most expensive domain sold?

mantra · Nov 17, 2003

What is the most expensive domain you have sold?
If you can't say the name, say the price it was sold for ..

My highest (not so high) was $200 ..

Spider · Nov 17, 2003

My highest was for $2200

ad-lib · Nov 17, 2003

> $50k
< $100k

Spider · Nov 17, 2003

I have seen some of your names on GFY ad-lib, you have a very sweet collection.

Delete · Nov 17, 2003

seeker · Nov 17, 2003

$3000 , 3 years ago :-(

LewR · Nov 17, 2003

$500k - July 2000 - Act.com

- (Waiting for the 2nd wave fo teh .com rush....)

actnow · Nov 17, 2003

LewR,

A $ 500k sale would definitely help my cash flow.

seeker · Nov 17, 2003

$500K??????

what are u doing here?

go get a boat and go fishing!

Bob · Nov 17, 2003

$10,000.

dmyre · Nov 17, 2003

1100.... and it was an Ebay auction

Anthony Ng · Nov 17, 2003

Originally posted by seeker
what are u doing here?

LOL! Good question.

NameTower · Nov 17, 2003

2k
and finishing a 3.5k deal..

aguss · Nov 18, 2003

I sold two names for $4k each and I still dont understand why I cant pass the $4k.... :-D

cyphix · Nov 18, 2003

$1100

seeker · Nov 18, 2003

so let me see.
Other than the grand sale for $500K, most of us are not really making that much money.

It leads me to the next question...

Why are we here?
Do most of you do this full time or part time?
in the end, I wonder If it is worth it, or is it some sort of addiction?
Should we enroll in a 12 step program?

Spider · Nov 18, 2003

I make a couple hundred a week in affiliate programs so even though I could never do this full time, it helps pay for the little things.

Bob · Nov 18, 2003

Originally posted by seeker
so let me see.
Other than the grand sale for $500K, most of us are not really making that much money.

It leads me to the next question...

Why are we here?
Do most of you do this full time or part time?
in the end, I wonder If it is worth it, or is it some sort of addiction?
Should we enroll in a 12 step program?

I have definitely made more than I have spent. Over the last three years, I have probably sold (and made via affiliates) about $70k - $80k. Going for the homerun can be difficult to acheive. However, making money in this arena does not require hitting a homerun.

My largest sale is $10,000. However, I have had numerous sales in four figures. The four-figure sales probably add up to $30,000ish. Add to that the 100 - 200 or so sales in the hundreds, and you have another $20-30k.

One sale of $10,000 or 5 sales of $2000 yield the same amount of cash. With a limited amount of homerun material available, most people have to concentrate on hitting four singles rather than a homerun.

Who is more successful? A person who makes ONE sale of $10,000 or a person who makes ten sales of $1000/each? Some people would argue for the former, while some would argue for the latter.

What if LewR's ONLY sale was $500,000. What if I have made 500 sales, but my total is $300,000. Is LewR more successful then I am? What is LewR actually paid $400,000 for ACT.com and sold it for $500,000? His profit was $100,000. Now what if my cost on the names I sold for $300,000 was $20,000. Now my profit is $280,000. Now who is more successful? (NOTE: None of the info presented in this paragraph is factual. I know LewR has sold more than one name, and I know he paid less than $400,00 for ACT.com. I am merely trying to make a point.)

The success of a person is judged on an individual level. A $500 sale to one person might double their previous largest sale and make the person happy. Another person who sells a name for $500 might be just ho-hum.

Generally speaking, when a person starts in the domain name game, they hae terrible names. Over (hopefully a short period of) time, they realize this and strive to increase the quality of names that they own. This is where opinions generally take hold. The criteria that makes a good name to a newbie is generally different for a seasoned veteran. The newbies will naturally strive to be like the seasoned domainers and try to acquire names that would be considered "elite" (i.e. triples or homeruns).

I think the thrill of the chase is what keeps a lot of people in the game. You can compare collecting domain name (or ANYTHING for that matter) to building a pyramid. You NEVER get a homerun to begin with. You have to collect singles. As you get more and more singles, you naturally start to acquire doubles. You collect ever more singles and you pick up the occasional double. As you get more doubles, you eventually acquire something better - a triple. All the while, your standards rise as to what constitutes a "good" name. You begin to realize that some of the names you thought were killer as a newbie, are in fact JUNK. So you refine your portfolio and keep working on the acquisition of more double and triples, until one day, you get that homerun.

Again, what constitutes what names fall into each level is a personal opinion. I know for me, names that would be considered a "single" are names that would sell for $0 - $100. Doubles are names that sell from $100 - $1000. Triples are names that would sell for $1000 - $10,000. Anything over $10,000 for me is a homerun! Newbies might dream about having a sale over $500. A seasoned veteran might not get excited unless a sale is over $100,000.

I think it is the thrill of eventually hitting a homerun (however high or low the domainer has defined it) is why people stay in the game. People can hit a homerun in any ballpark they want (com, net, org, us, info, biz, cc, ws, bz, etc), but like American baseball parks, the fences are at different distances. (i.e. it is easier to hit a homerun in the COM park than it is in the BZ park).

Lastly, I know that I have built quite a nice portfolio over the years. I try to keep the single and double grade names moving. When I get a triple / homerun name (as defined by my standards), I usually hold them for long-term "investment". If I ever had to liquidate my portfolio, I would come out 20x better than what I have invested in them.

-Bob

Anthony Ng · Nov 18, 2003

Yeah, it's all a cost-benefit analysis, except that some of the variables could not be denominated by the dollar sign.

I made more than $30,000 just in the last 30 months (got 5-figure sale too!) and I'm happy with that. The truth is (believe it or not): even though I have been brought to court as an alleged cybersquatter, I never buy a domain name with the intention of selling it. (I always buy names with respective development plans in mind, but then many of them just don't take off.

) I've missed (turned down) some of the better offers, but hey I enjoy learning a lot about domain names. Now, I'm able to tell off-hand whether a name is registered or not withOUT consulting the whois, even to the proximity of which gTLDs are available! It's fun.