Lesson in Domain Liquidity

Some of your domain portfolio into “quick cash” is important.  It’s important to have cash to take advantage of opportunities. Opportunities come along, whether it’s a deal to get that premium .com you wanted, or other investment opportunities in things like stocks, businesses opportunities, etc.  If you can’t participate, their is a cost to “losing out” on the opportunity – it’s called “Opportunity Cost” and it is real.  (It’s real painful as I’ve found out.).  When you don’t have enough extra cash on hand to take advantage of another opportunity you lose out, you lose out on the chance to grow - and grow faster!

This week I missed out on an opportunity because I wasn’t able to generate enough “quick cash”.  I had to judge how much value was I willing to sell in my portfolio (and at what price). How important was that opportunity I was looking at?  Was it more important than the domains I was selling? I’ll never know because I didn’t reach my target sales, haha!

Now, some things I learned, and some observations about trying to sell some domains quickly.

The Market Changes – when you are trying to sell domains quickly the market dynamics change.  The potential Buyers change, and the criteria of what is considered a valuable domain changes.  It is very difficult to engage an end-user for a very quick sale (1 – 2 days). So your pool of potential Buyers shifts to someone with ready cash looking for opportunities that can close quickly = domain investers (domainers). End users may be interested in the “brandability” of your domain, or its relevance to their market niche, while  a domainer may be more interested in the amount of traffic or search volume that particular domain may get,  to evaluate whether it’s a good product/service keyword domain for example (their are numerous niches of domain markets). And as important – the price.  The quicker the sale – the lower the price.  This is just the market speaking.

Are Your Domains Really Worth as Much as You Think They Are?? – How much do you think you could get?…I mean if you wanted to sell that domain today, not in a week, but in 24 hours.  Who would buy it?  How would you sell it?  Do you know someone who would buy it from you quickly, or do you know where you could advertise it to sell quickly? Would it even sell at all?  The biggest delusion we may have when trying to sell quickly is thinking that we have “gems” and still trying to get close to end-user pricing. (We’ve all done it!).  Remind yourself, a Buyer needs incentive to buy a domain quick for cash, which usually means they can buy your good domain at a price low enough that they can still make money off of it.