Timing of Sales Email is Important

Timing is everything, and that certainly applies to selling domain names. In my opinion, the time that you choose to send a sales email is critical and can be the difference between selling a domain name to a willing buyer and missing an opportunity to connect with that prospect.

In the majority of situations, I will only email a prospective buyer once. If the buyer doesn’t respond to my email, I likely will not email the person again because I don’t want to bother him or her (two exception being if the prospect replies with interest or if it is the result of an inbound inquiry). I generally assume a lack of a response indicates a lack of interest.

With that being said, if I send an email to a prospective buyer and she doesn’t respond, as a matter of practice I probably won’t send a second email to avoid being a pest. There’s a chance that the prospect had no interest in the domain name and that is why she didn’t respond, and there’s also a chance the email was received at an inopportune time. For me, chances are good that I will never find out.

For the most part, I try to send emails to prospective buyers

How Whoisology Helps Me

When I receive an inquiry, either via email or Domain Name Sales landing page, I do some due diligence on the prospective buyer. Most of the time, I have a limited amount of information to use to do my due diligence. The one thing I almost always have is an accurate email address. This is usually enough to learn about the prospect.

The Domain Name Sales platform integrates quite a few tools that can be used to learn about a buyer. You can easily search Facebook, LinkedIn, or  Google to find a match for the email address. This can be useful in determining who the buyer is, but I like to use Whoisology to glean additional information about the prospective buyer.

When I receive an inquiry, I like to

Sell a Domain Name via PR Firm

When you are looking to sell a domain name to a large company, it can be difficult to get in touch with the right decision maker. In fact, it can even be difficult to determine who the decision maker actually is!

An article in the Boston Globe might shed some light on how to sell a domain name to a large company, and I want to share the insight I gleaned from the article in the hopes that it helps you.

If you aren’t aware, Market Basket is a major grocery store chain in the northeast. The company was founded by the Demoulas brothers, and the chain grew into one of the largest grocery stores in the region. Because the store had Demoulas in its name for quite some time, the Demoulas brand is still well known in this area. Unfortunately, there was considerable family discord reported, and the company that is known as Market Basket was in the news quite a bit last year as a result of ownership issues. Long story short, Arthur T. Demoulas now has control of the company.

The Boston Globe published an article about the Demoulas.com domain name and how it was owned by someone that is not related to the Demoulas family or the grocery chain. To me, the most relevant and helpful part of the article is this:

Opening Offer is Important

The vast majority of opening offers I receive to buy my domain names are very low. I would guesstimate the average opening offer is well under $1,000, with the majority probably being around $100. Frankly, it’s a bit disheartening and frustrating to receive a $100 offer for a domain name I bought for $xx,xxx.

On the rare occasion that I do receive a decent offer for a domain name, I get excited because I know the prospective buyer has at least done some homework. We might not end up reaching an agreement, but at least the opening offer doesn’t make the prospect look unqualified and uneducated. I try to respond to all inquiries, but I am much more inclined to ignore an uneducated offer than deal with someone who clearly doesn’t have any idea about domain name values.

When I am on the other side of the negotiating table, I take my experience with

Domain Lesson from Clarkston, Michigan

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I caught a news article on ClarkstonNews.com about the website for a small city in Michigan, and the City Manager shared a valuable lesson all municipalities and businesses should heed: Set up a single email address to receive important emails, such as domain name renewals.

The domain name that is home to the website for the City of the Village of Clarkston (also known as Clarkson) expired, and apparently someone from the previous administration was listed as the registrant. As a result, the domain name expired, rendering the website unreachable since it was in pending renewal status. Fortunately, they were able to get in touch with that person, and it appears that the website is now operational again.

Had the domain name been registered to

Don’t Let Someone Talk Negatively After a Domain Sale

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As hard as I try to be nice when completing a domain name purchase or sale, I have been a participant in what you might call “challenging” negotiations. Regardless of what is being discussed, negotiations can become contentious. I think domain name negotiations can be even more contentious than usual because some people think aftermarket domain names are overpriced, and they don’t like the fact that people buy domain names as investments. Put simply, some people do not like dealing with domain investors.

I am sure there have been plenty of negotiations that ended with one party not being happy with the other party (or the domain broker who represented a particular party) after a deal is transacted. I can’t help but think of this article posted by Andrew to illustrate a case where one side of a deal was unhappy with some part of the transaction. Sometimes people keep this to themselves, but other times, they want to express how they feel to as many people as they can.

With that being said, once a