New sellers fail to successfully copy Ali Zandi’s domain selling techniques

Ali Zandi, a super seller of Flippa and a former lead broker of the same portal for a very short time, made his name famous among domainers immediately by trading more than $600k domains in 2014. He made two famous interview with DomainSherpa (you can find these here and here) which are quite inspiring for beginner domain brokers. So inspiring that just after the first interview, many fellow sellers started simply copying not only his techniques but even his listing formats and phrases. I closely follow these trials and I can confidently say that most (all?) of the sellers who tried to follow his words made a loss. While I will not show any specific example because it might hurt the feelings of these guys but I thought I will try to explain what can be the reason behind of those failures:

• Ali Zandi’s interview was based on the statement that Flippa is a superior platform and you just list a domain with an appealing description on Flippa and you will win. This is the case sometimes and not the case for most of the times.

• As Ali emphasized, he works all the day and that is very much needed for success. He is an extremely talented sales man, so he will find potential buyers and the “weakness” of these buyers to maximize the sale price. So just listing on Flippa is not a magnet that buyers will come and bid to make you rich. You have to find buyers to maximize your profit.

• Buying cheap is a really hard task. Don’t forget, if you see a domain in auction elsewhere, other domain buyers also see that. So if you win an auction for a given price, there is a high chance that there is no other domainer who wants to pay more for that domain. Simply buying in Godaddy, Namejet or Snapnames auction and than listing it right away on Flippa will not work, only if you find end users who are ready to spend a lot for a domain.

• We are humans and like to win. It is very appealing to not mention or even don’t count the advertising fees, listing fees, success fees, bank fees, etc. of a successful flip. E.g. if you buy a domain for $1000 somewhere else, than list it as a premium listing on Flippa and showcase it for 5 days, the auction will break even at $2500. Not easy at all! And you will use a reserve price of $3000 and the auction goes unsold, next time it should be sold above $3500 to make a profit. Maybe some will say that it is a 200% profit but we know that there is no profit here.

• Ali’s methods were successful when he was the only one doing it, when there are 20 sellers doing exactly the same, the market becomes supersaturated. Only the best can survive or the ones who build marketplaces and always win. Like in sports betting, where 99 percent of the betters are losing in long term (published fact). The other 1% might influence the results, anyway. And the big winner is the betting portal, of course.

Conclusion: there is no such a thing that easy money, believe me. Be original, find your winner methods and keep it yourself how you did it. If it is public, it is not a winner anymore.