Sales Tip: Look at the Left Side of the Email Address

Elliot Silver
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It is important to know who is inquiring about one of your domain names. There are many good ways to track down the identity of a prospective buyer or someone who inquired about a domain name, and I want to share what might be a less intuitive method in case you don’t have luck using other methods.

Look at the left side of the email address and perform a Google search for that. For instance, if the email address is MrDomainer999@yahoo.com, you will want to search for “MrDomainer999.” If the person used that moniker as a nickname, forum handle, website comment, or something else, you may be able to identify the prospect.

Oftentimes, people use

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How I Reach Out to a Domain Owner

Elliot Silver
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Just about every day, I send emails to domain owners with the hope of buying their domain names. This morning on Twitter, someone asked me about approaching a domain owner to buy a domain name without coming across as a scammer:

“How do you reach out to a domain owner, looking to purchase his/her domain without coming off as a valuation scammer,” I was asked.

I thought I would share some fairly simple advice to people who want to buy domain names directly from the owners.

I think the most important thing is to make a reasonable offer. Money talks. You can be the nicest, smartest, wealthiest, poorest…etc person in the world, but if you don’t offer the domain owner something of value, it isn’t going to get a deal done. There are many things that can be offered, such as cash, equity, collateral, tax deduction, products, services and perhaps other things I can’t think of off the top of my head.

An offer is the

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What to do with Extra / Unused Domains

Elliot Silver
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Every once in a while, a family friend or friend of a friend gets in touch with me to ask about their unused domain names. Sometimes these domain names were bought for a project that was never launched or they were previously used and are no longer needed.

I want to share the advice I generally give to people who own extra domain names but aren’t in the business of domain investing. Generally speaking, I recommend three options for them to either use their domain names, make money from the traffic their domain names receive, or to increase the likelihood of selling their domain names.

Three ways to profit from unused domain names:

1) Park the domain names to earn pay per click (PPC) revenue. It is free to

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How to Keep a Domain Registration Private

Elliot Silver
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Whois privacy is often cited in a negative manner, but there are many valid reasons for people wanting to keep a domain name registration private. I keep some of my domain names privately registered as a means of cutting down on spam, preventing others from seeing domain names my company owns, and preventing others from knowing what domain names I am buying and selling.

Whois privacy is offered at most domain name registrars. Private domain registrations are  generally inexpensive. Some registrars such as Uniregistry offer free privacy on domain names.

I want to share a few ways domain investors can keep their domain name registrations private. Keep in mind it would be very easy for an attorney to get a court order to reveal private Whois information for legal reasons. Also, keep in mind that I am not a privacy expert, so my privacy needs aren’t critically important to my business, and the suggestions below aren’t going to guarantee privacy. For that, an attorney should almost certainly be consulted.

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Always Good to Reconnect with a Domain Owner

Elliot Silver
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Whether you are a buyer or a seller (or both), it makes sense to check back in regarding a domain name.

At the beginning of the year, I was working with a few people who had significant interest in domain names owned by my company. Unfortunately, due to their budgetary limitations, we were unable to work out a deal. I thought it might be a good time to reconnect now that a couple of months have passed.

My pricing position hasn’t really changed, but perhaps theirs has. Maybe they have a tax refund coming or they needed a gentle reminder about the domain name. They may have shifted focus to their business, figuring that they can reach out about the domain name at a later point in time. I am someone who is happy to work with a buyer to get a favorable deal done, and I am hopeful that reconnecting a short time later will give a negotiation a shot in the arm.

If you are a

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Have a Reasonable Price When Doing Outbound Sales

Elliot Silver
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Sometime within the last 6 months, someone I don’t know emailed me to ask if I was interested in buying one (or more) of the three domain names he listed in the email. I was interested in one, and he told me the price was $500,000. When I saw the price, I said no and he asked for a counter. I told the owner we were too far apart, and I didn’t bother to submit an offer.

A couple of months after receiving the email, I saw that the domain name sold for around $10,000.

Had the owner started in the $10-50k range I may have made a competitive offer. His asking price out of the gate made me question my own valuation, and I didn’t want to submit a lowball offer or get into a valuation argument with the owner.

There are two lessons

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