Hello everyone,

For the last couple of months or so, I was pretty busy playing around with the domain portfolio which as of today just crossed over 8,900 domains. I’ve worked hard in repricing almost the entire portfolio and have slashed it down from 20% to 60%. I saw incredibly good results last month which I believe was due to this change. However, to my surprise, I’m seeing exactly the opposite result this month. This shows how unpredictable the domain business is and how much one has to be patient to keep it going.

More than half of the sales happened for the domains I recently lowered the prices which shows that this tactic has worked very well. But I was wondering the reason behind the slowness in sales this month. I had 17 domain sales last month which is the most in numbers to date! So far this month there have been 3 sales and half the month is already over!

In January 2023, I’ve had a little over 8,100 domains and at NamePros I shared this:

“I’ve some 42% of domains priced at $9,888 and above.

Remaining some 58% are priced between $1,988‐$6,888.

My STR in 2022 was around 1.5%

My average sale price last year was over $6,000.

Had the worst year (2022) considering the numbers and quality of domains.“

As of today, a little over 68% of the domains are priced between $1,988-$6,888 which is a major change from the start of this year considering the addition of 800+ domains so far. Only 31% of domains are now priced at $9,888 and above unlike 42% in January 2023. I’m fully confident of seeing some great results in the coming months due to this major change. I’ll try to share the results.

It would be nice to know how sales have come up for you in the last couple of months and so far this month?

On the other hand, I plan to share my sales more actively starting next year. I know many of my readers are anticipating that and I won’t disappoint you all.

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

Recently I received an email from dechem.pttrs@gmail.com with the subject “Special Offer (4L domain .com)” – the 4L .com I removed from the subject. Below is the message I’ve copied:

“Dear Domain Owner,

My names are Sandra Schulze, a representative of a private firm and I am reaching out to you to inquire about the possible purchase of your domain name 4L .com (domain removed).

We have a very lucrative offer for the domain which we know you have held ownership for a very lengthy period and our hope is that the offer meets your expectation.

I will furnish you with more details including the financial offer, agreement, and payment procedures as soon as I get your continuation response.

Warmest regards,
Sandra Schulze”

I asked this scammer what’s their offer and in response, I received the following message which has several red flags:

Thank you for your speedy response to my email notification on the proposed acquisition of your domain name 4L .com. We know that you have had ownership of the four-letter domain since 2000 and my clients are more than willing to offer a lump sum final offer of five million United States dollars.

Furthermore, I’d like to inform you that I work on a commission with my clients on the successful acquisition of the domain name which will be of great benefit to me and to you if the proposed sum is agreed.

Our mode of payment will be via  escrow.com and I will be setting up the new transaction with your email address, please specify if you are conversant with escrow.com so that I can elaborate if you are not.

Escrow services require a fee that will be shared by both buyer and seller and I will draw the agreement indicating the roles of both buyer and seller which will be signed by all parties before we proceed to escrow to make payments, the transfer of the domain name and conclude formalities.

Looking forward to your response to continuing this acquisition.

Regards,
Sandra Schulze“

Now the first red flag is that the domain is listed for sale at $50,000 and the scammer offered to buy it for 5 million US$ which is outrageous. At least this person should’ve done some research like what price this domain is listed for, also who the domain owner is, whether it’s a seasoned domain investor or someone with 1-5 domains only.

I responded the scammer with the following message:

“The domain is available for purchase for $50,000 only so you’ll save $4,950,000.

You may start the escrow with escrow.com using our email address xxxxx@xxxxxxxx.com (redacted) and we’re frequently using their services and don’t require any external agreements to sign it.

If your client is a serious buyer, then go ahead and initiate the transaction.

Best regards

AbdulBasit”

It’s been more than a month now and there is complete silence whereas I received the first two emails within 24 hours. It was very obvious

My point of saying it’s a creative way of scam is because before these scammers asked to use some escrow service and behind the scenes they themselves own it and provide with less appraisal value and don’t even bother buying the domain and usually just run away with the appraisal amount paid by the domain owner. But this time, this scammer said to use escrow.com to look like a legit person but eventually would’ve asked to use some shitty appraisal service before initiating the escrow at escrow.com which would’ve never happened.

So Sandra or whatever your real name is, just do some research next time like checking the prices and stop bothering domain owners especially with a lot of domains as they won’t come in your trap.

To my loyal readers and followers, please feel free to share any scam email addresses or messages you’ve received in recent times to make others aware of it.

Thank you!

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using Sedo.com for the last 17 years and have seen a lot of improvements and have made a few good and great sales through them. I wanted to share some of my experience and give some suggestions regarding Sedo.

One of the most needed features is 2FA which should be implemented as soon as possible. Currently if anyone’s account gets hacked, the hacker can change the price and buy the domain which will come into the possession of the hacker in minutes due to Sedo MLS if the seller has already opted-in. This is a must feature and they must bring it on quickly.

Sedo External Escrow service is a great alternative escrow service if someone has any issues with Escrow.com like they’re currently not supporting accounts from several countries. I’ve used Sedo’s escrow service countless times and I’ve had an overall pleasant experience. The only issue with this service is that the buyer or the seller needs to contact Sedo at transferservice@sedo.com with the subject “External Transfer Request” and they require the following data to be sent in the email:

Domain name
Total sales price (including VAT if applicable)
Currency (USD / EUR / GBP)
Sedo Login Seller
Sedo Login Buyer
Which party will pay for the Sedo commission* – (Seller / Buyer / Split Fees)
Keep the domain sale confidential – (Yes / No)

The above method of initiating the escrow transaction is too old and needs to be automated through their site itself rather than the person requiring to manually do all that via email and sometimes the email may not be delivered or ends up in spam or something…

Also recently I encountered an issue when the sale happened via Sedo MLS which is similar to Afternic Fast Transfer sale. Once the sale email came in, I wanted to communicate with the transfer agent but the communication/message center was disabled due to which I was unable to communicate with the transfer agent. I had to contact the support to get things sorted out. It will be good if Sedo will keep the message center open like for every other transaction to communicate with the transfer agent smoothly and quickly.

With Sedo MLS, I’ve noticed the slight increase in sales via Sedo which was not there before when all my domains were with Uniregistry. Currently I’m keeping all my domains with Dynadot which offers both Sedo MLS and Afternic DLS.

Last but not the least, Sedo payout is very quick. But if they can add an option to select the payout method for each and every sale would be great.

Feel free to share your feedback, suggestions and let your voice be heard.

Hello everyone,

Recently I came across a great tip to find out about a “Pending Sale” at Sedo.com, all credits to Alex Verdea who shared it at Twitter in detail.

As per the image above shared by Alex, if you go to your Domain Management and select “Sales Settings” or even “Custom Overview” which is normally selected at my end, you then need to sort the price in “Ascending” order. Since all of my listings are BIN priced the same like Alex, so you’ll see any “Pending Sale” having blue triangle and yellow triangle shows the domains are not listed for sale and I’ve a few of them with that status.

I was checking this thing the day before yesterday and found out that there was a pending sale of $2,988 for which I received a sale confirmation email from Sedo today morning which made me want to share it with you all.

Thanks to Alex for this wonderful tip and I’m sure many of the investors will now be regularly checking it in their account.

Feel free to share your experience if any of you knew about this or have come across any sale by knowing in advance this way.

Hello everyone,

This is something part of the domain business and many investors are curious as to what domain owners with thousands of domains under their portfolio do after acquiring the domains. By the way, currently I own 8,600 domains as of now.

Okay, so coming back to the topic, below I’ve shared it in detail.

The first thing I do after acquiring a domain name is to add in my records as some people use Excel sheets and some have their own way of storing the data. After that I change the nameservers to Afternic (ns3.afternic.com/ns4.afternic.com) and add it to my Afternic account as well as Sedo to have an additional exposure.

Once the domain completes the 60 days lock period, I always move out the domain to my preferred registrar, earlier it was Uniregistry but now after it’s getting shut down, I’ve moved all of my domains to Dynadot. After the domain transfer is completed, the next thing is to activate Afternic Fast Transfer and Sedo MLS to get additional exposure at their partner registrars. Make sure the domain is successfully added in your respective accounts before you approve the Fast Transfer requests by Afternic and Sedo which usually shows at Dynadot under Summary page. It varies how it will reflect at your end depending on the registrars. Once the domain is successfully added to your account, then only approve the FT requests. Otherwise wait until the previous/old listing is deleted and your domain is added to your account before approving it.

Also I don’t keep the domains on auto-renew as I want to renew it myself because you can never rely on the auto-renew option. I always renew the domains in advance and try to buy domains which I plan *not* to drop in the future. This makes the domain renewal management pretty easier in the sense that I’ve to simply select the domains and renew it. It took several years of experience and learning process to buy only those types of domains which I believe are not the type of domains I will be dropping in the future. I recommend especially to big portfolio holders (typically in thousands) to buy only these types of domains you don’t plan to drop ever because scanning through the list, doing some research is super time consuming for making the decision whether to renew or not.

Feel free to share your experience as to what you do after acquiring the domain.

Thank you!