Domain Magnate

How do I make money domaining?

Well by most part it comes to:

1. know the market well
2. buy low
3. sell high

Domaining is a strange market. There are the end user prices and the market/reseller prices for any domain – both can vary a lot and there is a lot of money to be made on these differences.

However the risks are high, so you have to know the market very well. Being able to appraise a domain as close as possible for any specific marketplace is among the most valuable skills for a domainer. I’m usually able to predict a price pretty close: you can see my appraisal in the vqu.com thread where I posted it’d sell for $6500 – it ended at $6551, however LLL.com’s aren’t that hard to appraise. I expected my dato.com auction to end at around $9k and the winning bid was $9,001. I even won an appraisal contest over at domainstate last year. The point is (besides the fact that I like to brag sometimes.. but who doesn’t ) that since profit margins can be pretty low, being able to determine the price you can get for a domain is a top skill for a successful domainer.

How to improve that skill? Follow the market, check sales, appraisals, auctions. Experience and information.

• Here is a little exercise for everyone

Supernatural.com – Before you read further, take a quick moment to research and appraise this name. (1)

.

.

.

It was posted for appraisal on DNF, a year ago. This one is actually really hard to appraise, but here are the appraisals from that thread:

• thevirtual: low to mid $XXX,XXX IMO
• EJS: $2k – $5k+ imo
• valeria: xxx,xxx? you must be kidding. 3-6k
• PREDATOR: $100k name on it’s day Min. mid $xx,xxx
• Leading Names: 30k +/- 5k
• Onward: 25K reseller. 100K end user
• WeBuyThe.Com: Mid XX,XXX
• Devil Dog: xxx,xxx easily
• Rockefeller: high XX,XXX
• DNP: $50K to reseller min
• EJS: $30-40k if the traffic were to correspond to the OVT score.
• bdjuf: 15-25k$!
• NameGuy: 10K – 20K imo
• namestrands: End User value could be anything from $5k – $15k

Now take another moment to change/adjust your final appraisal before reading further… (2)

.

.

.

After this eventful appraisal thread the domain was sold twice. First sale was private and price is not known. However speculations were that it’s from $20-30k to above $50k (I assume the later is closer). Second sale was on sedo auction which ended at a whooping $125K 2 months later.

Please post your appraisals from (1) and (2) below, but no cheating
Of course if you knew the price before it’s no fun.

Tags: 20k, 6k, 9k, appraisals, auction, Auctions, devil dog, domainer, domaining, ejs, exercise, imo, marketplace, predator, profit margins, reseller prices, rockefeller, score, traffic, valeria

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Articles, Auctions, Country tlds, Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.