I was talking with another domain investor last week about the potential price difference you’ll see on average when you sell a domain outbound vs. inbound. There is a real difference between an inbound and an outbound sale, and it really comes down to leverage.
When someone comes to you and wants to buy your domain, you’re the one with the leverage. When you go to someone else and ask them if they want to buy your domain, they have the leverage.
Sure, you can argue about the nuances and talk about edge-cases where you have the leverage during outbound, the reality is, if someone comes to you and wants to buy something, it’s not crazy to think they’d pay more for it than if it were the other way around.
Before I go any further I’ll address the one edge case that’s hard to ignore. If you happen to own a super premium one or two-word .COM, and a company out there exactly matches the name and goes off and builds a billion dollar business, sure – then you might have the leverage since you have a name that is uniquely valuable to them.
That being said, the vast majority of domain investors don’t have six and seven figure premium names, so let’s talk about the normal case, a domain you own that you think is probably worth say $5,000. The question is, by approaching someone directly (i.e. outbound) are you more likely to end up selling for $2,500 vs. if someone comes to you directly could you get $7,500?
Since I’m asking the question it’s only fair that I answer, so here’s my two cents. I do think you leave money on the table, the exact percentage is hard to guess but I’d say it could be as much as 50% when you’re selling via outbound. You just have a lot more leverage when someone is trying to convince you to sell them the domain vs. when you’re trying to convince someone they should buy a domain name.
But that’s just my thoughts, now I want to hear yours. What do you think? Comment and let your voice be heard!
