A few insights from two domains I’ve acquired for startups this year

I just finished my second brokerage deal of the year and thought I’d share some reflections on these two deals. I’m still trying to see if there’s a way I can share the domain for one or both, if I can swing it, I’ll do it. That being said, these were relatively small deals so I don’t think it’s going to blow anyone’s mind.

The first deal I did was a one-word .CO domain for $15,000, the second was a one-word .IO for $14,500. What’s interesting about both deals is that in both cases my client, the buyer, wanted the .COM but it was either out of their budget or off the market. In both cases they said, eh – no big deal, let’s go with the .IO or .CO.

In the first deal, the .CO happened to be owned by Afternic which made it an incredibly smooth transaction. Honestly, every time I do a deal with Afternic I’m more and more impressed with the people over there – they have some serious A Players.

The second deal was an interesting one. I kept emailing the owners of the .CO and .IO (because the .COM turned out to be off the market forever as my buddy Drew would say) and I got no response, for months. So I started increasing my offer, once I hit the $10k mark the owner of the .IO responded and came back with $18k, I countered at $12k and we landed at $14,500.

Both of these companies had six-figure budgets for a domain, but when the .COM they wanted wasn’t available, neither would consider changing the word they were set on. They both wanted that one word and told me they would rather have that word in a .IO or .CO than to pick a different word and get that in .COM.

Sample size of two so there’s no need to extract this into any general trend, but I did think this was interesting and wanted to share my insights from these two deals with all of you. Of course, on the brokerage side, what could have been $500,000+ of deals turned into $29,500 in deals…so yeah, not a ton of commission for me. That being said, my motto has always been, “got a job big or small, do it right or not at all.”

When a big deal turns into a small deal, I still hustle my butt off to make it happen and get my client the best deal. Both companies are happy and I’m really excited to see what each does with their new name. Like I said above, if I can get the a-okay to share the names, I will, but for now the insights will have to do.

Thanks for reading and stay safe everyone.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton