Sam Levy of Mightyboards thinks he's getting phished, ends up selling his domain for five figures

Sold a domain for five figures. That's a nice little windfall — one that he almost ignored, thinking it was spam.

(Makes sense, considering phishing has gone up 350% during Covid.)

Here's how @samlevy sold his domain and used the momentum to launch Mightyboards:

The buyer had actually been trying to contact me for months but I wrote it off as spam. I'm not in the domain selling business so it was all unfamiliar to me.

After a period of radio silence, they reached out again when I was paragliding with friends through the Italian Alps. We negotiated on the price a bit but I was super skeptical throughout the entire process. I was just playing along, waiting for a gotcha along the lines of "please deposit $1,000 to continue with the sale".

The broker ended up getting quite impatient because I was so slow in replying. It wasn't that I wasn't interested or excited. I was both of those things. I was just super distracted, in addition to being skeptical. This was the first time I'd attempted a multi-day expedition with camping gear, flying by day and camping out at night. And the scenery was mind-blowing.

So yeah, it was surreal to eventually see the money in my account. The only person I told at the time was my friend, Iona, and we had a few celebratory beers before setting off back home to the UK. I was sad to see the domain go but I think I made the right choice.

The money gave me more motivation to pursue my project, Mightyboards, but not how you might expect. I had to post a milestone before my product page could go live on Indie Hackers, so I wrote one about the domain sale. The next thing I know, the story is getting attention and I realize I don't have a landing page. So as fast as I can, I build a marketing page and get 15 signups. And that spurred me on to get more. Now, my waitlist is up to 89.

The money from the sale won't last forever, so I'll make hay while the sun shines.

Subscribe to peak behind the curtain of the latest milestones 👇