If you don’t know domains well, you might end up getting chump change.
A very nice lady blogger wrote about her “unexpected windfall“, after selling a pair of aged domain names to a person who inquired about them.
Registered in 2001 by Ms. Roz Rogoff, the pair of domains GoVocal.com and GoVocal.net remained unused, despite spending money for the design of a logo.
Ms. Rogoff intended to give the domains away for free, but the buyer – who most likely could not believe his luck – paid an unspecified amount of money, “more than $100 and less than $1,000“, according to Ms. Rogoff.
The new owner walks away with what appears to be a nice pair of short, clean, memorable brandables and despite Ms. Rogoff being content with whatever money she received, the general consensus appears to be that she left quite a chunk of money on the proverbial table.
Short brandable .com domains don’t go for cheap these days; domain investor Mike Mann sells average domains for high four figures, and good domains for up to mid five figures.
If GoVocal.com were owned by a savvy domain investor such as Mike Berkens, we are certain the selling price would have been in the $30,000+ range.
Some domain owners can obviously be persuaded to hand over valuable assets on the cheap. It seems that GoVocal.com is destined to become a major brand in the future, all thanks to the kindness and apparent lack of domain business acumen of its seller.
This was common practice in that era for domain names that would sell for Mike Berkens pricing in even today’s market. It may take a while for a ROI of that magnitude, as those names, then again there could already be an end user lined up as both TLD’s were secured. I was unaware that this method still worked; however, I wouldn’t have personally sought names of this caliber. The days of finding unsuspecting sellers for great generics are gone, but alive for brandables. Time will tell.
David – A key element in every negotiation that follows an offer, is to be aware of the value of one’s domain assets. If one isn’t familiar with the potential revenue that can be extracted from a domain sale, they are apparently content with whatever offer arrives. Without asking for more, one does not get more.