My Latest Domain Flip: How I Turned $60 Into $3,177 And Why Afternic Rocks!

It’s one of the best feelings in the world, you wake-up in the morning, make yourself a cup of coffee (or tea in my case) and sit down at your computer to find-out you made $3,000 while you were sleeping. That was my Tuesday morning and I wanted to take the time to go through the process I followed step-by-step as I know this is a topic that is always of interest to my readers.

Over the last few months I’ve had some great flips, many of these involved reaching-out to end users, negotiating on the phone and via email, and really making the sale happen. These have been more active flips, which are still great, but there’s nothing like a passive flip, a flip that just happens while you’re sleeping. I can’t say there is a formula for these, as we all know it comes down to having a domain name that a buyer wants.

So please don’t take this post as me saying that I’ve become a Domain Flipping Guru, I still have a lot to learn. As you all should know by now, I love sharing my experiences on my blog, not to make myself an expert, but instead to share what’s working, and what isn’t working in my business. Okay, so there’s my disclaimer, now let me walk you through my latest flip!

First things first. 90% of the domains I’ve sold this year have been .COM domains most of which were registered in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. No, I wasn’t Domaining back then, but that’s been the focus of my purchases this year. I can’t emphasize this enough – it’s never too late to get-into Domain Investing, there are still lots of great domains expiring every day, the challenge is picking the right names and finding the right buyers, or being on a platform that can make it easier for buyers to find you.

In July of this year I purchased InkGenie(dot)com for $60 through Go Daddy auctions. The domain name was originally registered back in 2000 and this was one of those names that I thought would be a great fit for an end-user. I did not think this was a great flip candidate though since this is a brand able domain. About 10% of my portfolio is brandables and I am a very unmotivated seller with these. With brandables I’m waiting for a company to come-around that has come-up with a great name for their new business and that name happens to be a domain that I own. I thought a domain like this could sell anywhere from one year to ten years from now, but for $60 it was an investment that made sense to me.

When I buy a domain name that I want to sell my first step is to list it on Afternic. I have been using Afternic since 2008 and really like the personal attention they give to their customers. In this case I actually let one of the folks at Afternic set the price of the domain based on what they thought could catch a buyers attention. This is one of the things that really makes Afternic stand-out from the crowd and I like the fact that I can have a real person come-up with a price suggestion. I know there are endless debates in the Domaining community about whether to list names with a fixed price or not. I can’t say I lean one way or the other, some of my names are set at fixed prices, others at “Make Offer” it all depends on the name and I could write a whole post about this topic alone!

I believe I listed the domain for sale in August of this year and I had all but forgotten about it until this week. Then Tuesday morning I received an email from Afternic indicating that the domain had sold. The first thing I did when I saw this was to call my account manager, Eric Hammond. This is another nice feature of Afternic, with a dedicated account manager you always have someone you can pick up the phone and talk to. Eric has always been easy to get in touch with and goes above-and-beyond to make sure his clients are taken care of.

The transaction took place through Afternic’s escrow service which made the entire process completely seamless. While this flip was not quite as exciting as some of the others this year that have involved strategically finding a buyer and negotiating the sale directly, it’s still my favorite kind of flip since it took no work on my part outside of picking the right name and acquiring it at the right price. Of course, as with many domain sales (and especially brandable sales) there was a lot of luck involved with a flip like this however having the fundamentals right makes a big difference.

For me this year has been all about changing the dynamics of my portfolio. Now, instead of having a portfolio spanning 20+ TLDs with most domains only a few years old I now have a .COM-heavy portfolio with most of my domains being 10+ years old. My average purchase price has gone up, but with it my average sales price and the number of sales I’m making has gone up dramatically.

If you’d like to read about some of the other flips I’ve done this year, feel free to read the articles below:

From $8 to $3,500: My First Trend-Domain Flip

My First 150x Domain Flip and How I Did It

Thanks for reading and happy flipping!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton