in a non-spammy way) since this provides valuable insight during negotiations. There’s nothing wrong with cold e-mailing anyone as long as you provide value to the end-user. The same principle goes with marketing in general and cold e-mailing/cold calling are ways to do just that.
