Behind the Sale: BeWoke.com – from $244 purchase to $6,000 sale

Welcome to the tenth 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 Mark Levine a domain name investor and entrepreneur from Minneapolis, USA.

Mark, tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been investing in domains since the early 2000’s, but at that time I was only investing in names related to my businesses (an online business filing company and a book publishing company). Currently, I own 1,200+ domains. I owned a book publishing company and at one time owned close to 1,800 publishing related domains. Some of my best domains became some of my company’s strongest brands: Published.com and BookPrinting.com. Domains related to book publishing are a specialty of mine, but today they comprise a smaller portion of my inventory. I own a lot of brandables and have done well selling ones that contain keywords like “book”, “story”, “pub”, “title” and other terms that when I bought them were for their value as publishing domains, but also happen to be great brandables.  In 2015, I started buying one word and really short .IO’s. I got into them at the right time.  While they are less than 10% of my portfolio, since 2017 they’ve represented about 20% of my overall sales. I’ve sold two .IO domains since June 1st. I’m not a full-time domainer but have spent more time on domain investing since selling my publishing company in 2016. So far in 2018, I’ve exceeded my total 2017 domain sales revenue while selling 50% fewer names to get there.

What is the domain name that you’ve sold?

I sold BeWoke.com on June 1, 2018, after receiving an offer trough it’s Efty For-Sale landing page.  I used the North theme for this domain name.

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

I acquired BeWoke.com in October 2017 at a Godaddy auction for $244 and I sold the name for $6,000 with the buyer paying the escrow transaction fees.

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

I’m a political junkie and like to buy names related to US politics, government, activism, etc. BeWoke.com can have various meanings. One is certainly related to political activism. Heading into the US mid-term elections in 2018, I expected to get some offers on the name. I had the Buy It Now at $8,900. On most of my Efty For-Sale landing pages, I set a BIN, but put no minimum offer limit. The opening offer from the buyer was $5,000, so I knew the buyer was serious. I wasn’t going to let $5,000 get away on a name I paid less than $250 for, but I thought the buyer might go higher. I countered at $7,500. The buyer responded and said the most they would pay was $6,000. I accepted and required that they pay all of the Escrow.com transaction fees.

Thank you for sharing Mark, is there anything else you like to add? 

I’ve been migrating my domains to Efty over the past year. So far in 2018, 30% of my sales have come through my Efty landing pages, saving me thousands of dollars in commissions.  A selection of my domain names can be seen at my marketplace at DomainTheory.com