$5,000 Domain Name Offers

I recently received a few $5,000 offers for domain names I own. Based on several factors including the  email addresses, the information in the emails, and a couple of other things, I believe these are mass emails sent to many domain owners. My opinion is that the sender goes through all of the affirmative responses and decides which to pursue and which to ignore.

I assume some people are very happy to get a $5,000 offer for a domain name only to be let down when they don’t receive a response. I also assume some people get annoyed by these $5,000 offers because their domain names are worth much more than $5,000. Others find them annoying because nobody responds when they wish to begin a discussion, as a $5,000 opening offer is usually enough to at least open a dialog.

One takeaway from this is that the owner of every good domain name has likely received a $5,000 offer. Even if the email isn’t a bona fide offer, the domain owner may not know this  or not care that it wasn’t necessarily legitimate. This means that people who make subsequent genuine offers will be told that the domain name already had a $5,000 offer. Domain buyers are then competing with offers that may not be real, and that can be a challenge when a domain name is valued in that ballpark but not much beyond.

Chances are good that if the domain name is very good, there has been more than one offer submitted over the years. Although I submit offers based on my comfort level on an individual domain name basis, I keep this fact in mind when negotiating.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. I received similar email from “Amy Davis” with email who has no records on internet anywhere I could find and I knew it’s not from a serious buyer and so far no response after counter offer with $6,500.

  2. same email for one word .com $5K, maybe you should post it, and index it so people know it is some sort of scammy mail.

    • Sounds to us like Sarah is throwing lures out in hopes of landing a desperate owner. We all have to put up with the fish tank mentality of predatory opportunists.

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former Marketing Analyst/Strategist Rockefeller IBEC Group) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist

    • Us = Contact Group, I have been chosen as their spokesman and strategist. We collectively have over a 100 years collective experience.

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) Example

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former Marketing Analyst/Strategist Rockefeller IBEC Group) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist

  3. Yeah, got them too.

    They never address you by name and always seem to come from a female.

    email addy from Sara (sans “h”) sara.bfly13@gmail.com

    Signs off as Sarah

    “Greetings,
    I am a web developer interested in acquiring your domain name
    [redacted] I would like to make an offer of $5,000 USD in exchange of your domain name.

    Let me know if you would be interested in the sale of your domain, it
    would be really helpful for my project.

    Thank you,
    Sarah”

  4. Years ago when I had more time I’d set 0 as minimum offer and respond to them all and have turned xx into xxxx. Today all my available time is spent working on my websites due to the amount of websites I run so the domain sales business has been flipped to basically zero effort. I set minimum offers at 50% of what my sales price is so I only spend time talking to warm leads. Anything below that and my sales pages inform them the minimum offer hasn’t been met as time is money and I’d rather spend time on my revenue generating sites then on offers not in the ballpark.

  5. Those darn people who want to make money, feed their family and live the capitalist dream.. argh LOL

    Buy low sell high, acceptable business strategy unless you are talking about domains then you are a “predatory opportunist”.

    The boat goes both ways Jeff in fact anyone selling is more likely the predatory opportunists.

    I am not a mass emailer, never have been, to me each inquiry is separate and special. Nor do I steal domains for low prices by going fish. I will however not stand for people putting down those who do not have as much funding behind them to buy what they want when they want and use good ole fashion cold calling/emails to catch a fish.

    Everyone stats somewhere and if you started on top good for you but knocking people for making an effort, come on.

    • Josh,

      I am not knocking hard working people at all I am mocking those who manipulate digital mass marketing come ons. Sorry we are confused at where you are coming from?

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) Former Marketing Analyst/Strategist Rockefeller IBEC Group) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist

    • The issue I take is if I dislike this “$5,000” mass emailer I have to also dislike many in this industry who built a business on porn, typo squatting, mass new registering of names to flip at $2950 based on news feeds and trademark filings etc. The issue I have is these guys get domainer awards and we come down on a guy/gal who mass emails to get a good domain on the cheap and make a profit.

      Do I like getting spam, no but I at least know in this case why I got it why they sent it and in a small way it’s someone looking to catch a break and that touches a soft spot. End of day it is not my style but I see where they are coming from.

      I am no better than anyone myself, compassion first.

    • @Josh,

      You’re right to point out some inconsistencies – I won’t quite say “latent hypocrisy” – in domainer attitudes here. Domainers are quick to resent people who try to buy from them at low prices even though it’s what they’d prefer to do themselves if the tables were turned. Kind of amusing.

      But I think there are some real issues in this case. Not responding is ok. But sending out mass offers and not responding to the majority of them, not following through on handshakes when the offer is accepted – that’s emphatically NOT what most of us would do. We can resent that without any hypocrisy.

      This sort of thing – muddying the waters with a large number of fake offers – just spreads confusion and raises frustration levels in an industry that is already frustrating enough. If somebody out there wants to send out mass inquiries, that’s their prerogative. But offers ought to be sincere. Nobody respects someone who says 1 thing and does the opposite. Basic stuff.

    • i don’t even reply anymore. the first couple times i would counter since i thought someone offering 5k off the bat would be able to pay more but after getting a few more of basically the exact same emails i accepted a few but nothing. now i don’t even bother. they never send inquires for my best domains but instead rather mediocre seemingly random domains.

  6. A buyer that doesn’t follow up after you reply to his opening offer doesn’t bother me too much.

    What I personally find very irritating are emails with offers matching or exceeding BIN prices and when you reply to them, they admit they only wanted to attract your attention, but in reality they only want to pay say $500 of the $5000 offer.

  7. Another thing worth mentioning is that some places, like Godaddy Escrow has a ceiling of 5000$ before sending the name to Escrow.com. Or requiring a wire transfer. This means that up till 5000 USD, a CC can be used to fund the purchase at for example TDNAM.

    This in turns also opens up for the possibility of fraudulent transactions with stolen CCs.

  8. ———- Forwarded message ———-
    From: Nicole Alcaraz
    Date: Sun, May 8, 2016 at 11:23 PM
    Subject: Offer for your domain ailments.com
    To: eric@impulsecorp.com
    Here’s the one I received on May 8th 2016:

    Greetings,
    I am a web developer interested in acquiring your domain name ailments.com
    I would like to make an offer of $5,000 USD in exchange of your domain name.

    Let me know if you would be interested in the sale of your domain, it would be really helpful for my project.

    Thank you,
    Nicole

  9. I also get these offers occasionally and wonder what’s up. I will share one for what it is worth. While “Kim” tells a nice story, the end result was the same:

    Begin forwarded message:

    From: Kim Rogers
    Subject: Offer for gallantly.com
    Date: May 15, 2016 at 1:31:56 PM EDT
    To:

    Greetings,

    I am a web developer and my team is getting ready to launch our new website shortly.
    We are currently negotiating with two domain owners having the keyword gallantly in their domains in the price range of $2000-$4000.

    But somehow your domain caught my eye. So before we finalize our purchase I wanted to inquire if you were interested in selling your domain gallantly.com
    I know our budget is not high, but I can talk to our management and get them to bump our offer to $5000 USD for your domain.

    If there is any interest let me know. Otherwise, have a good day!

    Thanks,
    Kim

    • Received almost the same email from Carol Brooks – carolbrooks24@gmail.com:

      “Greetings,

      I am a web developer and my team is getting ready to launch our new website shortly.
      We are currently negotiating with two domain owners having the keyword fervently in their domains in the price range of $2000-$4000.

      But somehow your domain caught my eye. So before we finalize our purchase I wanted to inquire if you were interested in selling your domain fervently.com
      I know our budget is not high, but I can talk to our management and get them to bump our offer to $5000 USD for your domain.

      If there is any interest let me know. Otherwise, have a good day!

      Thanks,
      Carol”

      Seems like someone is going after .coms ending with ‘ly’ 🙂

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