Behind the Sale: Concert.io – from $90 purchase to $12,000 sale

Welcome to the third post in our Behind the Sale series on the Efty blog. In this series, I talk with domain name investors who share all the details behind a recent sale. You will learn how they bought low and sold high, how the negotiations went down and much more.

Today, I am chatting with Zach Bard a developer and domain name investor from Williston, a city in North Dakota in the United States.

Zach, tell me a little bit about yourself.

I have always been more on the development side of the house, but have been domaining (building my portfolio) on and off for about 8 years now. With that said, I have always been partial to .io as my “weapon of choice” as it was always in my field of focus. I know, I know .com is “king” and nothing else, but all I can really say to that is; to each their own. I personally hold .com above all still and own a lot, but I have bought and moved a lot of .io’s to GitHub start up campaigns, clients, and large companies for a good ROI’s so it’s been a good fit for me. It’s kind of like an unsaturated market “acquisition wise” and so with that I have been able to acquire early on and even still what I would consider premium names for a fair price mitigating my risk of loss with this particular CCTLD.

What is the domain name that you’ve sold?

I sold Concert.io through my efty marketplace www.io.domains on April 23, 2017.

How much did you pay for the domain and how much did it sell for? 

I back ordered it directly from the registry (NIC.io) on Aug 1, 2016, for $90 and sold it 8 months later for $12,000

Can you share how the negotiations for this domain name went down? 

The initial offer was for $1,000. I responded letting them know that if the offer was at the top end of their budget then, unfortunately, it was going to be to low to accept, but that I would be open to discussing should their budget have room to talk higher. Responding in this form helped me to establish whom I was talking with (domainer/end user). They responded letting me know that it was not at the top end and asked what I was looking to get for the domain and that we could further discuss the price. At this point, I countered with $18,000 with a brief justification for the asking price with some previous premium .io sales attached. They countered my response with a solid $10,000 offer. I responded appreciating the firm offer and that my target price for the domain was $15,000 and that we were close to achieving that price and asked if they had any more wiggle room. They responded that they felt their offer was “fair” and were going to hold firm at $10,000. I countered one last time acknowledging their firm offer and reiterating my “target price” of $15,000 and asked if we could split the difference and equally compromise at $12,500. They agreed to $12,000 and I accepted and closed the deal. We finalized the sale through Escrow.com as it was the buyer’s preference.

Thanks for sharing Zach, is there anyone else you like to add? 

It turned out, in the end, the buyer was a large company and they did a great job at disguising that up until we were in escrow. The email I was contacted through was a disguised/personal email as opposed to a company email. This is not an uncommon practice in my experience of dealing with these bigger companies but is worth noting if you have never closed a deal with a bigger client. I have learned over time through trial and error the start to finish process you have in place with your negotiations plays a huge role in your success of a sale. Having tools implemented in your process such as minimums set in your “make offer” pages to help establish who’s on the other end as an example. Being personable and establishing credibility with asking price through sales history, stats etc helps in landing a bigger price tag. I always try to price and I pitch in my asking prices that I price the domain to where the client should have no problem recovering the investment should they decide to shift focus in the future and sell off the asset. Again this is me sharing this particular sale and methods in which have proved true time and time again for me in hopes it may help others going forward with their ventures. At the end of the day, you got to put the time in and research, study, and pick other domainer’s brains through forums and chat groups. I have decent sales to justify my methods, but never consider myself a pro or even remotely claim to know it all as I continually learn something every day. If your not part of NamePros I would encourage you to join and just read and absorb the threads. Get involved and ask questions. There is a TON of experience out there. Watch DomainSherpa’s video’s/interviews. Bottom line; get involved with peers and their practices and do your homework. I wish I would have sooner; it would have saved me a lot of time and money. Last but not least I want to thank you for the opportunity to share this sale and thank the team at Efty for the great platform that allows people like me to build a great PROVEN marketplace with a 0% commission free platform.

Do you have a noticeable domain name sale that you would like to share? Drop me an email at [email protected] as I would love to hear from you!

Disclaimer: Efty does not have access to user’s sales data. We, therefore only share information on sales that have been publicly reported. Read our full governance here.