My First 150x Domain Flip and How I Did It

Back in March I talked about My First 50x Domain Flip and I am now excited to share more good news – I have just completed my first 150x flip a little over one month later! This flip really illustrates the value of a developed domain and the importance of reaching-out to end-users when selling a domain name.

The buyer has asked for me to keep the domain name confidential but as usual I am happy to cover as many details as I can with all of you. I think you’ll find that when you’re flipping to end-users they aren’t too keen on having the price they paid revealed to the world. I hope as I continue to flip and make bigger and bigger sales I will eventually be able to share the exact domain names with all of you.

So, first things first, the domain name was a .COM. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise as I’ve found that end-users don’t seem to get very excited about .net, or .org names and they really haven’t heard of any other TLDs!

The domain was a geo-targeted medical domain name not targeting a city itself but instead a specific area within a city. The format of the domain was with the geographical location first followed by the specific medical profession.

I registered the name in Q3 of last year and quickly put a website on it and very quickly had the domain ranked #1 in both Google and Bing for the terms within the domain. It took a very short time to build the site and rank well because the niche is not nearly as competitive as ranking for the state or city, this is a nice thing about geo-domains that target a specific area within a city.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, when we lived in Boston we lived in a part of the city called Back Bay. I noticed when I searched for local businesses I often didn’t search for the business in Boston, I search for the business in Back Bay. Let’s say for example I wanted to find a gym, I would much rather find a gym in Back Bay a short walk from my house than the North End which could easily take 30 minutes or more to get to by train. This is an interesting distinction to make when looking at Geo domains that I hadn’t given much though to until then.

Now for the good stuff – how I reached the end-users. I typed in the exact keywords in my domain and reached out to the specific companies advertising on Google for the term. If there is nobody advertising for the keywords in your domain you might not have many end-users to reach-out to so you may want to check this before you buy and develop the name.

I contacted a total of eight end-users and received three offers. In the end I sold the domain for $1,200 – a domain that I paid $8 for less than a year before. Sure, $1,200 is a lot less than the $5,000 I made with my 50x flip however it’s still a multiple I am absolutely more than happy with.While the domain name was important to them it was the fact that it was #1 in Google and Bing that gave it the most value to them. Had I just tried to sell the domain itself parked with no rankings I don’t think I would have been able to sell the name. Since all of these businesses were paying good money to advertise the buyer is immediately saving a nice chunk of change every month and getting a better ad spot than they could ever buy.

This year rather than trying to sell a million names at once I’m focusing on one at a time. Now that this flip is complete I’m onto the next one. While this still doesn’t come close to what I’m making passively from my developed domains it is a nice boost to my revenue and I have to say it’s a lot more fun than I thought it would be!

Well that’s it, another month, another flip. Right now my goal is to flip one domain every month so I still have a good 12 days to make another flip an exceed my goals for the month. When you’re setting goals it’s important to be realistic. Sure, I’d love to flip five or ten domain a month, but I’ve never done that before so I’d like to start with something I know I can do. I’ve set my threshold at $500 because I’m just not that excited about sales below this amount. It feels good to hit my goals and even better to know that my domain is actually helping a business save money and reach more customers!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton