See Other Domains Before Inquiring

Elliot Silver
-
0

I want to share a piece of advice for those of you who opportunistically acquire good domain names privately. Check out whether or not the domain owner has other domain names of interest before sending your inquiry.

Let’s say you are in the market for good one word .com domain names and think Exclaim.com would be great for your portfolio (my company owns the name).  Before inquiring, it might be good to have a short list of other domain names the owner has so you can inquire about those, too.

When you are buying domain names on a one off basis, the domain name might be priced much higher than if you are buying a package of domain names. In addition, by inquiring about more than one domain name, the domain owner will likely be able to tell that you are a domain investor rather than someone who is planning to build “the next big thing.”

I regularly use tools like

Read More

Rebranding is Expensive

Elliot Silver
-
0

When I am in a negotiation to sell a domain name to a company that would use the domain name by launching a new brand or rebrand an existing business, I often think about how expensive of an endeavor it will be for the company to do so. In addition to their web related graphics, the company needs to update signage, business cards, marketing materials, shirts or uniforms, and other merchandise. This is expensive. Frankly, the domain name would likely cost a fraction of the entire rebrand, even if the domain name is expensive.

On one hand, a domain owner can make the argument in a negotiation that the company should pony up a bit more for the domain name since they are going to have to spend big bucks on the rebrand. On the other hand, reminding a decision maker about the expense of a rebrand might give them second thoughts about buying the domain name in the first place.

I think there may be a disconnect

Read More

Don’t Be Annoying

Elliot Silver
-
0

The other day, I received an email that started with, “I have reached out several times.” I had not responded to this person’s email because I had no interest in what he was offering, but I will share some advice with you.

It’s fine to email me once about some domain names that you think I might like to buy. You can see the types of names I own, and if you have something that would fit in on that list, you are welcome to share them with me with your price. If I don’t reply, perhaps it is because I am not interested. There’s a chance I missed your email, so a follow-up wouldn’t be too annoying. However, if you send two emails that don’t generate a response, it is likely that the domain names you sent are not of interest.

I do my best to

Read More

How to Buy Back a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
-
0

Yesterday afternoon, I wrote an article detailing a couple of ways a domain name may go under new ownership, unbeknownst to the former owner. I suppose because of the surprise of this, sometimes these former owners have a poor attitude when discussing their former domain name, and that is not helpful to a negotiation.

I thought I would share a few tips to help former owners try and reacquire their lost domain names via negotiation with the new owner:

Be professional – Being an a-hole is not going to win you any points with the new owner, and it will likely lead to a breakdown in negotiation. When someone gets confrontational with me about a domain name my company rightfully owns, I generally completely ignore the person or have my General Counsel take over. I don’t have the patience to deal with people like that.

Know your rights – If the domain name is descriptive and it expired because an old email address was used as the contact email at the registrar, chances are good that the

Read More

Offer a Cyber Monday Domain Deal

Elliot Silver
-
5

We’ve all been in negotiations that don’t end well. Our price is higher than the buyer was willing to spend, and we got stuck on our asking price. Perhaps today is a good day to rekindle the negotiation and offer a Cyber Monday deal for the domain name.

People have come to expect great deals on Cyber Monday. My inbox has been full of companies offering special prices for Cyber Monday and even “Cyber Week” in some cases. Point is, people are looking for deals online today, and why not try to close some of your old leads.

Now that most of the email newsletters with special

Read More

Argument Against BIN Pricing

Elliot Silver
-
20

Most domain brokers and domain name marketplaces encourage their sellers to set buy it now (BIN) prices for their domain name listings. They correctly cite the higher sales rates for the BIN names as a reason for sellers to list domain names with BIN prices. While this is true, I don’t think it always works to the benefit of the seller to use BIN pricing.

Let’s say you bought or hand registered 50 average to below average “Western” 4 letter .com domain names a few years ago. These names, which now may be considered “Chips,” have the letters Q, X, W, and Z mixed within them. By US and Western standards a few years ago, these names generally weren’t anything special and could be had for registration fee or a bit more. If you decided to listen to the advice of domain marketplaces and set “aggressive” BIN prices of $750/each, you would have sold all 50 names at some point in the last several months. That once aggressive pricing is now considered a steal.

Before the last several months, I can’t

Read More
1...525354...213Page 53 of 213