When I receive an offer or inquiry, I tend to do a little research before replying. I want to see who is interested in acquiring my domain name, and I also want to see why they might be interested in buying the domain name.

To do this cursory research, Google, LinkedIn, and even Facebook are the primary tools I use. Typically, I can find out all I need to know within a few minutes of searching.

One of the best tools that can be used though, is one I use every day: Whois searches. Despite GDPR being in effect rendering this tool less useful, it can still be helpful.

A Whois search is helpful because it

When I worked in the corporate world (Wunderman and AIG), Summer Fridays were great. It was the day to dress down, sometimes enjoy a free bagel breakfast, leave work early, and usually have a bit of quiet time in the office while the management teams were out in the Hamptons or elsewhere. It’s been well over 10 years, but Fridays in the Summer were typically low key.

I should have remembered this yesterday when I sent several outbound emails aimed to sell a couple of domain names. Using my LinkedIn account, I sent a couple of messages to executives about an exact match domain name I think they would use well. I sent a few additional emails to other people as well. No responses. Nada. This is abnormal for me.

A Summer Friday, especially in August, is probably the worse time to send emails to corporate executives to sell a domain name. Many aren’t working, and those who are working, are probably trying to finish up so they can close down for the week and get out of the office. Even if an email gets through and there is interest in a domain name, it will take a while for the decision makers to discuss, negotiate, and approve a deal – let alone bring in the legal team to hammer out the purchase agreement and the finance team to deal with the payment.

In the corporate world,

Darryl Lopes, formerly a broker at Uniregistry and now an independent domain broker, shared a great tip on Twitter this week that could be helpful to domain investors who are looking to sell a domain name:

The easiest way to find leads for two-word domain names you own is to see is the same domain name with a dash is developed and reach out to them. #domains #sales #domainbroker

— Darryl Lopes, D-LO (@DarrylLopes) August 2, 2018

For the sake of discussion, let’s say I want to sell DomainInvesting.com. The traditional way that I would search for a buyer if I was doing outbound would be the following: