Mike Carson tweeted out a very detailed story on his sale of Fair.ly. It was pretty interesting.
Anatomy of the sale of http://fair.ly domain name for $27,200: It started when I bought a large portfolio of .ly domains from the founder of http://Register.ly (Libyan Spider) in 2017 for $43k, this one included.
There were some cool domain hacks in this portfolio, including http://free.ly, and a single letter .ly domain.
First inquiry for http://fair.ly was 2018, I asked $5k and they countered $2500, I asked if they could meet me at $3750 and didn’t hear back. In 2019 I got two more inquiries and asked $5k, but they said it was above their budget. In 2020 I got 4 inquires and started asking $10k and then 1 BTC.
In 2021 I only got one inquiry and asked 2 BTC. In 2022 no inquiries. Then this offer in 2023 and I asked 2 BTC. They countered with 0.75 BTC and we settled on 1 BTC. At first I was asking a low amount because I wanted to make back my initial investment.
Once I did this, I started asking more. I sold http://bare.ly, another name from this portfolio, for around $30k in 2022. I’m not saying this is the right investment strategy and certainly not the only way to do it. But I’ve always liked the idea of getting the initial investment back and playing with “house money” after that.
You have the luxury of not being desperate – basically you always have the upper hand in negotiations because you do not need to sell. .ly domains aren’t super hot right now, but can make some cool domain hacks. http://Local.ly is the highest reported .ly sale for $125k back in 2011. The company http://musical.ly was acquired for $1 billion+