The most often asked question in the comments section or emails is “Where and How do you sell your 5 letter dot coms?” I’m going to start off with this. MOST OF THE 5 LETTER DOT COMS ARE WORTH REGISTRATION FEE. It’s a fact and almost every name I get sent to me for evaluation is a bunch of junk and would best left in the open registration. Here is a little summary of how I approach 5 Letters dot coms.
1. If you hand registered a name it is worth $8. I have never hand registered a 5 letter dot com.
2. I have all my 5 letter domains at Sedo. They seem to get the most bids there. I am about to list them all at Afternic and Godaddy as well, but haven’t done it yet.
3. I sell 60% of all my domains through Sedo. I think everyone sees them there as that’s where I have them parked. I guess some could have seen it in the “for sale” section as well.
4. The remaining 40% have been through email inquiries. Compared to the NNNN domains and keyword domains, the emails for purchases on 5L domains tend to be serious offers.
5. I have never sold a domain under $1000. I’m not interested under this price and put that on the table early. What I paid isn’t important. (that is a little bit of a lie as I’ve sold a few for $500 to get some cash and get my portfolio numbers down)
6. Negotiation is the key to getting your price. Of course you have to have a decent domain (and again, most people don’t) but after that, it’s about being patient, confident in what you have, and not too greedy. There are limits to what a 5L domain is worth and your goal is to get to that point. I see most in the $1500 to $3000 and that’s where I sell. To me that’s not greedy, that’s their value.
7. The names purchased from me are almost always brand new websites and a few have been Phone or iPad apps.
8. There have been a few that paid good money and never did anything with them. I can’t believe someone would pay $2,000 for a brandable domain and let it sit. It obviously doesn’t make any parking money
9. There isn’t a 5 Letter that I have that doesn’t get at least one type in a day on average. I drop them if they don’t.
10. Every name I have gets at least 5 who is checks a month. If they don’t I drop them.
11. I drop names all the time. I bought some shitty names in the past and it’s taken me a while to realize it. I have a few names like eeeey.com and ipppp.com that I have no idea why I bought them but ipppp for some crazy reason almost pays for itself in parking.
12. Out of the thousands of 5L names sent or offered to me I have purchased exactly 2. Buyers will find your good names. You just have to make sure that if they type it in they can make an offer. Sending them to people never works for 5L, unless you are sending them to a client looking for a good new name
13. I work with brokers who help new companies find names. This has not resulted in any domain sales but I’m getting closer as brokers check with me for good 5Ls.
14. I try and keep my 5 letter domain portfolio at 50 names. Of course if I think a name is too good to pass up I will buy but I try and keep it contained to “better” names.
There you go. 5 letter domains are not for everyone but they are for me. Hopefully the info will help in some way.
No examples of at least a couple 5L’s that you own? 🙂
Jamie,
You need to work a little harder that that 🙂 I have a bit more than what’s on the list as well.
@Jamie
Try his ‘Domains for Sale’ link!
@Kevin,
That just shows that I didn’t see the link. LOL
Very informative, and nice names, Shane. My favorites are the ones that rhyme with “Dweeb” and “Jello.” My best one is Kibmo.
That’s some pretty tough criteria for any domain. It appears a lot of your names you have listed don’t qualify to be renewed (in fact agubu appears to have dropped 🙂 ) as they don’t have the traffic to meet your qualifications. You definitely have some names that meet those criteria though too and it’s apparently why you do well in this space. Can you give a ballpark of your average acquisition costs for 5L’s or is that too much info?
I also think there are 5L’s that are available via hand reg that make good brands. I really like my Vocav.com domain and it was hand reg’d. I have less than a dozen 5L’s and probably half are hand reg’d and the other half were acquired for less than $20 a piece. I’d like to get that number to a couple of dozen at least, but I’m being really picky.
I’m also curious if you’ve tried setting BIN prices on at least a subset of your names to see if that attracts more offers/outright purchases. Do you set a min offer?
Thanks for the info, it’s been enlightening!
Andrew,
I said I bought a bunch of junk early. I actually have to go through my list and update it. Been very bad about that. Another project to add to my list. I don’t like vocav but it really doesn’t matter what I like, it matters what sells. I sold yooby.com for $1500 this week and it’s the 9th 5L this year I’ve sold for over $1000 so I may not know what I’m talking about but as long as my account stays full I’ll be OK.
Hey Shane, sorry if it sounded like I was calling BS. Apparently my smiley face was mangled. In fact what I was trying to say is your criteria appears to really help weed out what doesn’t sell for what does (and that we all have names that don’t meet that criteria that we are probably better off dropping).
some of the 5 letters that web2.0s chose seem terrible to me, one mans trash may be another’s treasure as they say.
How about these 5 Letter domains?
Baywo.com
UyesA.com (sounds ;like USA)
Ozilo.com
Ozilo may be a keeper. The rest I would drop