What is the Hardest Type of Domain to Sell?

Like any asset, not all domains are created equal. The fact is that some domains are a lot more difficult to sell than others, for many different reasons. Who better to discuss this topic than our very own Jeff Gabriel? (broker of the famous $13 million sales of sex.com)

Transcript

Hi, my name is Jeff Gabriel. I am the Co-Founder and CEO of Saw.com. We are the leading domain brokerage on the net. We’re always writing fresh content to help viewers like yourself understand and love the same industry that all of those that work with me at Saw.com have grown to love. I’ve made a list of common questions and I want to answer each of these questions in 30 seconds or less.

What is the hardest type of domain to sell?

I think the question here is “what industry is the hardest to sell to?” I take it, from my end of the table, as a different way of thinking. From the broker’s perspective, I’m thinking about “what’s the hardest situation you get yourself into when selling?” So for this question, there are really two things, as domain brokers, that are really hard for us to do:

• Sell domains with a questionable history
• Sell domains in particular industries

History

Number one, when you’re given a domain that has been on the market for a while from another domain broker. When we’re handed that opportunity and we look at it and say, “all right, this is a good domain.” Then, the seller says, “Well, what can you sell it for?” Then, let’s say I say that the value of the domain name is $150,000 or $200,000. Then, they say, “okay, I’m willing to sign with you.” So then you send them over the agreements. You get started, you start researching the domain, the industry, and you start trying to sell it. Then you start to find out that the previous broker was trying to sell it for less than what you were selling it for. So the problem is that it becomes very hard to try to sell the domain when you’re trying to sell it for a higher price to a lot of the same people (not all) for a higher price. So that ruins your credibility as the broker. And it also ruins the credibility of the asset that you’re trying to push because it looks like whoever’s trying to sell this is not a very upstanding person. Another thing I was asked about was the history. I talked about the history of the domain name. Well, if the seller was not an upstanding person when they were the owner, and they used the domain, they probably didn’t do very ethical things with the domain. That raises a lot of red flags and creates issues, which then causes bad offers. When bad offers come in, and the feeling of desperation comes over the phone or over email, you’re gonna get nothing but bad offers. If this situation occurs, it’s a really hard domain to sell.

Industry

When I was given the opportunity to sell sex.com a number of years ago (which I sold for $13 million), calling adult businesses was actually very hard. This is because a lot of the people who work for these businesses say they work for advertising agencies. Or, when you call in and you try to go through the catalog of names that work there, all the names are fake. It makes sense – when the people that work there try to go to their children’s soccer games, they don’t want anyone in public to know that they’re an executive of an adult business. And a lot of those adult businesses have a front for the name of a business that is public-facing. So you know, I’m just making this up, but you have “Adult Pictures” as an adult company. It might be owned by a company called “J2 Advertising.” So, people will say “I work for J2 advertising.” Well, it’s very hard for you, as a domain broker, to go through and figure out the difference between J2 Advertising and you know C3 Advertising, where C3 focuses on totally different ads. And J2 is really just the adult business. So, getting in there and finding people that are very public-facing when it comes to adult business is very hard to do to get the right audiences and the right decision-makers to make the sales.

End Transcript

Worried you might have one of these so-called “difficult” names to sell? It might not be as hard as you think, and you may just need the right domain broker. Our professional team of domain brokers is experienced in all types of sales across a wide variety of industries. In our world, no fish is too large or difficult for us to fry. Contact us today to book a free consultation.