Quick flip vs. waiting for the perfect buyer, when it comes to selling domains, which do you prefer?

Yesterday I wrote a post about a pretty awesome sale that domain investor Josh Reason made, MarketInsider.com for $7,910, a domain he purchased a week earlier for $700. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a great sale, over 10x ROI in a week, yes – I’ll take that.

There were some good comments on my post yesterday but one caught my eye and inspired me to write a follow-up post because I think it brings up an important issue:

There’s part of what Bob is saying that I agree with, and part that I don’t. I was going to respond in the comment section of the last post but since this is something I think is incredibly relevant to most of my readers I thought I’d share my thoughts in a post.

So I do agree with Bob that someone like Rick could sell this name for more, I’m not sure about $100k, but I’m interested to hear what Rick thinks he could have sold it for if he waited for the truly optimal buyer to come along.

Where I don’t agree is that Josh didn’t use good negotiation tactics or exercise patience. Making 10x on your money in a week makes you a badass negotiator in my book, and without any more data we have no reason to think this particular buyer wouldn’t have walked if he held at $10k or higher.

I think that there really is no right path here, it all depends on what kind of investment strategy you follow, and like most things in life, it’s different for everyone. For me, if I can make 10x today, I’ll take that over maybe making 20x or higher five years from now. While I do have a handful of domains in my portfolio where I’m willing to wait for the perfect buyer in most cases, I want to lock in a good ROI as quickly as possible to feed more money back into my business to buy more names, and lock in a profit.

One of the domains that I got heat for selling too cheap is Summon.com which I bought for $3,500 and sold for $17,500. A few domain investors told me that they think I could have sold the name for six-figures if I waited. They were probably right, but a $14,000 profit for me in a short period of time was worth it then. Now, eh, I’d probably hand onto this one longer and wait for a higher price, but my life and finances have changed over the last seven years so my investment strategy has changed a bit with it.

That being said, I’d say 90% of the domain in my portfolio I would happily sell tomorrow for a 10x profit and not look back. 10% of names in my portfolio, sure I’ll wait longer for the perfect buyer. If I were in Josh’s shoes, I would have sold MarketInsider.com for the exact same price, then I’d re-invest some of the profits in one or two other names and keep the rest.

Just like we probably all invest in the stock market or real estate differently, we also all invest in domains a bit differently. The question is – are you a bird in the hand kind of investor or, like a championship fisherman (or fisherwoman – that’s a thing right?) do you want to wait until you get top dollar for every single domain you own?

You know what I think, now I want to hear from you. Comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton