Sold my first domain through InternetTraffic.com aka DomainNameSales.com

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 1st, 2013 10 Comment

Sold-my-first-domain-through-InternetTraffic.com-aka-DomainNameSales.comI have been parking my domains with InternetTraffic aka DomainNameSales.com for few months and received many inquiries but none of them was tempted enough to sell or the potential buyers didn’t even bother to present their offer once I asked them to make it. I have tested several other parking companies and found IT/DNS the best so far in terms of PPC and getting domain inquiries more frequently than at some other places.

In the first week of January 2013 I received an offer on one my domain with starting offer of US$500 and they explained their purpose of buying and who they are. It didn’t took much time for me to analyze and counter offer with US$6,000. Next day the person informed me price is too high and they could max US$1,000. I politely informed we cannot proceed further. After several back and forth emails of US$1,250/US$1,400/US$1,750. I simply told them not to waste my time. Although this conversation was with one of the employee of that company who were interested in buying my domain. I just told him instead of wasting my time please present your best and final offer and I will simply accept or reject it. He offered US$2,000 and I rejected. I offered US$5,000 as my final offer and stated it’s valid for next 7 days only but they didn’t bother to respond and I decided they need to suffer for that and I will stay strong on my offer if they come next time.

Fast forward to March 2013, I got an offer of 3k and I knew it’s the same company trying to buy but with different name and email ID. My counter was again 6k. And once again similar pattern of offers got started with US$3,750/US$4,250 but with no success.

A couple of days later the CEO of company contacted me and started with straightaway US$5,000 but I wanted more than 6k this time but he just wanted to wrap up quickly and was serious enough so I let this domain go for US$6,000. Once again I will say US$6,000. I got extra US$1,000 just because they didn’t accepted my offer of US$5,000 on time.

Oh yeah, and the domain was Semios.com

As mentioned in my previous post where the buyer was unable to make payment on time and I cancelled the deal. At that time I really needed the money and after cancelling that deal I got this sale happen successfully. Although I was having conversations with this company for the last 2 months.

It was the first time I asked for more money once the buyer didn’t take it seriously and responded on time. And luckily I got what I wanted.

So what do you think of this sale and had any similar experience?

Posted in Domaining, Domain Sales, Personal

Buyer was unable to make the payment on time and I cancelled the deal of US$5,000

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 28th, 2013 11 Comment

Buyer-was-unable-to-make-the-payment-on-time-and-I-cancelled-the-deal-of-US$5,000This is a lesson I learned last month and thought to share with you so one should be very careful while giving out first counter offer without doing due diligence. Something similar happened with me as well but fortunately I was able to cancel the transaction because the buyer was unable to make payment on time.

Once again I am sorry for not sharing the domain but you will still find it quite interesting for sure ;)

I received an offer on one of my domain which is related to hotels/travel/news/journal. The initial offer was of US$1,000. I countered with US$6,000 without going into detail who the buyer could be which was the mistake I normally don’t make it. A week later I got US$2,000 offer but I rejected the offer. Next came US$3,000 and I lowered my asking to $5,000 and mentioned that it’s my final offer. He accepted my final offer of US$5,000. To make things clear the person whom I was dealing was middleman.

Once my offer was accepted, I initiated the transaction at Escrow.com. Until this time I didn’t knew who the buyer was. Anyhow, I notified the buyer that I need the payment within 4 days or I will cancel the transaction. I normally don’t say this to my buyer but at that period of time I needed that money to be invested somewhere quickly. The buyer accepted my as well as Escrow terms.

Now see my craziness that before giving out my first counter offer I never dig deeply who the buyer was but after initiating the transaction at Escrow I searched for him. I tried my level best and found the buyer is from Australia and operates 5 star hotel. This was really shocking to me. I found many sites with same keyword which I was selling has developed hotels/bars/journals, etc. Each of them was really big. I promised myself that I will check each and every domain in depth before I give out my offer. Also I was praying the deal gets cancelled in any way. Those 4 days were difficult for me to pass and luckily for me a week passed away and I reminded the buyer about my terms upon which he agreed and I cancelled the deal.

He came back after 8-9 days insisting me to re-initiate the transaction at Escrow or his boss will not be happy with him. I apologized and informed the deal cannot go on this way. Fortunately he didn’t bothered any more as well.

Just to give you an idea of the domain I am talking about is I have two word .com and they own three word .com. In short it was an upgrade domain for them.

After everything was over I decided to sell this domain for five figures to any one who wants to acquire it in future no matter whatever the circumstances are at my end. Not because the same buyer would come and pay me in five figures but the truth is I found the real value of this domain at least in my eyes. Although I know everyone assess the value of domain differently.

I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you are still interested in knowing the domain name just post your name and email and I will get back to you.

Posted in Domaining Tags: , , , ,

Gambling content and domains can now be monetized through Google Adsense

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 24th, 2013 0 Comment

Gambling-content-can-now-be-monetized-through-Google-AdsenseI am not sure if this is something new for you or not but I received latest newsletter from Google where it’s clearly mentioned that gambling domains can now be monetized through Google Adsense. Although I don’t buy gambling/alcohol/adult related domains for some reasons so this news is not of my interest but I thought to share it with you guys in case if any of you are unaware of it.

The ads will only show up for the publishers who have opted to display ads on their websites. Also the ads will show up in certain countries where gambling is legal and have no issues whatsoever. So as I live in Pakistan I cannot see the option for making it enable because gambling is not legal in our country. I think most of the people around the world won’t see the ads because gambling isn’t legal all over the place.

This must be a positive sign for those who currently own and invest in gambling related domains because that would boost them in order to make some extra money.

Posted in Domaining, Domain Monetization Tags: , , ,

Previous domain owner wants to take me in court!

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 18th, 2013 5 Comment

Previous-domain-owner-wants-to-take-me-in-courtYou will find this quite interesting and funny. As many of us buy domains through auctions and recently I acquired a .net which I thought was good for reselling purpose and got for mid 3 figures. After acquiring it for 40-50 days I was contacted by the previous owner of the domain asking me to transfer back domain to him as there was some problem with the company he registered the domain. I wasn’t sure what he was actually referring to because of the broken non-English language.

He even said in his initial message that he will be taking me to court if I don’t transfer the domain back to him. It’s a generic term and there is no trademark with that keyword. It’s a short brandable word which must not have any trouble but isn’t he trying to scare me 😉

I have recently parked that domain with InternetTraffic and he came through by clicking the sales link and even tells me that how come you are trying to sell my domain. Well, I think I need to get his permission before I put the domain for sale 😉

I haven’t respond him yet and doesn’t need to do at least for now. It’s my first experience with a person wants to take me in court if I don’t transfer the domain to him in timely manner.

Keep reading and bookmark this blog as many more interesting stuff coming all the time 🙂

Have you experienced anything like that? Care to share your story?

Posted in Domaining, Domain Investing, Personal Tags: , , ,

60 days lock period of GoDaddy resulted in canceling the deal of my first hyphenated domain

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 10th, 2013 9 Comment

60-days-lock-period-of-GoDaddy-resulted-in-canceling-the-deal-of-my-first-hyphenated-domainHello everyone,

I won’t blame GoDaddy for that and instead accept my mistake. Although this 60 days lock period is quite frustrating when the buyer asks for transfer out of GoDaddy. So today I would like to share one of the incident happened with me.

It was a .com hyphenated domain for which I contacted several companies and one of them asked the price. I responded back with US$2,000. Keep in mind that I don’t usually start by giving the price first but in this case I was in hurry to make the sale and asked for 2k which was fairly reasonable for a hyphenated domain. The buyer immediately accepted my offer and we initiated the process at Escrow.com with seller paying the fee completely.

The owner of the company asked me to wait until next couple of days as Director of IT will be in touch with me completing the transfer process. Once the payment was approved and I asked their GoDaddy customer# and email address.

The owner strictly said we don’t use GoDaddy as our primary registrar anymore and currently using Network Solutions. I tried to get the authorization code from GoDaddy but it was locked for transfer out and I was unable to retrieve the auth code until next one month. I informed them the situation and I received unfriendly message “We are recalling the money from Escrow.com and once the lock period is over you may contact us. Otherwise we are NOT interested.”

It was quite frustrating to see the funds going back and I was unable to do anything from my end. However, another bad news was yet to come which I wasn’t aware of. So once the lock period was off I contacted them again. This time they preferred to split the Escrow.com fees in half way between buyer and seller. I happily agreed because last time they paid full Escrow fee and deal was cancelled so they didn’t want to risk this time. I created the transaction once again with split fee but they didn’t responded even after Escrow sent them auto reminder. I contacted them to see if they need some more time to make payment.

Their reply wasn’t pleasing for me saying that after several discussions with our SEO consultants we’ve decided not to proceed with this domain name purchase. You may cancel the transaction at Escrow.com.

I admit it was my mistake not to check the status of domain at GoDaddy because recently I had brought the domain from another registrar. Lesson learned is never try to sell the domain if it’s locked and you are somehow unable to transfer to the desired registrar of domain buyer. Or you can at least inform the buyer that you will only be able to push this domain at same registrar (can give the exact reason anything you wish to). Make sure you inform them in the beginning so there won’t be any trouble like I faced in this deal which was at the end remained a sad story…

Have you faced anything like that before? Had any deal going out of your mouth ? 😀 Please share and don’t hesitate

Posted in Domaining, Domain Sales, Personal Tags: , ,


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