Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

A tip to convince buyer for your domain name

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on January 11th, 2016

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Last year I sold a domain through DomainNameSales.com and while dealing with the buyer in the entire transaction I learnt one new way of handling the buyer which will help a little more in convincing to buy your domain name.

Let’s suppose after going back and forth during the negotiation process, buyer’s final offer is 15K and you are stuck at 20K. What I did was telling the buyer that “you wouldn’t be responsible for any additional fees either as I will cover the commission, Escrow.com fee, and all other associated fees.”

Now let’s pay attention what I wrote above… I will cover the Escrow.com fee and all other associated fees which both actually means the same in our business. But the buyers are not aware what all kind of other associated fees will be attached while I will be buying the domain.

I gave the above example which I used to conclude a deal successfully last year using the same trick. The only thing I changed was price above but the price difference was the same in my case!

There are plenty of inquirers and/or endusers of my domains reading my blog and when they will see this trick, they might get more smart in dealing but more important for me is to share whatever I feel is good and might be helpful among the domaining community. In short, you can call this mind game trick 😉

Feel free to share whenever you use this trick and the after effects. Good luck!

Posted in Domaining, Domain Monetization, Personal Tags: , 21 Comments »
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Issues I faced while using Afternic as a seller

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on January 5th, 2016

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

I wanted to clear up first that I am starting to like using Afternic because I made some nice sales at Afternic last year including last month as well. But that doesn’t mean I will stop sharing the issues I faced using Afternic with you guys which will help you to be careful in advance.

I already sold a domain last year through Afternic for $15,000 (Afternic commission 15%) and got the payment through wire option smoothly. Later at the end of last month, I made my first low amount of sale at Afternic last month which was of Adventix.com for $5,000 (Afternic commission 20%). I admit my mistake of not remembering the commission change which is on the higher side for lower amount of sales.

It is something like this:

20% commission ($15 minimum) for domains costing between $50 and $5,000.
For domains costing between $5,000 and $25,000 the cost will be $1,000 plus 15% of the amount over $5,000. So if you sold a domain for $20,000 you’d pay $1,000 plus 15%.
For domains costing over $25,000 you’ll pay $4,000 plus 10% of the amount over $25,000.

Disadvantages-of-using-Afternic-as-a-seller

Afternic must point out somewhere in the dashboard or negotiation page about their cut for that particular deal. For my above domain sale, I was expecting their cut is the same 15% and I agreed to the price but later the broker informed me about that and he asked if there is the need of contacting buyer about the price change but I stopped him because I had my words (price to buyer) given and that would have been unfair and unethical for buyer to see the price change in no time! Finally I sticked to that price and eventually the domain was sold within a week.

So in short, commission structure is not clearly mentioned, although they have informed about that in past but that cannot be recalled while making sale specially after a long period of time reading the changes in commission.

The next problem came when the payment was received by Afternic, they asked me to select payment method and I was unable to find wire option which I selected for my last sale. I contacted the broker and even called their helpline but unfortunately they had their rules of not sending wire for any amounts under $10,000. That’s just ridiculous! I asked the reason and was told the bank don’t allow us to send small payments. Another ridiculous statement!

I was left with 2 options left. PayPal and check. As many of you are aware that PayPal don’t support Pakistan for opening an account. For check, it would have taken around 75 days to get funds cleared. Finally I received funds in one of my relatives PayPal account.

Last but may not be the least issue, you instantly receive email for price request (only when you haven’t priced your domains) and Afternic asks you to update through logging into your account but you don’t see the domain at dashboard for almost an hour to update pricing unless you are familiar using their platform and knows to find the domain under your portfolio and update pricing. So it’s better for Afternic to either send price request notification a bit with delay or simply update the dashboard immediately with the domain showing up because all sellers are not pro and can easily be confused.

Care to share your experience with Afternic and feel free to share if you had any similar good 😉 experience in past.

Posted in Domaining, Domain Monetization, Personal Tags: , , , 5 Comments »
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My performance review of 2015

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on December 31st, 2015

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

At the very beginning of 2015 I wrote about the achievements in 2014 and my goals for 2015. After going through that post right now I see the first goal was to have 1,200 domains by the end of 2015 and I can tell you I almost got it there. Finally I have 1180 domains under my portfolio closing this year.

Second was to make $1,000 p/month in domain parking. This was once again a disappointment because for the last 2 years I have been setting the same goal but revenue is not as increasing as the number of domains in my portfolio.

Third was to make at least $5,000 sale in total every month. I can tell you that I made double than what amount I set to make every month the whole year which personally is very satisfactory.

Fourth was to sell 20-24 domains in the entire 2015 which isn’t difficult considering the number of domains but eventually I ended up selling 13 domains plus 1 lease to buy option domain which was cancelled this month with non-payment but that gave me several months of bonus revenue and keeping back the domain. I feel sorry for the buyer but cannot do anything other than sending several reminders and give some extra time than mentioned in contract. Although the number of domain sales were too less but making total sales in six figures is something what I focus more rather than selling domains cheap.

Last was personal goal, not related to domains… It was to move out from Karachi where I was born and grew up. And finally I moved to Islamabad (capital city) in mid of 2015 and so far it’s great experience and overall happy with this decision.

To wrap up in short, it was a fantastic year than I expected and what I can surely say for next year is to have a much better year INSHAALLAH. Thanks to ALLAH who has given me everything and lot of happiness than I could even imagine, my parents who supported me specially my father, entire domaining community from whom I have learnt plenty of stuff and learning it every day and my life partner who is always there to fully support me in every decision I make in my life.

Care to share your experiences in 2015?

I wish all my readers a wonderful New Year.

My-performance-review-of-2015-and-what-I-achieved

Posted in Domaining, Domain Sales, Personal Tags: , , 42 Comments »
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Reason why I will NEVER use Flippa in future

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on November 23rd, 2015

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Time flies so quickly and I just noticed that it’s over a month since I published the last post. Well, everything is great at my end. Had some nice acquisitions recently but not much sales.

Today I wanted to share something very important because many of us domainers uses Flippa. I am their member for over 3 years and for quite some time Flippa promoted their service through my blog by placing banner ad in past. I am giving you the background just to know everything in detail and you guys better decide if their decision was fair enough for me?

Reason-why-I-will-never-use-Flippa-in-future

Last month my Flippa account got banned with reason “multiple account operation”. Since I have opened my account with them (over 3 years), I had only 1 account for personal use. Looking at my domain business, some of my family members wanted to involve in this industry and asked for my guidance. I started giving them all material/resources and whatever guidance I could give and one of which was Flippa. Couple of my close family members are at my home to get complete knowledge about this business so later they can do on their own. I am always happy to share whatever I can.
The day I received email from Flippa, I wasn’t sure about which multiple accounts they are talking about but their support team provided those 2 new accounts which were created several months back!

I tried to explain them but no one bothered to listen me and stopped responding to my emails.

I contacted Luke McCormack (Director, Business Development) who initially contacted me in the same month for promoting their affiliate program. I wrote him and explained him everything but he too didn’t responded which wasn’t really looking good because when writing for promoting their affiliate program, he was efficient enough in writing me but when I needed him, he didn’t bothered to reply back. That shows how cooperative their team is! At least Luke could have said it’s not his job to look into this issue. This shows how good you are!

Finally I contacted Kevin Fink and got automated response of being out of office. I was desperate to get my account unbanned because the status shown banned at Flippa along with my profile isn’t good no matter I use Flippa or not.

I than emailed Kevin through NamePros and he reached out to me as soon as he was available. He told me that “Marketplace Integrity team does not have confidence that those accounts are operated by separate people.” He was right because they didn’t knew me and my background. But Kevin knew me very well except meeting in person. Anyhow, he said that he could reinstate just one account only, but it would then be limited per IP address; if your family members wanted to utilize an account, they would have to have WhoIs info / IPs / etc different from yours.

Seriously? That was just nonsense to me. If my family member wanted to use an account from the same place, they should get different internet connection just for the purpose of using Flippa!!

I responded “But that’s crazy for us to have a different internet connection just to operate Flippa because your MI team keeps banning such type of accounts. Using one sole account is not possible because I want them to operate their own domains and buy/sell themselves so they learn all stuff without my guidance in future.

It’s better for all of us not to use Flippa again in future unless you guys unban all our accounts.

Once again thanks and hope we keep our good relationship intact.”

Kevin responded back:

“I hope you understand why the answer is no; unless your family members can provide separate identifications for each new account, our team will continue to uphold the ban. We take this very seriously, and as much respect I have for you, and hope to continue to work with you where possible, this is simply out of my personal control. It is a ToS / marketplace integrity issue, and we cannot cut anyone special treatment.

Let me know if you have ideas as to how your relatives can work with us to adhere to this.”

Instead of sending passport copies and documents which will prove their different identifications, I decided that all my family members wouldn’t use their service any more. Overall, it’s their loss because there are plenty of places to buy/sell domains.

Apart of that, Kevin is a good guy and he responded in time and appreciate him taking steps to get my account unbanned.

Care to share what you guys think in regard?

Posted in Domaining, Personal Tags: , , 73 Comments »
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Some recent domain acquisitions and more five figure sales

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on October 22nd, 2015

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

It’s been long time since I last shared my domain purchases with you guys and I wanted to share some of the recent acquisitions.

TimJohnson.com – I am a big fan of buying person names. Although I see people inquiring on such domains are offering mostly under $100 but I am still happy to buy such common two word names which will definitely pay off one day.

EMA.CO – Already sold couple of .CO names in five figures to date and I am seeing .CO is growing as always and buying short, person name is always good if you are getting it at the right price in my opinion.

Brent.net – This is much more common name than the above two word person name.  Even it’s a .net domain, I still like it because it’s quite common name in U.S. (Correct me if I am wrong).

Phresh.com – Love such type of brandable domains. Already received dozens of inquiries to date.

TheWonderland.com – Never sold a domain with the starting word “the” but always fond of buying such type of names as I have seen good track record of these “the” starting domains.

ILCS.com – Prices of LLLL.com has increased dramatically compared to last year. I still feel it’s the time to buy quality LLLL.com no matter whether it’s Western or Chinese premium. Just buy it if you are getting at the right price. I found ILCS overall a good combination.

QeMedia.com – Raymond Hackney likes to buy LLmedia domains and I think we are on the same boat. Although I have very few LLmedia domains.

204040.com and 118886.com – I like the first one due to sequence and the other with 3 consecutive 8’s. Someone looking for more insight about them can reach out to Chinese please 😉

OnlineGraphics.com – I know you must be thinking that GraphicsOnline is better but that’s what I could get.

PLUP.com – Decent name for any startup looking for short, catchy and brandable domain.

The above domain acquisitions are very few which I shared and just chosen randomly to list here. I simply tried to share a mixture of short, brandable, two word names to have an idea of what domains I usually buy.

Just recently I shared some domain sales which included a five figure sale and I am happy to announce that I had 2 more five figure sales after that!

One of the five figure sale I cannot disclose because the buyer requested not to share it but the other one I had through Afternic where the broker contacted first and asked the price for the domain Dowin.com. Normally I ask buyers to present their offer but rarely I quote the price. I asked for $15,000 NET and the response was that the buyer’s budget is 15K max and after commission I will get $12,500 which I gleefully accepted and the deal was swiftly done. Not much negotiation done so nothing more to share about this particular sale 😀 By the way, the buyer seems to be from China.

Many thanks Escrow.com and Afternic.com as each of those sale were completed through them.

Posted in Domaining, Domain Monetization, Domain Sales, Personal Tags: , , , 27 Comments »
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