Your Offer Might Spark an Interest in Selling

Elliot Silver
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Here’s something to keep in mind when making offers for domain names: your inquiry might make the domain owner  consider actively marketing the domain name for sale.

In the last couple of months, I have made many  purchase offers for domain names that were not on the market. On a few of these domain names, shortly after making my offers, the companies decided to seek out a domain broker to sell their domain names. The prices of these domain names were far above what I would pay, and as far as I know, none of these names I am thinking about  have sold via broker.

When buying domain names, my strong preference is to make a deal privately. This generally allows me to purchase a domain name covertly, without the price reported publicly and without outside involvement from someone who might use this data to their advantage. When a broker

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You Might Want to Accept the First Counter Offer

Elliot Silver
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One of the most exciting aspects of buying and selling domain names is the negotiation. You have a purchase or sale price in mind, the other party has their price in mind, and you go back and forth in the hopes of closing a deal. Based on my experience, sometimes it is better to accept the first counter offer and just close the deal than risk losing the deal by counter offering.

Let’s say I want to buy a domain name I think has a wholesale value of $20,000, so I kick things off with a reasonable offer of $10,000. Sure, the offer may be a bit low, but it isn’t a $100 offer that the seller probably sees every week, and it is strong enough to show the seller that I am serious. Being a reasonable domain owner, the seller counters at $15,000. The hard part is deciding whether to try and save some money by either sticking to my offer or improving it. Alternatively, I can simply say “deal,” and get it done.

I have regularly gone back to try and get a better deal. Domain investing is part speculation, and I think an investor makes his money on the buy-side. Sometimes the market is weak or a domain name isn’t as valuable as I might expect, so getting a good deal is important. There is a big risk to going back and countering the counter offer though.

A seller may begin to re-think things. He may realize he isn’t likely to get what he wants on the name and try to find another buyer for the domain name. This can drive up the price. The seller may simply say “no thanks” and take the domain name off the market.

When I counter offer, I am effectively

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Ask Your Parking Company for Help

Elliot Silver
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If you have domain names that are getting traffic but not earning much revenue, it might benefit you to chat with your parking company about the domain name. This sounds like an obvious course of action, but I bet many  people simply don’t seek out this extra help.

Most of the people I have met who work at parking companies are very knowledgeable about parking. They know how to monetize domain names better than others, and they can  offer guidance based on their experience. PPC company representatives also have access to data points that users don’t have, and they also have access to data from other parked domain names.

PPC landing pages and feeds are pretty good at determining

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Connect with a Branding Agency

Elliot Silver
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Last week, Alan Dunn shared a link to an article about a company that decided to rebrand as Alongside. The company was able to acquire the exact match Alongside.com domain name, although the article didn’t really discuss how the domain name was acquired. It did, however, give me an idea that might help me sell domain names.

There are two excerpts from  the article that grabbed my attention:

“We enlisted Pauly Ting to help us make sense of it all and come up with a name that fits us perfectly.”

“We enlisted Rob Meyerson from Heirloom, who had an impressive naming background for some of the biggest brands in the world”

Many companies use

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Don’t Get Caught in the Legal Crossfire

Elliot Silver
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Despite the fact that it is 2016 and the laws regarding cybersquatting on well known brands are well established, some people still seem a bit too cavalier when it comes to owning infringing domain names. My guess is that some people either don’t know about the protections given to brands or they believe the risk/reward analysis is in their favor.

This morning, Andrew Hazen called attention to a lawsuit that was filed by fashion brand Christian Dior. According to the article in World IP Review, in addition to injunctive relief and the transfer of the infringing domain names, “It is also seeking an account of all profits made by the defendants in their unlawful acts, and statutory damages for wilful counterfeiting for each use of the Dior trademarks ($2 million per infringement, tripled) and $100,000 for each domain name.”

The company, like many other large brands, is

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It’s Not How You Will Use it But How it Can be Used

Elliot Silver
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I can’t tell you how many times someone has told  me that my asking price is too high because of the size of their business or because of their plans for the domain name. It boggles my mind when some people then become  rude simply because the price and value of the domain name is beyond their budget.

Although most of these inquiries do not materialize into an acceptable offer and are simply ignored, it may be helpful to explain that the value of a domain name is not how the person inquiring plans to use it, but how the domain name can be optimally used. When I explain this, I sometimes offer the following illustration or something similar:

Let’s say you

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