Buying Domain Names

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.

I noticed a domain name in auction recently that looked funky to me. The domain name was very old, had been unlocked and relocked without transfer, and it had an active website on it. Put simply, I found it peculiar that the domain name was listed for sale in an auction. Before I placed a bid, I needed to get confirmation that the listing was legitimate.

There have been plenty of times where something about an auction looked off, but it turned out to be legitimate. There have probably been more times where something looked off and it was either a fake listing, a case of theft, or something else that made the auction problematic. If I can prevent it, I would rather hold off on placing a binding bid than have to deal with a problem later.