Here comes an update post! Expect it to be long and hopefully, helpful!
After I started this post I had no idea the journey I would be a part of selling my first domain! However, I am happy to say that tonight I closed the deal. This post will take you through the initial contact of the customer to the final sale. Lots of weeks and negotiating went into this one!
On Apr 16, I humbly messaged
@tweetsgonewild. I asked him if he could help me with finding an end user and he agreed. I have to say, I can not thank them enough! They deserve as much credit as possible when it came to this sale.
Anyway, I researched companies on zfbot that had arizonafleet in their name. Most of the companies had either been parked or were dead, however, two companies seemed viable. I did some research on both companies by doing a simple google search, and a whois check. Unfortunately, one of the companies had their information on private so I could not get a direct email or person of contact. However, the second company I was able to get the owner's full name and personal email. I did a bit of research on the company and the owner and found out the company was a trucking service that was family owned. So I figured they may want to buy this domain name. Their current domain name was "arizonafleetservice".
I sent a simple email:
Hi xxxxxxx,
My name is Jelani, I found out about your company via GoDaddy, since I am the owner of arizonafleet.com.
I saw your company is a trucking service, with the URL arizonafleetservice.com so I wanted to contact you directly with the opportunity to purchase arizonafleet.com. I believe owning both domains could help your business profoundly.
If you are interested in purchasing this domain please let me know. I look forward to your response!
Best,
Jelani
I did not know if they would respond, but I added MailTrack on my email account just to track if they read the email and how many times if so. A few hours later he responded with "I may have interest". I messaged
@tweetsgonewild and told him what the owner had said. He advised that I try this example from a Zandibot post: No 3:
https://www.namepros.com/blog/daily-dose-outbound-techniques.863492/
So I wrote something up that would help him see the value in owning the domain "Arizonafleet.com"
He didn't care about the fluff and just wanted to know the numbers. I told him I would want to sell the domain for $400 USD. He did not respond to that initial offer. So I waited 4 days and responded with this:
Hi xxxxxxxx,
I'm really motivated to make this sale with you. So I decided to lower the price to $250. The domain name has one more year on it, so it would expire in 2017.
Also, the domain name will safely be put into your GoDaddy account by me switching over ownership to you. In terms of payment we can work through PayPal, or Escrow which is an easy and safe option.
Please let me know if you are still interested.
Best,
I wanted to convey to him the value of the domain name and that I am a serious seller willing to work with him.
He responded a day later and said "What is your bottom dollar on this"
I told him the final price I could do was $225. I wanted to be firm with my pricing strategy as I figured he was still interested, regardless of the price I quoted him earlier. He countered with $125. I told him the lowest I can do is $200.
He said that since he is not the final decision maker in this process, he would reach back to me. I waited a week and followed up. No response.
I waited 3 more days and let him know I would accept his counter offer of $125. I did not want to lose value on this transaction, so instead of losing the sale completely, I accepted. Since he used GoDaddy it was an easy transfer of the domain name. He paid via PayPal and the sale was complete.
The final sale was $125 and after PayPal took their cut I was left with 121.07. The final profit was around $104. Now, I intend to put my initial investment back into my account and use the rest to buy more domains.
I am so thankful for this first sale. Not only did it show me how to reach an end user, but it taught me patience. For the next domain I am going to be really specific and do way more research!
I hope to continue these updates as they come! Thanks for following and I hope this post finds you well.
