How well did my .ae domain investment do in 2022? - a 🧵 Investment was from June till December In 2022, I invested $15,246 in .ae by buying 462 domains over the course of 7 months. Almost all domains were one words. I sourced my domains from the drop. 1/16

All great 1-word domains were taken many years ago. Today, the only place to access premium inventory at wholesale is at the drop. In May, I figured an auction would be the fastest way to sell, so I went on researching my options. 2/16

After being rejected by both ParkDotIO and RightOfTheDot, I knew I had to build my own platform. WordPress + Auction Plugin = it was. The ‘Blaze’ branding was in parallel to the business model of ‘burning’ through domains quickly. 3/16

In June, I put out a Press Release that lead to the first round of auctions. The PR ignited the initial batch of sales (both domain investors & end users). By the end of June, I had sold 35 domains for a little over $17k. 4/16

From that point on, sales varied every month based on available inventory and quality. Many great domain gems I was anticipating were renewed during the grace period. 5/16

I got lucky catching some really great ones like Blockchain•ae, Insure•ae, Work•ae, Move•ae, Kids•ae, and bunch of other gems that had greater weight on the bottom line. 6/16

By the EOY, I had sold 252 domains. That’s a sell-through rate of 55%. I attribute my high sell-through rate to the buy-low sell-low strategy. This liquidity helped build the portfolio throughout the months. 7/16

By running my own platform I was able to: + Save on marketplace commissions. + Maintain better control. I got to strategically list domains at certain times, experiment with price vs. demand, and be able to make adjustments at any time to help improve sales. 8/16

I learned a lot and will probably run this beast better in 2023 with all the experience I gained. + Get access to the web server logs. Traffic monitoring and visitor trends would have been the most priceless capability I had. 9/16

Viewing how many times a visitor loaded a domain listing was invaluable to my research on what names were in demand. + Create a brand for myself where I can introduce an educational course for newcomers. 10/16

Investing in Dot-AE follows a much different path than .com or the vast majority of extensions out there. Not every 1 word is deemed valuable and some terms are actually not in use in the UAE, so the corresponding domains were left untouched. 11/16

And now for the figures: Total Sales: $50,293 Cost of Goods Sold: $8,217 Net Income: $42,076 Still hold 210 unsold domains that cost $6,930. Recently, I’ve managed to pick up some stellar domains such as & - now in auction. 12/16

decor.ae - Domain Name For Sale | Dan.com

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I found a great domain name for sale on Dan.com. Check it out!

http://Decor.ae

If you were thinking about investing in ccTLDs, .ae is a pretty solid extension in the Gulf region with over 267K registrations. Compare that to the 2nd largest namespace of Saudia Arabia at 72K. Pretty big gap. 13/16

Flexibility in pricing your domains to end users is KEY to winning the .ae game. I’ve watched investors fail miserably. For the most part, companies in the UAE don't value domains as much as they do in the US. UAE companies are just starting to understand domain values. 14/16

I have a client that has resold a few of his domains and made gains. Take the cash and perhaps invest it in more .ae’s or maybe in a business that yields higher ROI. Dot-AE can be your starter fuel to ‘ignite’ bigger things. 15/16

You can’t get a perfect .ae for less than 4-5 figures on the aftermarket. If you run the math on my figures, it comes down to around $200 per domain. When you do that 252 times with a plan in mind, you come out as a winner. 16/16