2026-09-30

BIN pricing and the follow-up strategy that closes domain sales

How buy-now numbers are set across a 154-name portfolio, the three-number ladder behind every listing, the four-message follow-up sequence that turns an offer into a funded escrow, and what to do when a BIN sits for ninety days.

The number on a domain page is not really a price. It is a filter. A buy-now price says three things at once: here is what it costs, here is who can decide today, and here is the shortest path from interest to a paid escrow.

Everything expensive about a domain sale happens before that. A listing goes live, someone is interested, and then you spend two weeks negotiating a number both of you could have read off a page. BIN exists to delete those two weeks.

What a buy-now price buys you

• The buyer can commit without a meeting. Every extra message is a place where a buyer drops out — not maliciously, just because another week started.
• It protects your time. Answering "what is your best price" forty times is not selling, it is unpaid customer service.
• It makes your list comparable. When three names carry the same number, interest in one tells you something about the other two.

The cost is that BIN caps you: you cannot price-discover upward. That is exactly why every public number in my list sits on top of a private floor, instead of being the only number I would accept.

How the numbers on my list were set

All 154 names carry a buy-now price, from $80 to $3,995, and the prices cluster rather than spread evenly — 38 names at $495, 33 at $375, 22 at $488, 16 at $195, 13 at $150, 10 at $100. The clustering is deliberate. It makes the list readable in one pass and makes comparison honest.

The logic behind the tiers:

• $100–$195 — long labels and thin categories. developenglish.com and workoutfitnessplan.com are honest examples: clear meaning, no urgency, priced to move rather than to wait.
• $275–$375 — geo and service intent, plus brandables that must earn their own demand. seattlestudioapartments.com sits at $375. Nobody types that by accident, but the person who does is a landlord with units to fill.
• $488–$499 — active categories where an end user will build. Ten names in the AI category sit at $488, including aigeneratetools.com and aiphotoservices.com.
• Four figures — exact-match service names where the buyer is a business, not a collector. accountantstax.com anchors the top at $3,995, and the $1,288 names — promptja.com, fastimageai.com, generateimagesai.com — were listed while that category was visibly in motion.

Notice what is not in the formula: my original cost. What I paid is the worst anchor in this business. A name bought for $12 can be worth $488, and a name bought for $400 can be worth $150. The market does not know what you paid, and it does not care.

The three-number ladder

Before a name goes live, write down three numbers. This is what makes negotiation boring, in the good way.

1. BIN — the public number.
2. Floor — the lowest number you accept without a plan attached. I set it at roughly 75–80% of BIN.
3. Walk-away — below the floor you do not discount, you offer terms.

A worked example: BIN $495, floor $400. A $300 offer arrives. You do not reply with $450 and a paragraph about the category. You reply with one of two things — "$420 and I open escrow today", or "two payments of $250, the name transfers on the second". Both hold the value, and one of them gets a yes from the buyer who has cash flow instead of cash.

Charm pricing or round numbers matters less than consistency. Expect counters 20–40% under a published BIN; that is normal, not an insult, and the floor is what stops normal from becoming a discount you never agreed to.

The follow-up sequence that closes

Most sales that stall do not stall on price. They stall on an unanswered email. This sequence stops at four messages, because a fifth changes nothing except my mood.

• Day 0 — answer with a decision, not a question. Within the hour if you can: the number, the transfer route, one question at the end to keep the thread alive.
• Day 2 — one line. Confirm the price is still open and restate the best number you already offered.
• Day 7 — reduce risk, not price. Send the detail the buyer is actually worried about: which registrar, push or transfer, who pays the escrow fee. This message produces a surprising share of the yesses.
• Day 14 — an honest expiry. Only set deadlines you will honor.
• Day 30 — close the loop, then stop. After that, silence is the follow-up.

The wording matters more than the cadence:

• Day 0: Your $300 offer is below the $495 buy-now. I can do $420 with escrow opened today — shall I send the details?
• Day 2: Still open at $495. The $420 stands through Friday.
• Day 7: If the transfer is the concern: the name is at a registrar that pushes in minutes, escrow holds your funds until it is in your account, and I cover half the escrow fee. Renewal is standard .com.
• Day 30: I'll assume the timing is wrong. The buy-now price is there if that changes.

The mechanics that decide whether you get paid

• Push versus transfer. Same registrar: minutes, usually free, done from a dashboard. Different registrars: typically five to seven days, and a 60-day ICANN lock starts when the name lands. Ask where the buyer wants it before you accept an offer.
• Escrow, always, above pocket change. Agree who pays the fee in writing up front, and if a deal stalls on a small fee, offer to cover it. That is cheaper than the sale and cheaper than relisting.
• Confirm the receiving account exists before anyone pays. The most common stalled sale is a buyer who never created an account at the registrar you are pushing from.
• First paid wins. When two buyers circle the same name, the first funded escrow takes it and everyone else hears so in one line. Vague answers here are how sellers end up with two angry buyers and one unsold name.

When a BIN sits for ninety days

Read the numbers, not your feelings:

• Traffic and no offers — the price is wrong, or the page fails to answer a question. Change one of the two, not both.
• No traffic — the name is not reaching buyers. That is a distribution problem; fix placement before you touch the price.
• One low offer, then silence — the floor is above the market that saw it. Either hold and wait, or accept that this name sells to one buyer and go find them directly.

If you do move a price, move it once: a single 15% cut, not three small ones. Buyers watch listings, and a number that changes every month tells them to wait.

None of this needs a broker or a subscription. The flip maths and the listing copy generator are both free in the toolkit, the negotiation scripts live in the blog archive, and the portfolio is the whole method running live — 154 names, published buy-now prices, escrow transfers on every one of them. If one of those numbers is the number you keep re-reading, that is the entire test.

Originally published at https://dnwai.com/d/blog/bin-pricing-and-follow-up/ — 154 buy-now domain names, escrow transfers.