My clearout of domains and websites is almost complete, so I thought I would write a post about what I have leart while clearing out my old portfolio.
1) Just because you thought it was a great domain, doesnt mean it is! I have a few domains which I thought were great domains that I could develop, or just sell on and make a decent profit on. However, after listing them several times on Digital Point it has become clear that not everyone has the same opinions of what makes a good domain. Needless to say, it works the other way as well. I had a couple of domains I was expecting to just let expire, s0 when I was offered $50 (about £30) for one of them I snapped their hand off!
2) Timewasters are… a waste of time. I sold a couple of websites/domains to users, who then refused to reply to emails/pm’s. I even made the mistake of even turning down an offer from a different user while waiting for a timewaster to reply. After the first two timewasters I decided if the user didnt get in touch within 24 hours I would sell the website to someone else.
3) Sell to a trustworthy seller. I had an offer of $1000 for one of my sites, however there was something very strange about the buyer. Wasnt interested in seeing proof of earnings, he had different names/usernames/emails for Digital Point/GoDaddy/Escrow. When I asked him about it, he insisted it was because he was in the forces and didnt want them to find out what he was doing online – which seemed even stranger. Anyway, I stopped the sale and held onto the site for another couple of months and eventually sold it to a reputable seller (he had already bought one of my cheaper sites), for 20% less than the original offer – but I had the money in my account within 10 minutes of agreeing the sale and everything went as smooth as possible! It might not always be the best offer, but I would personally rather take a guaranteed $800 over a possible $1000 any day.
Overall I am quite pleased with how easy it was to clear out the domains, and how much I actually made. I have sold 14 domains/sites so far which cost me approximately $60. I wasnt hoping to make much profit, enough to cover a years decent hosting (£100/$160), in total from all of the sites/domains I sold, I ended up with about $1500 in my PayPal account – almost 10 times what I wanted and I still have another 3 or 4 undeveloped names to clear out.