I get a lot of emails from domain investors who want to sell me domains. While I know some people can get annoyed by these emails, I love them. Rather than responding with a rude “Get lost” like many people do, I look at these domains and like any investor should, I look for deals. One of the biggest life lessons I’ve learned is that you should try to find the opportunity in everything. Now I don’t mean you should do everything, that is overwhelming, but don’t discard potential opportunities because you never know what you might miss.
Okay, enough of the warm fuzzy fluffy part of this post, let’s talk about buying and selling domains.
When I get these emails I typically respond the exact same way. “Are you selling at retail or wholesale?” I’ll often add that I only buy at wholesale prices since I focus my sales efforts on selling at retail. Getting this out there is important not just for me but also for the seller who should already be thinking of this. Every company selling anything should be thinking of this.
As many of you know I used to work for (and am now a proud investor in) Sonos, a wireless music startup. I managed our International Sales in Asia, Australia, Latin America and Canada which translates to, lots of product being sold all over the world. The dealers or individual stores in each country were buying the product at our dealer price and reselling it to their customers at retail. Anytime you step into a store as a consumer you are paying retail, sure you might get a discount, but this is a discount off of the retail price. The store has to buy at wholesale otherwise they can’t stay in business.
In the business world there is no confusion between wholesale and retail, no retailer like Best Buy would buy a product at retail, they only pay a wholesale price. In the Domaining world there is a lot of confusion about wholesale and retail since the dynamics are so different. However, as a domain owner you shouldn’t be confused, you know what your bottom-line is and what kind of profit you are making. You should also know if you are approaching an end user or a retailer. Many domain investors are retailers, they buy at a wholesale price and sell at retail.
So ask yourself this question, are you selling at retail or wholesale? If you are selling at retail, look for ways that you can reach end users who will pay retail. If you’re selling at wholesale look for domain investors and the sales channels that domain investors buy through. The point is, make sure you’re targeting the right audience. There are so many ways to sell your domains, don’t waste your time trying to sell to the wrong audience.
