The inconsistency of domain sales

Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.

AbdulBasit Makrani is a successful domain investor with a portfolio of over 8,000 domain names. Today, he wrote regarding some of his recent domain acquisitions. But something else in his post stood out to me:

…I would like to tell you that as of today I’ve 8,250 domains. There are still a lot of inconsistencies in sales like in December 2022 I just had one sale only! That month was the worst month in sales in over 6 years! Then in January 2023, I had 10 sales. This is just mind boggling. I’ve been consistently adding around 100 domains every month and fluctuation in sales keeps happening but December was a shocker to me.

Domain investors need to consider some of the randomness of domain name investing. AbdulBasit has a sizable portfolio (at least compared to many readers), yet he still sees significant fluctuations.

There’s little consistency in domain sales. Sometimes I make a few sales in a week, and I start to think I’m a maestro. Then there are months like last November 2022 when I didn’t sell a single domain.

You ought to talk to other domainers to get a complete sense of the market. Most of our portfolios are too modest to see trends. I sold 32 domains out of the 2,000 in my portfolio last year. That’s not enough domains to understand if the market is going up or down in any given quarter.

And one more thing. Look at AbdulBasit’s portfolio size. When you see someone note a sale on Twitter or NamePros, remember that sales are anomalies. Most names never sell.

Listen to this podcast to learn more regarding AbdulBasit’s domain investor journey.