I’m Mostapha. I buy and sell names from Morocco. I have listed a name at the number I wanted to hear, then waited for a company that did not exist. There are two prices. Wholesale is what another investor will pay, after fees, with a calculator open. Retail is what a company pays because the name is the door of the business. The Domain Value Checker prints a range on purpose. The bottom is closer to wholesale. The top is a hope until a named buyer appears. How we score. How to read a NameBio comp is the tape. This page is which room you are standing in.
Who is in the room?
Wholesale: other domainers, drop buyers, a small fund that wants spread. They will run the same checker. They will search NameBio. They will not pay for your story. Landers on Sedo and Afternic are shops. They do not create a company.
Retail: a founder, a shop, a local firm that will print the name. They do not care that you “hold inventory.” They care that the email looks like them. They pay more slowly, and they use escrow: Escrow.com. If you cannot name that person, you do not have a retail ask. You have a mood. Before you sell.
Same letters, two markets. zenpay.com can sit in both. best-ai-tools-online.com sits in neither. Three pastes: live valuations.
The flip that dies on day one
You buy in an auction like an end user excited, round number, “I can list it for 10×.” You try to sell to domainers. They bid wholesale, or they do not bid. Fees and a year of renewal eat the spread. That is not bad luck. That is mixing rooms. A flip is a spread, not a personality. Books die here: why they fail.
Write the maximum bid as wholesale before the countdown. If retail ever shows up, that is surplus. Do not budget surplus. History still: snapshots. Marks still: UDRP. A pretty retail story on a colliding mark is not a higher multiple. It is a complaint.
How I use the range
- Checker. Leftover → drop or cheap-sell. No retail fiction. Before you buy.
- If the name is a keeper, the floor is what I would pay another investor. The ceiling waits for a company I can describe in one sentence.
- One public ask, inside a range I can defend. Five prices on five landers is a different stupidity; don’t. A range, not a guarantee.
- When the box and the tape disagree, believe the tape and the empty inbox: when the checker is wrong.
Leasing is not a third price for leftovers. It is rent on a keeper: when someone actually wants the name.
Decision
Buy as if you will have to sell to a domainer next month. List as if a company might write. If those two numbers cannot both be true, you are in the wrong room. Keep the Google row. This is not a 2026 pricing framework. It is two doors.