Have you bought or sold domains or websites or businesses?

[michael1981]

I've spent thousands of dollars buying domain names, and I have sold a couple as well. I personally don't think its worth it to sell quality domains. You will never get the true value for a quality casino domain name, plus it takes so long to find a buyer. People are so cheap and suspicious after Poker Black Friday. It's a terrible time to sell at the moment, from my experience, and in my opinion

[MrDeposit]

Every website I have sold in the gambling market was for a profit before or after the sale. When I buy a site, I prefer to make sure I at least make a profit before I sale the site so no matter the price its sold for I still made a profit. Same goes for websites I built from scratch. I always make a profit from them before selling.

[earnrake]

We do have a lot of domainnames (pretty good ones imo) on SEDO, but actually we really did not receive any serious bids on it. We will keep it 'in the fridge' to maybe workout some projects for it, although we want to focus on our own activity.

[Topboss]

We generally buy more domains than we sell, but I think our most profitable purchase was http://www.onlinecasino.co.za - which we paid R20 000.00 ( $2500.00 ) about 5 years ago and it is now making us over $20 000.00 per month so that was a good buy in my books. We are kicking ourselves because we were also offered the domain casino.co.za at the same time for R40 000.00 but turned it down.

We also used to own a domain called igame.co.za which we intended developing one day. A well known service provider in SA tried to threaten to sue us saying that it is close to their name, so we told them to go ahead as we didn't believe they had a chance. Needless to say they didn't sue but eventually we negotiated a sale of R20 000.00 which was a good profit for us considering the domain had cost us R100.00

[InMars]

I bought a few domains but never sold any.

[UKCasinoOnline]

I have bought a fair few domains for crazy prices, and quickly turned them into real money makers, and often sold them on. If you are after fast money with a quick turnaround, this can be profitable. However, you must have a good domain and be able to add value in your own way.

[universal4]

I have bought and sold a few domains over the years, usually buying more than I sold.

I did recently the past few days sell a few names and one thing I ran into was that the loosing Registrar asked me to send copies of my identification along with the list of names that would be transferring out.

I thought this was kinda strange (and for a moment thought I was cashing out at a casino lol ) but upon discussing this with a few other members I found that this is becoming more common at Registrar's. This gives them docummentation and verifies the request for the "auth codes" are valid.

So don't be surprised if this happens and thankfully in the case I had a few days ago only slowed the process down by a few days since it crossed a weekend.

Rick
Universal4

[-Shay-]

As part of our overall business plan, we regularly grab domains that we believe we can flip at a profit without improving the domain into a website.

We also look for existing "value" websites that we can buy - meaning a site that is under-performing AND we believe with great certainty that we know exactly what needs done to make it perform how it should. These are also "usually" flipping opportunities but we make sure that if we do not get our desired price, it is a site that will earn us money and thus be a worthwhile of time and money.

We've also sold existing websites and businesses we've developed and created from scratch and the key here is timing, in my opinion. I like to sell so that I've turned a handsome profit but haven't waited too long to the point where the site has peaked in terms of earning "easy money". The best sales in terms of sale price and value have came where there's still plenty of upside potential for the buyer - that way everyone wins.

[justbookies]

What escrow service do you use when you strike a private deal? I have used escrow.com a couple of times when buying a domain privately and found it to work very well. Are there other services like that or do you do the financial transaction another way?

[universal4]

I use the gpwa lol

Not that it is a specific service, but I have found that dealing with members of the GPWA I have not had any issues.

I have also found when handing someone hundred dollar bills seems to work pretty well too....

For the larger amounts escrow.com is one of the best recommendations I have heard good things about.

Rick
Universal4

[-Shay-]

We've used escrow.com for larger transactions that were not completed in person.

We've also used the honour system with people we were familiar with on smaller sales.

Face to face transfers is the best though, as everything is done in person and clearly it is a big enough sale to justify one or more parties taking a trip.

[refposition]

i sold some websites last week

[addysaw]

I've bought a few cheap domains and recently purchased a site, but it was mainly for the domain more than anything else. Wasn't quite sure how to vote though...

[-Shay-]

What escrow service do you use when you strike a private deal? I have used escrow.com a couple of times when buying a domain privately and found it to work very well. Are there other services like that or do you do the financial transaction another way?

In addition to website/domains, you can use Escrow.com for buying other stuff - a vehicle over the internet, for example, work if dealing with private writers or website work of a large scale project.

You can set up payments when milestones are reached (i.e. - release money when x is achieved, release more when y is achieved, etc). This probably helps all involved, as the webmaster doesn't have to worry about "project slowdown/shutdown" or a writer disappearing after you have prepaid, only for them to resurface with a story of their dog getting sick.

Additionally, it gives the writer or worker piece of mind, as they can see that they are going to be paid as they complete their work.

Basically, it makes it easier for a webamaster to feel comfortable pre-paying and for the writer/worker to put themselves and their work out there before receiving payment.