I inquire about purchasing many domain names, and the majority of these offers are made to people who aren’t involved in the domain space. Since I am generally making cash offers rather than simple inquiries about availability (probably 80% of the time), I receive a wide range of replies from domain owners.

Because I am not offering end user prices in most cases and because it’s almost essential to counter offer in my opinion, I receive all sorts of replies – from simple one word replies to extensive replies. The replies are either an attempt to get me to pay more, not contact the owner again, or tell me that my offer is far too low for some reason. Some people are better at crafting effective replies than others.

One thing I like to do is think about the reply emails I receive to see what I think is effective and what doesn’t seem to work, and then I use them for my own inquiry replies when I don’t send them to the brokers at DNS.

On occasion, I will receive a

I previously discussed the importance of doing due diligence before purchasing a domain name, and I want to offer some thoughts regarding how I perform due diligence. This post will cover aspects related to finding out about a domain name’s sale and listing history.

You’ll want to find out previous sales and previous sale listings to help with your negotiations. You might be prepared to pay $20,000 for a domain name, but if you saw it didn’t sell at TRAFFIC 2009 in the $5,000 – $10,000 reserve range, you know your offer is probably too high. Likewise, if you saw a name sold for $100,000 in 2010, you probably won’t have much luck offering $1,500 for it.

Here are some suggestions on how to find out if a domain name was previously sold: