It looks like Mike Mann who founded then sold BuyDomains.com has done it all over again with DomainMarket.com
He started Domain Asset Holdings from scratch at the time most thought all the good domains were gone, accumulated over 300,000 domain names again and has built a sales team that sells hundreds of thousands of dollars of domain names a month.
Mike Mann has been posting sales data reporting strong sales consistently on his Facebook page for his company Domain Asset Holdings (DAH)
I reached out to Mike who send me some official tallies for the month of February and Year to Date sales and they are quite impressive.
In all DAH sold $294,598 in domain names in February which represents an increase of 31.8% over Feb 2011
The $295K in sales where for 351 domain names which is a 30.2% increase over February 2011 in the number of domains sold.
The average sales price for February 2012 was $839.31 which is a $19.73 increase over February 2011 average sale price.
Year to Date DAH has sold $526,270 in domain names a 37% increase over same 2011 time period.
Year to Date Domain Asset Holding sold 659 domain a 20.9% increase over same 2011 time period.
2012 Year to Date Average Sale Price for Mike Mann’s company is $798.59 a $149.54 increase over the average sale price for the same 2011 time period.
High sale domain in February 2012 – $26,000 – FromRagstoRiches.com
High sale domain in January 2012 – $22,000 – UVideos.com
Its really impressive that Mike who build and sold BuyDomains.com seems to have done it all over again now with DomainMarket.com
Congrats to him and his team.
If he has 300,000 domain names, that’s a big annual bill for renewal fees. You’d need to factor that into the equation, to see how well the business is doing.
Please bet against me, its really profitable, get me pumped up.
Glad to read this.
If they own 300,000 names and sell 6000 names a year, which appears to be a good number for arguments sake that would be 2% of the names.
So, the the question would be whats the overall overhead and historical average price of sales vs renewal outlay.
When scaled by someone who knows what they are doing makes sense and the .com market is going to only get stronger.
Would love a more detailed write-up one day if he would be open to it.
@ George :
The 294,000 names @$8.47 would around $2.5 million & if he sells 6000 names at the average price Feb sales price at $839 that would be $5,034,000.
Probably will get more and maybe pays less for renewals. Who knows overhead. That math alone makes it profitable …
The posted sale figures predict he will sell about 4000 domains in 2012 for approx. $3.3 million.
So I guess he will make atleast $500k after all the expenses.
Question though is this: if he keeps selling better domains to get the cash flow going, then quality of the remainder of the portfolio will get worse.
How do we “bet against you”?? We can’t really “short” your company, as it’s not a publicly traded entity. Each domain name is unique, so if you’re “long” example.com, I can’t exactly replicate a short position by trading other assets. In art, I can’t short a particular Van Gogh painting — the quantity is exactly 1, no more and no less.
The closest I can do to “bet against you” is have a flat position in positions where you are “overweighted”. I own exactly zero .co domains — I think that was a bet that made sense to me, as I’ve not lost any money, unlike many others who ventured into the .co swampland (although some folks made money, most was made by registrars and the registry itself).
Anyhow, all I was trying to point out was that to measure the true “health” of any company, in any industry, one shouldn’t rely on just a single metric, i.e. “sales”. One needs to look more carefully at a full income statement (i.e. revenues, costs, etc.), a balance sheet (i.e. a company might have a lot of debt on its books), cash flow statement, and even non-financial metrics (e.g. for a long time, Facebook and Twitter had only minor revenues, but were “healthy” by other measures).
Congrats Mike. Job well done. Rinse Repeat…Rinse Repeat…
Good luck Mike. Keep’em rolling.
John: Why would you assume 6000 domain names sold per year, when that’s higher than the actual statistics, i.e. 659 domains in the past 2 months? Also, sales people don’t work for free.
Hats off to D0main Market.
i agree with all of the above statements.
@George:
I’m assuming a 2% portfolio turnover. Currently, his numbers don’t support it, but its only 2 months into a year that i think only gets stronger for .Coms.
I also think the $839 sales price goes up.
But, they are numbers and can be argued both says.
That is why i would love to know more details if they are willing to do an interview.
Yes, it has worked in the past and should continue to work, but the overall market and expenses will dictate how it continues to play out.
Don’t think Twitter & FaceBook or any public company that has deep pocketed investors that can ride out any kind of market until it’s ready to mature.
Couple things:
It’s quite impressive and amazing what MM is doing.
DAH is acquiring 100,000 domains a year so that 300,000 will be 400,000 sometime in 2012.
George
Of course you have to take costs into consideration to figure profitability.
Anyway you cut it, its a business that is making seven figures a year, and growing at 30%+ while costs are fixed at a 7% increase, you have a pretty good business
John: I agree, the the model *can* work sometimes. e.g. he can raise his average revenue per sale by selling off some of the better domain names (e.g. country names like Angola.com, etc.). But, as RK rightly said, if you sell those off, then the overall quality of the portfolio suffers — you’d have to spend money to replace those domains.
Some folks also *have* to sell, as their overhead is high, or they have outstanding debt that needs to be paid off, etc. Folks borrowed money from Domain Capital, for example, and you’ve seen how many of those didn’t pay off. Indeed, Sex.com had a lot of debt too, and you saw how the investors in that domain were fighting amongst themselves, before they were forced to sell it.
Also, we’re assuming the “costs” were registration fees for many of these domains — if costs were domains acquired at SnapNames, NameJet, or other auction systems, they could be far higher than simply $10/yr. And those acquisition costs can be very volatile, and not capped at 7% per year.
acquisition costs are one item, renewal or carrying costs are fixed
domains are where the money is at and when the new domains come in to where its no longer .com .org .net (ect) and more on the lines of .blue the prospect of making a ton of money will be easy, i would love to get windows.microsoft 🙂
Right. But, for the largest domain holders who rely upon sales, a comparable model might be that of an oil or gas exploration company with “proven reserves.” As they deplete their oil wells, the rate of production changes (if you overproduce, there can be a rapid reduction in annual production). They also need to spend money on “exploration” to keep their reserves constant or growing. All the “easy wells” have been tapped (that’s why companies want to drill in the Arctic). Deep sea exploration can also be risky.
Once you actually hit a big find, that goes into your proven reserves again, and the carrying costs are relatively fixed, agreed.
Buying 100,000 domains in 2012, though, vs. buying 100,000 domains in 1996 or 2000? Different portfolio quality is to be expected.
And to top it all off, the average price of oil or gas can be volatile in itself.
Not a model that I’d want to use for myself (I’ll stick to 500 domains that I can see my company actually owning forever, rather than requiring sales to offset large carrying costs).
I think one also has to looked if they are able to monetize the sites besides parked ads or just plain for sale pages. Say having affiliate sites for each domain until it sells. There are some nice website creators that i was about to do for mine, but unfortunately cannot being in the state of illinois. If they are able to do it many of their names would probably take in enough money to cover renewal fees (some may even turn into nice businesses in their own right to sell of) using the affiliate model and if they are in a state with no state tax and low costs of living the model becomes much more profitable.
Hey a big “thank you ” to Mike for sharing a bit of info about his biz and also tweeting some of his buys/sales.
Would love to read more about some of the specific tactics/strategies he uses. I know he does it on a much larger scale, but we can always learn from HOW and WHERE he Sells/Buys.
Cheers
George
“”Please bet against me, its really profitable, get me pumped up.””
I think Mike’s comment here is a good one and actually an accurate one.
He does take a beating from the commentators whenever a post is published about him.
So that’s how you beat against him, by doubting his success or demeaning his accomplishments.
I know he has a big personality and in some ways like Mr. Schwartz
George
Except he Mike has done it before and its not only the annual profit of the company its the exit.
Mike is one of just a handful of domainers that have had a successful exit out of a domain company after he built it up.
Not a lot of naysayers on this thread compared to what i have seen on other sites throughout the years
At the end of the day, one needs to keep in mind hedge funds and trading firms haven’t really entered the space yet. The Liquidity Boom hasn’t really hit. When it does people are going to look back and say WOW at some of the prices of .COM’s that people are patient enough to hold onto.
Impressive numbers. I smell loads of jealousy in some of these comments – why bring up a person’s personal life when the article is written about his business?
Well if they own names of known people, TM’s, typos, etc in the bunch I guess legal fees will also have to be taken into account for expenses. Costs of those can vary from year to year i imagine.
Many are focusing on only the sale numbers. You don’t think with 300,000 domains that there is any income coming from the fact that they’re pointed to his other existing businesses? For all you know that could be the primary reason he’s built a portfolio and his sales having covered most if not all of his renewal fees would mean he’s getting a massive amount of free traffic/marketing out of it.
Steve
He also is foregoing well into the six figures and probably in the even figures of revenue from parking domains by not parking them
@ Berkins…He also is foregoing well into the six figures and probably in the even figures of revenue from parking domains by not parking them
Assumption. Doubt .co makes any ppc revenue and one would first need to know the quality of the names in order to estimate revenues. 300K names does not guarantee revenue
Howdy
its Berkens
I doubt Mike owns more than 1% of .co domains.
I know how many domains I own and how much I make off of parking and Mike has 5x as many domains as I have
300K domains the quality of which consistently generate hundreds of sales a month for hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales, I would assume would be of the quality that would generate the estimated figures.
Unfortunately Howdy is probably correct.
If we subtract the TM-targeted names, the rest of the portfolio is probably not self-sustaining.
And if that’s true, then from a legal perspective it calls the model into question, no matter how successful it has been.
The only way to show Howdy is wrong, and prove that this model does not rely on infringing on the legally enforceable rights of other businesses to sustain itself, is to stop acquiring TM-targeted names and see what happens as the renewal fees are due on all the other names.
@John: Do typos that are not associated with a TM attract any legal liability? How? And what exactly is “etc”? Could you be more specific?
Thanx for the inspiration, @ MikeMann! Maybe there is hope for my little portfolio . . . 😀
This is a joke isn’t it?
What is the point of arguing over the success or lack of it when all we have is a couple of sales figures?
I know they purchase many names in the $xxx region – so what has the portfolio cost to date? At least $2.25m – maybe $5m; $10m; $20m; more? Not including overheads or renewals.
Selling 300ish domains a month from 300,000 stock isn’t any great shakes either – I’d be out of business if I only acheived that strike rate at the average sales price. All those names must be buyer driven too, which means that the quality of names maybe isn’t all that either.
Still, no doubt the exit strategy will be to go public before the fact that a big lump of the portfolio never gets any interest and is dead wood, becomes evident to the market.
Good Job Mike Mann. Never mind the jealousy comments. Stay Focused and Keep going.
James
Except that he did it all before all the things you said are not possible not sustaining, just numbers, no exit etc
The guy built Buydomains.com which he sold for like $60M, $80M
I’m old I forget
Now he did it all over again.
When he owned Buydomains.com back in the day I know the kind of domains he went for because it was often Mike, Frank Kevin and Myself in the auction
Now he has rebuilt the portfolio and is selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of domain a month
Its BuyDomains.com 2.0
Mike Mann is an inspiration to many rookies and established domainers. At the end of the day, it’s what one feels about their own accomplishments that matters. A lot of people criticize others instead of focusing on their own plan to success. I don’t see numbers as the driving force but the method instead. Mike Mann – and Mike Berkens – have a scalable model; while my footprint is small in comparison, I’ve learned a lot from both. Every positive reinforcement assists the domain industry grow. Keep on rocking the domain world! 😀
@Georgios
I have met many Greeks who are absolutely brilliant at business (Talking about Greeks who have immigrated to foreign countries and built empires from scratch) by working hard and being streetwise. Any of those Greeks which I talk about would be blown away by these figures, they are absolutely staggering. You are not one of those Greeks. You should stick to law, there is no doubt you are possibly one of the brightest domain lawyers on the planet, and many of us domainers will always be in-debted to you for the things you fight for – but business is unfortunately not your strong point – don’t take my words too harshely, I find myself trolling more than ever lately, but I believe I’m right to a degree.
@HowdyDodat
Extremely harsh words, I don’t even have the energy to reply properly. I too look down upon the Rockstars, and am grateful every single day that I live a simple life and don’t go through what they do. A personal attack like that is uncalled for (yes I might have committed the exact same offence, but not on such a scale). I have seen too many people in my young life already, where no matter how much sacrifice and hard work they put in, something eventually goes wrong (‘Nice guy finishes last’ is an eternal truth). So enjoy your perfect bubble where everyone loves you and you get on quietly with your ways. Eventually you will join the 99% of us that have felt real pain and have to go through a real struggle/suffering every day. You fail to mention anything about Mike’s Grassroots cause, it’s because of his ability to get something like that up – that hundreds of thousands of people will indirectly benefit and have their suffering reduced that little bit to give them some hope. Living in Africa and seeing suffering on such a widescale, I no longer go after needing the things you list as bringing happiness (having a family etc). People I look up to, and what I strive for on a daily basis, which brings me genuine happiness is helping others. Not everyone has the same limited factors in their philosophy of an ideal life which you define.
And for the record, I don’t know Mike Mann, I don’t know Georgios, I’m a nobody and I’m from Africa.
Stick: I’m not a lawyer (my background is finance and economics). As to my business skill, acquiring School.com was an obvious “failure” I suppose, in your eyes….
You did say two things that seems correct, that (1) you don’t know me, and (2) you’re a nobody.
Stick
That comment your referring was too personal and over the top for me and I removed it
@Acro I feel the same.
@George
Guess I’m wrong then :_) – I apologize.
No problem. My only point (I don’t know what folks *think* I wrote, but go back and read what I actually wrote), is that one shouldn’t rely on just one metric (sales in this case). It didn’t seem controversial, but seems to have spawned a lot of replies.
If someone went on Shark Tank (or Dragon’s Den, the UK/Canadian predecessors), and just showed their sales, the sharks (or dragons) would want to do a lot more due diligence, when deciding whether the business is worth investing in, is successful, etc. That’s all I am saying. At least he has revenues, which is a good start……one would need much more data to analyze his business fairly, though.
@StickThrower – George Kirikos is a fellow Greek and a proud Canadian 😉 along with Bill Kara and Mike Bahlitzanakis of City.com, Nick Spanos of Bapple, Tony Kanakaris and several others. We all share a passion for ethics and are hard-working; often times we question authority and love challenges.
A must read: http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm – Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
@stick
Real benevolence is not advertised
It is done without thought or the desire for recognition
The reward comes from giving itself
Like all his crap he announces his gifts to the world as if it means something
Sorry it does not
Does Stick know Berkens is lawyer?
Due diligence.
So what does the buyer of BuyDomains have to say?
Is he happy with his acqisition?
Has he recouped his investment?
Does he still expect he will recoup his investment?
Does it even matter?
Let’s say you start a web-oriented company and sell it for several million.
Later the company flops.
Maybe the buyer even sues you shortly after the acquisition. But he loses.
Are you a successful entrepreneur?
How long does a company need to be a going concern and turn a profit for us to consider it a “success”?
George is correct in that we have no data on BuyDomains profit and loss. Only sales data.
The company could be losing money every year. We simply do not know. And people who are sincerely interested in domain names should want to know.
Personal attacks should be avoided. It’s not relevant to the discussion.
But asking challenging questions, due diligence, should be encouraged.
Some excellent points made on this thread. Mike (Berkens) good to see you get in the fray.
What I find incomprehensible and reprehensible (unacceptable,) is people and corporations that make good money, yet are not satisfied with just making a handsome profit doing an honorable legitimate transaction, but who will stoop to any depth to exploit others less fortunate, by any means possible. This is where the lines diverge for me, no money for me is worth it, if I have to obtain it by exploiting others or feel like a wretch for getting it through in an illegitimate or dishonorable way, or using dirty tactics, blackmail, ransom, etc, to obtain it. I don’t want to get into semantics or into dissecting words, and I am using terminology rather broadly, but I think we all know what I am alluding to. That said, I can’t begrudge Mike Mann for having success at selling names, it’s good for him, it’s good for the industry as a whole, It’s obvious he has great talent for it.
I agree with most of what Acro said, except I tend to find more inspiration in men of character, rather than those who are just interested in accumulating money for their own means or ends, without the grace to help others when given the opportunity.
Back to the business model …
What kind of software is used to manage all those names?
Manually inputting into excel can’t be time effective when scaling.
On the stock trading side, they now have programs that take care of buys and sells.
Before, one could use Quicken or something close to that.
Does anyone know of any registrars that have similar software that can keep track of names in and out with total costs similar to Quicken?
Great to see folks discussing this topic where other shares their ideas.
Cheers.
Just to get 300K in names-My Hat goes off to him!
Very Hard to manage 300K Names.
Mike is an inspiration but he could have reinvested that 80 million in Apple or citrix at the time and now be worth almost a billion. Domains are not the center of the universe or the only path to riches,
Mike is an inspiring personality when it comes to business. He is extremely skilled and while other keep trying to figure how Mike sells not-so-good names at $xxxx, he does it again, and again, and again.
He has a great team and abundant capital.
Besides, Mike is more than just a domainer…he owns and operates many successful companies across the US.
I am a coder and have been in domaining for the past few years. I’ve learned a lot from Mike and never understood why some people are so keen on undermining his achievements. Pure jealously, I suppose!
Interesting to see a domain article in mainstream news. The article published on MSNBC via Reuters (2 hours ago) mostly talks about “cybersquatting” in particular .XXX, this little takeaway from the article “WIPO, whose Director General Francis Gurry reported on Monday that cases of Web piracy, commonly called cybersquatting, rose 2.5 percent last year involving a record 4,781 sites with nearly 90 percent resolved in favor of complainants.” It does not look like the odds are in favor for cybersquatters.
“one needs to keep in mind hedge funds and trading firms haven’t really entered the space yet
”
Excellent comment ,John, I agree.
MHB – There are differences between the market back then (early BuyDomains) and now.
Are Yourself, Frank and Kevin tussling with MM over drops now on a daily basis like back then? The pool of quality available domains is ever decreasing while the cost of aquisition is increasing.
I know they buy names every day in the $xxx range – that makes the capital outlay anything from $5m upto who knows…? Moving forward the cost of replacing stock will only increase, otherwise quality will need to decrease.
Seeing as this is a sales operation, monthly sales of less than 0.1% of a portfolio would appear to verify that lack of depth of quality.
If we were discussing any other commodity, the first question after hearing the sales figure would be ‘how much were your costs?’. I used to trade copper arb – on an average day I could make $50m worth of trades – a busy day would be over $150m. Those figures mean nothing other than being a big number – the only thing that mattered was the difference between sales and buys and if I’d covered clearing commissions. The difference between the two was invariably a tiny figure in comparison, but it is the only one that had any meaning.
Or maybe look at this this way MHB; if your portfolio is 100k in size, would it be hard or quite simple for you to sell $90k this month? Especially if you switched to a sales page from parking. And had a team of people to market them.
Wow, very impressive sales.
I don’t think an entrepreneur would buy a whack of stock and just sit on it, an entrepreneur has to be running a business and be in the action.
As for ‘could have’ bought Apple stock, it’s easy to make a call in hindsight. I ‘could have’ registered thousands of generic .com’s back in 1996.
“time most thought all the good domains were gone,”
+1
What a great teacher – I am the biggest student around