The most difficult part of a domain deal is often the domain name transfer. This process can be especially frustrating when dealing with a buyer who is not all that experienced with domain name transfers and doesn’t know how to facilitate one. This can be even more frustrating when the value of the deal is lower than usual.

The other day, I posted a poll asking people if they have ever given a domain name as a gift to someone. The majority of people who participated in the poll were like me and have bought a domain name for someone else as a gift. Sometimes, buying a domain name for someone else isn’t such a great idea.

Nearly all of the time I have bought a domain name for someone, they have not taken possession of the domain name from me. Either they don’t have the need for the domain name (yet), or they simply don’t know enough about how to actually get the domain name. If I were to guess, most of these people have never even owned a domain name before and they wouldn’t know how to open a registrar account and initiate an account change or a transfer.

For the most part,

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