Buying Domain Names

At the beginning of 2021, I shared my last purchase of 2020 (TimeoutProject.com) and first purchase of 2021 (LazyBastard.com). Neither of these domain names sold last year, but I’m still content with the purchases and the prices I paid. I am going to share the same thing this morning.

The last purchase I made in 2021 was NGFD.com in a NameJet auction. I like 4 letter acronym .com domain names, and the price was fair on this name. I priced it at $7,588 on Dan.com and will allow people to make reasonable offers or purchase it with a payment plan.

When I inquire about buying a domain name, I do so through my Embrace.com email address. The recipient of my email may have never heard of Embrace.com before, but I believe there is some level of authority and trust with the Embrace.com brand name. Establishing trust is important to getting a deal done. I think emailing from my @embrace.com email is much better than from my @gmail.com email address.

In my standard purchase inquiry email, I include several pieces of information to further establish trust with the recipient. The information is passively included in my signature, and I think it helps to give background about me and show that I am a credible buyer should a deal be made. The information I include in my signature:

If you look at the major domain name sales platforms, you will likely come across listings that aren’t legitimate. Sometimes a domain owner makes a typo when listing a domain name for sale, sometimes a domain owner has already sold a domain name and didn’t remove a listing, and other times people are simply messing around for whatever reason and list domain names they do not own. Domain name ownership verification still stinks on many platforms.

GDPR and Whois privacy are two issues that may cause verification issues. I believe most platforms have alternative methods of proving ownership though. In the case of domain names that were once owned by someone who listed a domain name for sale but later sold, I think it’s a pretty big challenge for sales platforms to be able to check the Whois or DNS records on millions of domain names every day to be sure listings remain valid.