How I sold a Hand Reg Name for $1988 and netted only $880 from the sale

A very funny story from my domaining journey.

Filled with anxiety, anger, frustration, and final realization that $880 net is not that bad for a 99 cent hand reg

Here is how it unfolded. This name had expired and it somehow had to sell immediately when it crossed 30 days and went into Auction.

Now I had once asked SAV if they would cancel an Auction that started because I forgot to renew. They denied and I had to win it back so, I thought who will bid on a .biz

This is from a Post that I made on Namepros in 2020, 5 months after I started domaining.

Swetha wasn't selling names for 69888 those days, but a modest 2-5K, and even then her portfolio was profitable and It was a big part of my learning since she shared everything. During that time, Namebio only showed what sold. While it was very useful in developing my eye to pick what type of names sells repeatedly, it wasn't complete and didn't show a clear picture.

And it only gave me dots for me to connect

I discovered domaining in Mid 2020 as a n00b.
I bought useless 3L. in, China Blacklisted 5N, Random 3L .net and .org and went on a hand reg spree.
Never heard of DAN, Afternic, Domain Sherpa, or Namebio before
And I generated 125K in sales in 2021 from an initial outlay of $15K

https://twitter.com/TonyNames/status/1473596824980123651

2022, I have done around 290K YTD
But It is far from what I expected.
Turns out 2021 was a great year for domaining.

It is also a blessing in disguise that the 2022 slow down came immediately after a very good year.

It has been a good lesson and taught me to pivot my strategy

My very first Sale was in Nov 2020
A very motivating sale of $2980, quickly followed by 3 sales on Sedo totalling 11K

In retrospect, I might not have made it this far, if not for those sales. That recency bias helped

In the 2 yrs since then, I've done a total of $390K in sales Some context.
I reinvest almost everything so it helped me snowball my sales.

I started with total out of pocket investment of 15K.

But by November as I mentioned I had sales of another 15K.

And every month I reinvested back.

Here is a break up

How to use ExpiredDomains. net to filter Backlink domains.

You can use ED as the first filter to shortlist Backlink names without using other Fancy tools

Of course you will need to do good due diligence but this is for the initial filter.

"BL" is the total number of Backlinks ED uses some other tool so the "BL" number will not be same as Ahrefs or Semrush numbers but it is close and good as a Filter.

DP: is the same as Ahrefs RD (Referring Domains). Total number of Unique websites linking to the domain

A very high BL/DP ratio "usually" means Spam

Domaining FAQ Thread:

Will add this to my Sticky and continue to add on this as I get questions from new domainers.

Feel free to ask and I will answer them under this.

🧵 👇🏻 Where do I list my names?

You should lists everywhere possible for exposure.

Afternic, Sedo, DAN, Uniregistry, Epik etc
Registries also have their own marketplace, so don't forget to list them on their respective marketplaces as well.

eg: You can list in Namesilo, Dynadot etc

July Domain Sales Report.
Same number of sales vs June surprisingly.
I took a lot of make offers as usual with my slow months. I had only 1 Make offer in June.
I should have taken a few low balls to hit 30K but I rejected for the culture 😅
Pretty sure August will be better. The sav sales was not an Auction sale. They contacted SAV support since it had default sav lander without a price

Connecting the dots and using various data points and not using a few in isolation is important.

Let me give an example of how I look at data.
Last names.
Last names make great brands
But not all last names are the same.
👇🏻 If a last name also belong to a football star, a writer, a movie star (obviously) etc, the TLDs taken will very high.
So you plug in the name to Linkedin to see how many "people" results are there instead of just TLD taken.
Not that it is a bad name, but you get the drift.

You should depend on GEO outbound only for cash flow in the beginning and you should start learning how to buy Self-selling-names as soon as possible.

Here is what I would do if I was starting out and was relying on Geo names to build a portfolio: 1) Understand how bigger Service Businesses are naming themselves.
Check out the larger businesses that cater to larger Area. Not your local business that buys $200 names, but those operating in the State Level and Regional Level.

This is a Sticky of some of my posts that were popular. I will keep adding to this thread as a way to organize my tweets and thoughts. Feel free to let me know if I missed any important tweet, thread etc. How to curate your own list of keywords and use expired domains to save the list for quick research

https://twitter.com/TonyNames/status/1514133800623640576

2 Word Names as I understand:
KeyManInsurance is a Three Word Name Always taken together. Like Credit Report. Auto Insurance. Home Loan etc.
This is a Tier above 2 word names that makes sense together.
Best Insurance is a 2 word that makes sense together.
These are other types 👇🏻 Key Insurance is a Brandable Two Word for the "Insurance" Industry.
Here "Key" is a strong qualifier. Other examples are Apex Insurance, Stellar Insurance. These companies are tier 1 upgrade candidates for one word names like Key. com, Apex. com etc

A lot of people in the domain industry talk about domain development as if it is easier/more profitable than flipping empty names.
It is not. Many successful investors have failed and you will at most have moderate success.
Here is why Domain development is neither here nor there
That is why they call it domain development and not web development.
Web development is a different business and is very profitable.
Domain flipping is a different businesses and very profitable
And both should not be married

Some people often ask about the profitability of my sales.
Here is a sneak peek:
I spent around $5500 in April 2021.
April is yet to complete and I did $28600 in sales from my April Purchases.
Spent $8400 in May 21, and did $43K so far and we have 2 months

What does this mean? I track various metrics as I like to know what is going with my business and this is one metrics I plan to track religiously. This will give me a valuable and constant feedback loop upon which I can work.
What I am tracking here is how Much I spent in a month and....

If you are not a Native English Speaker, at times it will be difficult to figure out if a particular phrase or 2-3 word combinations make sense. Being well read might help, but you will always find that cultural context missing. That is why you should rely on data
KW Building🧵👇🏻 So it is good to have your own list of KWs. These will help when you want to hand register trending names. All you need to do is run it on google sheets by combining say, Meta in one column and your words as Prefix or Suffix. But mostly it will help in building your buy list

A large chunk of Domain sales is via the Registration path.
A buyer search for a name on Godaddy or Dynadot etc and the name comes up with a Buy it Now price as a premium Name.
A buyer then proceeds to buy the name and then you get paid minus commissions.
How does it work?
A🧵 This is Similar to Real Estate MLS. You list your names on the largest distribution networks, run by @afternic and @Sedo. I will take the example of Afternic.
Afternic has several registrars who are their distribution Partners, eg Dynadot, Namecheap, InternetBS, Namesilo etc

A Few Life Hacks for Domain Name Investors:
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 1) Use Sedo as your default nameservers on your registrars. Only add TXT for those names are not verified via NS. You can change lander to your favorite once verified.
SEDO has very strong distribution in Europe and supplements Afternic very well.

Here is the real question. How much did I spend to generate $125k in revenue?
Around $90k
But these $90k is the cash generated by the sales.
My initial investment before i made any sale was around $15k (yes, don't quit. Your day job yet)
Details below 🐢🐢🐢 Before I made my first sale in Nov 2020, I had spent around $15k with no sales at all. But I studied the drops everyday, i analysed past sales, hung out on namepros sales report and made stupid comments, bugged members for tips etc. And I had a bag of junk.

You can do a lot with the ED filters (expireddomains.net), once you get a hang of it, and with over 2 million Pending delete without any filters, the ED Filters have made my life a lot easier.
Some of my favourite filters on ED (1/n)
A Thread 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻 A combination of the Taken in this Filter and Available in this Filter is the most understated but the best tool to create lists.