Behind the Sale: BirthdayBeer.com – from $11 purchase to $1,600 sale

Welcome to a new Efty blog series called Behind the Sale. 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 Alex Verdea a full-time domain name investor from Romania, currently living in the beautiful state of South Carolina, USA.

Alex, tell me a little bit about yourself.

I have been investing in domain names since late 2006, and I bought a bunch of .tel and .mobi domain names at first. Believe it or not, Flint Telecom Florida called me up one day and wanted to acquire Fling.tel (one of my first domain sales in the thousands of dollars). I then lost thousands of dollars with the TEL and MOBI names. The .mobi, .tel, .xyz, .club and all GTLDs are a BAD investment in my opinion, so I only focus on .com domains exclusively in recent years.

What is the domain name that you’ve sold?

I sold BirthdayBeer.com on Efty this past January. I use Efty for all my leads/inquiries and my own tiny marketplace for payments. I like to pass on the “escrow fee savings” to my clients by NOT using a 3rd party or Escrow services unless the client requests it.

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

I acquired BirthdayBeer.com for $11 as a closeout domain on GoDaddy’s marketplace in early 2016 and sold it about 1 year later for $1,600. I use the Kiffer make offer landing page design for ALL my domains. Why “make offer” and not BIN one might ask? Most initial offers that I receive are $100-$200, and that’s OKAY. If you slap a $5,000-$10,000 buy it now price you might intimidate a small business owner from filling out the contact form or even make an offer at all for your domain. I am very approachable and I listen and reply to ALL offers.

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

The initial offer I received for BirthdayBeer.com was $200. I politely replied and stated my price of $1,600, valid for 7 days and redirected the buyer to my marketplace AudiencePortal.com I added the name there with a BUY IT NOW price link. I use Stripe for 99% of my domain sales. The client paid safely and securely with a credit card an hour later. The client got a fantastic deal for this domain as BEER keyword domain names are HOT right now with the exploding market of microbreweries. I know everyone is focusing on drone, cannabis, VR/AR, self-driving domains, etc. Personally, I like to keep my portfolio mixed with all kind of names and tend to stay away from “trend” domain names but I do own a few of each (i.e., DispensaryDrone(s).com, MapsByDrones.com, SelfDrivingSmartCars.com, etc.).

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

My final “words of wisdom” for new domain investors out there would be to invest in .com and nothing else. There are too many good opportunities in the trusted .com extension to waste money and speculate in gTLDs . The .com domain values are going UP every single day and thegTLDs are simply a guess/shot in the dark investment at this point. I also recommend reading as much as possible and study “comps”/past sales before purchasing new domain names. I use daily resources like: Namebio.com, Trademarkia.com, Namepros.com, etc.

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.