I received an offer of $2,750 for one of my domain names.
I replied, “No, thank you.”
A couple of days later, I sold it for $3,000.
I did it myself, the old-fashioned way, through Afternic.
Now I’ve handed the rest of my 250 or so domain names to Grok Bot, and I’ve given it six months to sell one.
We’re already two months in. So far, no sales.
So the question is: can AI help me sell a domain I wasn’t going to sell on my own?
The Domain I Sold: harborpointhomes.com
The domain was harborpointhomes.com, and it sold for $3,000.
I checked, and nothing has been built on it yet. No website.
It’s very cool, when you sell a domain name, to go see if someone has built on the lot, if you will, or renovated it. That’s the real estate guy in me.
If you’re new to this, I wrote up how I got into it in my guide to domain name flipping. And if you want to buy a name of your own, my domains are listed at Domain Name Lovers.
How I Sell a Domain: The $3,000 Deal
Here’s how the deal went down.
- The offer. A buyer offered $2,750. I honestly thought it was lower than that.
- My counter. I said no, but I’d sell it for $3,000, and I’d leave that price open for 7 days.
- The answer. Two days later I got an email back: “We have a deal.” Boom, done.
Then comes the commission for brokering the deal.
After that, $2,250 is what I received from the sale. By my math, that’s $750, or about 25%, going to the marketplace. Totally cool.
The lesson for me: a clear counter with a deadline gave the buyer an easy yes.
Why Domain Appraisals Are Subjective
Let me teach you something about appraisals, because I find this really interesting.
An automated appraisal tool valued this domain at $100.
It sold for $3,000.
Appraisal tools are getting better and better. But very much like real estate in the real world, value is subjective. It depends on what someone will actually pay.
My gut, and honestly my real estate background, told me this name was worth more than $100. So I said no to the low number, got a reasonable offer, and made what I think is a fair sale for whoever develops it.
Use any appraisal tool with a grain of salt.
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Meet Dex, the Bot Running My Domain Business
I started using Grok Bot with just one bot for domain name investing. His name is Dex.
Since then, I’ll be honest, I’m running basically my entire business on Grok Bot. About 80% of my AI usage is there now. It used to be 100% Claude. Now it’s about 20% Claude and 80% Grok Bot, which is pretty wild.
I covered the first month of this in I Let Grok Bot Run My Domain Business for 30 Days. Here’s what Dex has done over these couple of months of us working together.
Nearly 6,000 Domains Analyzed
I didn’t realize until I researched this video that Dex has analyzed almost 6,000 domain names.
About 60 of them got an A grade, which means he’s saying, “Hey, buy this one.”
Truthfully, I’m only buying a small percentage of those.
That’s where gut feel comes in. I might do some keyword research, think through a potential business idea or a marketing angle. That’s where experience still matters.
Listing on Spaceship and Afternic
One of the coolest things it’s doing is helping me build my sell list and list my domains quickly on both Spaceship and Afternic.
That used to be a very manual process.
You needed the exact same spreadsheet on both sides. If you sold something or changed a price in one place, you had to go change it in the other.
Now Afternic has an API, so a bot can talk to it directly. In the seller hub you can even pull domains in from your Spaceship account.
So I’m trusting Grok Bot with it. The moment I buy a new domain, it can list it, price it accordingly on Afternic and upload it.
Before, listing just one name was so tedious that I’d wait until I had a batch. Now it makes sense to do them one at a time.
Cleaning Up My Sell List
It has also found domains I needed to remove from sale.
Maybe I wasn’t renewing one, or it was for a personal project and I had it listed anyway.
It’s going above and beyond and doing really smart work.
100+ Outreach Emails, No Replies Yet
The bots helped me comb through 5,700-plus domain names to filter, narrow down and decide on more names to buy, which I’ve done.
They’ve also helped me send more than 100 outreach emails.
We’re still warming up our email addresses, so we’re reaching out very slowly. So far, no responses.
The Six-Month Challenge
So what’s the challenge?
I want Grok Bot to run the majority of this domain name investing business, with me as a collaborative partner.
And I want to see if it can help me sell a domain I wasn’t going to sell otherwise.
It has until February. That’s six months total for the project.
I’m pumped about where we’ve gotten so far. I’m doing the same kind of experiment on our Etsy store too, which you can read about in I Let Grok Bot Run Our Real Etsy Store.
The scoreboard right now: one sale by me, zero by Grok Bot.
Check back. We have six months.
And don’t forget, today is the dumbest AI will ever be.
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