I Listed a $50 Domain for Sale. The Escrow Fee Is $50.

Three things are for sale on Rounders to Founders right now.

All three are mine. None has sold. And one is priced so the middleman's fee is exactly the asking price.

Welcome to the Sunday ledger. This week: Cash Out.

What Cash Out is

Cash Out is the board on this site where you sell a build or a domain. Small online businesses, code, customers, accounts, domain names. Straight asset sales, nothing fancier.

It took over from the staking application. Staking is paused, so R2F isn't backing builders right now. If you built something and you're done with it, this is where it goes.

The rules fit on a napkin:

• You prove you own what you list. A domain takes a DNS record. A build has to be verified on its Build page.
• Revenue gets read straight from Stripe when the seller connects it. If it's self-reported, the listing says so.
• My AI team reviews every listing before it goes live.
• R2F takes no commission. Listing is free, selling is free, buying is free.

How a deal actually closes

Every deal runs through Escrow.com. Nobody touches the money but them.

1. Buyer and seller agree to the terms on Escrow.com.
2. The buyer pays Escrow.com, not the seller.
3. The seller hands over the domain, the code and the accounts.
4. The buyer gets 3 days to poke at everything, then accepts.
5. Escrow.com pays the seller.

Domains get a Buy it now price. Businesses take offers, diligence and some haggling. Either way R2F opens the escrow as the broker and steps out of the way.

The ledger: my three listings

Escrow.com charges 2.6% on a wire payment up to $5,000, with a $50 minimum. Buyer and seller split it 50/50. Here's what that does to my board:

• vibecredits.com, asking $2,500. Fee $65. Buyer pays $2,533. I'd keep $2,468.
• dbrecon.com, asking $100. Fee $50. Buyer pays $125. I'd keep $75.
• holidaymyhome.com, asking $50. Fee $50. Buyer pays $75. I'd keep $25.

Read that last line again.

A buyer hands over seventy-five bucks. Twenty-five lands with me. The other fifty goes to the escrow company. On the cheap domain the fee is the same size as the price.

That's not Escrow.com being greedy. That's what a minimum does. It barely scratches a big number and it chews through a small one.

Poker brain: the rake

Every poker player already knows this one.

The house takes a rake from every pot, and the smaller the game, the bigger the bite. In a giant pot the cut is a rounding error. In the smallest games it's a fat slice of everything on the table. Grinders who play the lowest stakes hand the house the biggest share of what moves.

A flat fee works the same way. It's a rounding error on a $10,000 sale and a mugging on a $50 one.

So before you list anything, anywhere, do the rake math. You've got three ways out when the fee eats too much:

1. Raise the price. If the domain is worth $50 to you, it's probably worth $50 to you after fees, so ask for more.
2. Stuff the bag. Sell the domain with the half-built site, the logo, the waitlist. Same fee, bigger pot.
3. Give it away. Last October I offered a domain free in my newsletter to whoever sent the best reply on how they'd use it. When the rake is bigger than the pot, sometimes the best play is a gift.

Why nothing has sold

The honest answer is boring. A market needs buyers and sellers, and as of Saturday this site has six members.

Three listings, all mine. Zero from members. Zero sales. The bar we set for Day 30 is five listings from members, so there's a long way to go and three weeks to get there.

Steal this

Before you list a domain, an app or anything else on any marketplace, write down three numbers: the asking price, your share of the fee, and what you'd actually keep. If the third number is below what you'd take, fix the price or fix the bundle before you hit publish.

Cheap listings aren't wrong. Not knowing what you'll keep is.

R2F is a community for poker players building startups. What's the smallest thing you've ever sold online, and how much did the fees chew off? Tell me in the discussion thread. And if you're building something, post your build. Two minutes, and a verified build is also what you'd list on Cash Out one day.

— Art