My interest in domains has come from a career in marketing. It was amazing to see during the early days of the web how confusing the name ownership issue became and how much money buying general category names (digitalcamera, poker, etc.) could net buyers with no online marketing experience. The first domains I bought were mostly company names for consulting clients of mine or for websites I was thinking of starting myself.
I would get occasional emails and/or phone calls regarding the purchase and, quite frankly, I wasn’t that interested in keeping lots of them. But their relatively cheap to maintain. Anybody that spends more than $6.95/yr to buy and maintain a domain is crazy. I have most of my domains at GoDaddy and other than a fee policy quirks, I have been satisfied with their price/performance.
One day I got a call for a company interested in one of my domains, and as a lark I threw out $10,000 as a sale price. It was a clever “play on words” domain that fit the branding and mission of a company whose existing name was boring and unattractive. The company accepted the offer and that money became my investment egg for doing additional domain investments, which I’ll detail in this blog.
By the way, that’s only happened once to me. I get emails all the time and have tried the “hail Mary” but never come close to selling another one for quite as much money. Most of the unsolicited offers I see are for people that want a domain from $20 to $200 usually.