The number of inbounds you get a month can tell you a lot about your portfolio

Selling Domains

Yesterday I wrote an article about the absolutely stellar results that Abdul Basit is seeing at Afternic and I’ve been reading through some of his earlier articles to dive deeper into the data. One stat that I always find interesting is the number of inquiries someone gets as a percentage of their portfolio.

I often have people who email me with a long list of domains asking me to tell them which are valuable. I usually respond by saying, “put a landing page on them and see how many inbounds you get in a 3-6 month time period.”

The reality is, the number of inbounds your domains get does tell you something about how good you are at picking domains that are resonating with people. Of course this metric isn’t everything, there are plenty of people who sell domains for $10,000+ who haven’t seen an offer on that name in years and then poof, in comes a five-figure buyer. That being said, over a several hundred or several thousand name portfolio, inbounds can tell you something.

In January of this year Abdul wrote a post announcing his move to Afternic landers, and in it, he shared the number of inquiries he gets a month:

Another positive side is that I used to receive around 500 inquiries every month with the domain portfolio of little over 3,400 and of course most of those inquiries never convert. And from that too, many of them are not genuine domain inquiries. This way I’ll save enough time to spend other place which is more productive.(Source – AbdulBasit.com)

If you run the numbers that’s around a 15% inquiry rate which in my book is pretty darn good. One important thing to note here is that Abdul isn’t saying that he gets inquiries on 500 domains, it’s 500 inquiries, so there could be one name that gets 100 inquiries/month that’s bringing that number up.

Still, that being said, I think anything in the 10% – 20% range is pretty freaking awesome no matter how you slice it. I recently talked to a new investor and asked him how many inbounds he’s getting, the answer – 0% in the last six months. I looked at his portfolio and told him he probably has to start over. It was a tough pill to swallow but also the right move to make.

When you’re just getting started it’s hard to know if you’re buying names people actually want, or names that you just think people want. Actions speak louder than words so paying attention to the names that get the most inquiries can help drive future acquisitions.

I’m a data guy, so while gut is great, I always like to let the data lead the way. What do you think is the good inquiry % number for a portfolio?

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton