How OpenAI Fumbled Securing ChatGPT.com at Launch While I Got Lucky and Snagged It for $9.63

This is the story about how I got lucky and picked up ChatGPT.com for $9.63 and flipped it for $85,000 just 8 days later.

After my viral tweet last week, my friends asked, “Why reveal such info? Won’t this affect your domain selling business? Won’t potential buyers get insights into your pricing and selling strategy?”

That’s absolutely possible. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter.

For good domain names, the seller always dictates the terms – meaning they set a price, and if that price isn’t met, the domain likely won’t be sold.

So I think the downsides are low compared to why I’m sharing.

Why Share

There are several reasons, but there’s two that stand out.

Throughout my 26-year domain investing journey, I’ve enjoyed hearing about domain name stories.

Not just big domain flips, but also stories about domain upgrades leading to the success or exit of the founders.

It’s these stories that motivated and inspired me to keep pushing forward because even though I “got in early,” that wasn’t a guaranteed ticket to success.

I grinded and hustled for many years until 2021 when I reached the pinnacle of my career, selling my equity at Newswire.com for several million dollars, while my partner went on to exit selling to a Nasdaq-listed company the following year for $44M.

Now I want to pay it forward by sharing my stories and hopefully inspiring and motivating others to never give up – whether it’s a journey of domain investing or any other online business venture.

The second reason for sharing is that it serves as a reminder that domain names are powerful and should never be an afterthought when naming your business and products.

How I Registered ChatGPT.com

On November 30th, I was randomly scrolling through Youtube on my TV while having dinner. I saw a video with the heading “Mind blown” where the author was talking about how mind-blown he was about this new app called ChatGPT.

Less than a minute into the video, I hurried over to my laptop to snag some related domains and picked up 3 domains with “GPT” in the name. That was exactly 6:44 PM.

 

 

Then I went back and continued watching but then it dawned on me, I didn’t even think to check “ChatGPT.com”.

So I checked, and it was available!

I registered the domain, paying the $9.63 fee exactly 15 minutes after registering the first set of names at exact 6:59 PM.

 

 

I couldn’t believe no one had picked it up.

But I wasn’t really that excited about it until I put a traffic tracker on the domain.

The first day it got a couple of thousand unique visitors.

The second day it rose to over 4,000 visitors.

And then the 3rd through 5th day traffic surged to over 6,000 visitors.

Email Offer 5 Days Later

On December 5th, I received an email from a GoDaddy broker stating there was a “serious interest” from a buyer.

Prior to that email, I had received 2 other inquiries from other companies but they didn’t appear to be serious.

But the GoDaddy email gave me confidence that I could potentially sell this domain for a good amount of money.

The Valuation

Since the type-in traffic for the name was increasing, I knew it was valuable.

But how valuable?

My thought process was, what is the number that would make me happy now and in the future IF this thing becomes massively big?

But at the same time, not price it too high where it would turn off the buyer.

At this point I had no idea if it was OpenAI, another domain investor or business.

After less than 24 hours I settled on $85,000.

Had they anticipated its huge success, they would’ve secured the name.

This reinforces my belief that many founders and CEOs of large organizations are unaware of the importance of domain names for their businesses.

So my first response to the broker was $85K, to which he then replied back with an initial $25K offer from the buyer with 2 other options (in his email he mistaken says “increased offer”).

Now obviously $25K is nothing to sneeze at but it was the first counter and you never take the first counter. And there were these 2 other options.

 

 

Traffic to the domain continued to increase so I felt I needed to stick to my price, sale or no sale.

Remember, my philosophy above: sellers dictate the terms of a sale.

And that’s what I did. Had they come back with $80K or even $84K, I would not have sold.

But fortunately, they came up and met my price and the deal closed on December 8th.

 

“You Sold it Cheap!”

That seems to be a common response to my tweet about this sale.

And I don’t blame them. In hindsight, it’s clear 2 years after, that it’s worth much more.

But no one has a crystal ball and nothing is ever guaranteed.

In fact, it could’ve easily gone the other way and the deal could’ve fallen through.

That’s a much worse feeling than what I feel now.

Now, I feel great pride in being the first person to register ChatGPT.com and achieving an amazing ROI on something I still consider a massive stroke of luck.

Who Was the Buyer?

Another big question many might want to know is, who did I sell it to?

Well, I can confirm it definitely wasn’t OpenAI. Apparently there were some issues between the company/person I sold it to and OpenAI.

Domain Names Matter

And most importantly, I have another great story to tell at OnlineBusiness.com, where you are now. A site where we try and spread the message that domain names matter – and a lot more than most businesses think.

Thanks for reading and if you got value from this please let me know below in the comments and I’ll try and write about more deals.

And possibly start building OnlineBusiness.com in public.