Thanks to everyone being part of my life in Domaining

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

It’s a great feeling to be doing full time domaining and be your own boss. I can work at my own timings with no restrictions and obligations. I love domaining and it’s part of my life for over a decade as I bought my first domain when I was just 18 years old in 2004. Though I never became full time domainer until some years back.

Just wanted to share about the feelings I’m having as I came back from a vacation from Thailand just this month and went for a trip of 20 days. It was great pleasure and enjoying every moment of this vacation. It was possible with lot of hard work and having load of patience over the years and settling myself in today’s position where I’m able to live and have holidays every year solely based on domaining business which is really lovely to feel.

On the other hand, I wanted to share that I finally have 2,500 domains under my portfolio which is another great achievement for myself.

I sincerely wanted to thank everyone who has been part of my life right from the beginning of my career as domainer until now. There has been plenty of ups and down but that’s part of the business. Just needed to stick to basics and remain patient.

I wish everyone the very best for 2019.

My experience with numeric domains

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Usually I don’t invest in any type of domains where I don’t have a good grip and that’s the reason I never bought domains in huge quantity in short period especially when most domainers when coming in business simply start buying too many domains without doing their due diligence.

During the hype of 3L, 4L CHIP domains, we saw numeric domains got registered even 9Ns which was just ridiculous. Anyhow, I made a mistake of investing in 6N .com and bought around 15 for $7000-$7500 altogether. Since last couple of months I’ve been trying to offload all those domains at GoDaddy Auctions for less than $100 a piece and most of the time no one bothers buying it. So far I’ve sold half of them for little over $500 including GD commission. I don’t normally sell any domain for less than $1,000 but these were the names I just wanted to let expire and thought to give them try selling at GoDaddy and see if I can recover anything.

So in short, I lost few grands by investing blindly and at the peak time of 6N domains. The lesson is not to invest in any niche without studying, researching and putting in lot of efforts before you take any step further. I’ve seen Shane who’s been very vocal about his sales especially when he has lost money in any domains and most people don’t share their losses so that’s good from him to be open publicly. Appreciate that!

Now it’s time for 5N .com domains which I was lucky to invest some years back and bought at cheap prices when there wasn’t much demand for it. Unfortunately I didn’t had good knack on numeric domains so the focus was just to acquire at cheap prices and got ALL 5N domains which either had 0, 4 or both together!

I’ve been selling them as well at GoDaddy and was having around 10 of those and just left with one. Hopefully will sell that one in coming days. Overall, I didn’t made any profit on these and I see it break even while considering my time spent on finding, buying, money stuck for years, GoDaddy commission.

In future, I’ll try to be more cautious while buying domains as I don’t like to buy too many domains for test and trial. My buying strategy is to focus on those domains which I think will ultimately land in the hand of endusers.

It would be nice if any one likes to share their experience (losses) for others to learn, understand and not to repeat such mistakes in future.

Namecheap Surpasses 10 Million Domains Milestone

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

This is something interesting news to share especially for those who are frequent users of Namecheap registrar. Below is the press release received from them:

Namecheap, one of the fastest-growing American companies according to the 2018 Inc.5000, today announced it has reached more than 10 million domains under management, cementing its place as one of the world’s top domain registrars. CEO Richard Kirkendall founded Namecheap in 2000 with a mission to make building a website accessible and affordable for everyone. Now, 18 years later, Namecheap is the second biggest retail domain registrar in the world, and a burgeoning technology company with a diverse, growing portfolio of products for web professionals, small businesses, and independent Internet users.

“I’m truly humbled that we have reached this incredible milestone. In under two decades, we’ve managed to evolve from a startup into a global company with more than 10 million domains under management, millions of customers, and an expanding portfolio of products, including web hosting, EasyWP managed WordPress hosting, and other online services,” said Richard Kirkendall, Namecheap CEO. “Our customers are at the center of everything we do, and I’d like to say thank you to them – and stay tuned for more exciting news on the horizon!”

Since its launch in 2000, Namecheap has remained a private company, and has grown consistently and organically without Super Bowl-sized marketing budgets. Namecheap’s unique culture can also be reflected in its long history of fighting for Internet freedom and Net Neutrality. To date, Namecheap has raised almost $500,000 to support Internet freedom causes with its annual Move Your Domain Day. With more than 1,000 team members across 10 countries, and still growing, the future is set to be very exciting.

Additionally, Namecheap is committed to providing exceptional products coupled with unparalleled service and low prices for its millions of customers, helping them to establish their place on the Internet. Recently, Namecheap was named the first company to surpass 1 million verified customer ratings online. Namecheap’s friendly and knowledgeable Customer Support team are on hand 24 hours a day to seamlessly assist all customer questions.

Visit namecheap.com today to purchase a domain for as little as $0.88 (with free WhoisGuard privacy protection for life), web hosting for only $2.88 per month, and don’t forget to check out some of the hottest products in the Namecheap marketplace including EasyWP for top-notch managed WordPress hosting.

About Namecheap
Namecheap is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar and technology company founded in 2000 by CEO Richard Kirkendall. Celebrating nearly two decades ​of​ ​providing​ ​unparalleled levels​ ​of​ ​service,​ ​security,​ ​and​ ​support,​ ​Namecheap​ ​has​ ​been​ ​steadfast​ ​in​ ​customer​ ​satisfaction. With over 10 million domains under management, Namecheap is among the top domain registrar and web hosting providers in the world. To learn more about Namecheap, visit namecheap.com.”

Congrats to Namecheap and their entire team for reaching such a great milestone!
I personally haven’t used them much but whenever I tried it was mostly for domains transfers at discounted rates and as always the customer support was great. It has been more attractive than in past with it’s new user-friendly interface.

Very important and bad news by Escrow.com

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

It looks like Escrow.com is getting worse as the time goes by… After we all heard about Payoneer Escrow getting shut down so I started again Escrow.com which I had stopped due to their poor service.

I started couple of transactions at Escrow.com in a period of one week both for different domain and buyers. One of the transaction got completed on 30th August with last status “Inspection period ended, Buyer accepts merchandise.” 

On 3rd September, I receive an email from their Payments department which says the following:

“Dear Seller, Unfortunately we do not support disbursement to accounts under First Century Bank, Payoneer accounts, or any other third party payments service. Please kindly select or add a new disbursement method. Please inform us when your disbursement information has been updated.”

This came as shocking to me. First, they should have at least informed all their clients that they no longer support disbursement to accounts under First Century Bank and/or Payoneer accounts. Secondly, even if they didn’t bother sending emails to every of their concerned client, they could’ve updated somewhere in the middle of transaction whenever they got aware of this new changes at their end. But their so-called great support team didn’t bother to inform and waited for the transaction to get completed.

I’m forced to complete my second transaction with them as the buyer just said yesterday that payment have been already made so I’m waiting for this to be completed as well. I just didn’t wanted to receive funds via wire that’s why I started Escrow.com to receive funds via Payoneer.

Instead of improving their service, they’re getting worse as the time is passing. Now I shall be looking for better alternatives who not only support payment via Payoneer but also other options like PayPal.

I’m sure there are plenty of domainers who likes to receive funds via Payoneer and are using Escrow.com so please make sure to either change your funds disbursement method or start using another better escrow service.

Now I’ve sent an email today for disbursing my funds via wire option which is the only one left for me to choose.

**NOTE** In past, I’ve received good amount of funds in Payoneer account/card through Escrow.com several times.

It would be great to hear from fellow domainers which escrow service is very reliable, provides great customer support and offers several disbursement methods including at least Payoneer.

Few recent interesting domain sales

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

My last post about domain sales published earlier in January so I thought it’s the time to share some of the recent past sales which hopefully be encouraging and helpful in some way…

GreenPest.com – I bought this domain from a fellow domainer couple of years back in a package deal. This was sold via Afternic BIN at $3,888.

Younifi.com – Acquired this domain for $xx couple of months back and had BIN of $3,988 at both major platforms Sedo and Afternic. However, got direct inquiry and after I quoted price, got an offer of $2,000 for a quick deal to be done that day itself. I wasn’t tempted to sell it as that wasn’t an acceptable offer. I revised my asking and gave my final price of $3,500. Going back and forth for at least couple of times more and sticking with the same price of $3,500, buyer agreed and bought the name. All in all, it was really nice dealing with buyer. Great person to deal with.

CosmoChem.com – This was an interesting sale completed this month. Acquired the name less than two months back for $xxx, got direct inquiry via Uniregistry lander. Buyer was from Korea and if I remember correctly, I sold my first domain to a buyer from Korea. Funny thing in the entire deal was the buyer kept talking completely in Korean language which I needed to translate every time at Google Translate to understand what buyer says. After which I always responded back in English. It was good the buyer understood English language and I had no problem if he was responding back in Korean language 😀

Initially buyer asked for the price for which I quoted $7,888. Buyer offered with $3,700. I reduced to $7,250. And then there was silence for a week period… I usually don’t follow up unless I sense the seriousness from any potential buyer. In this case, I followed up and buyer improved the offer to $6,000.

I gave my final price of $7,000 and took the entire escrow fee at my end which in almost all my transactions, my buyers pay. Eventually $7,000 was accepted and deal completed through Escrow.com

TheNordic.com – Bought this domain several years back. Afternic broker (Will Black) contacted on behalf of their client with an offer of $5,888. It was having BIN for $6,888 both at Sedo and Afternic. He asked if I’ve any flexibility, would like to counter or accept. I responded to remain stick at $6,888. Few days later, got accepted and payment on the way! Many thanks Will as you’ve done good job in getting the buyer to accept $6,888. It’s been great doing business with you in past and this time as well! Hope to do many more deals with you in future 🙂

VELO.org – I’m sharing this particular sale because surprisingly this was my first .org sale and was sold for $5,888 through Afternic BIN.

Feel free to share your past and/or recent domain sales and if you like can give feedback on my sales.