Non-Traditional Deals May Not Make Sense

I have this idea in my head that I will sell one of my domain names for cash plus equity, and the equity stake will become worth a substantial amount of money. Unfortunately for most of us, this is simply a pipe dream, and I think the likelihood of it happening is very slim. That being said, I have spent time negotiating deals like these, even though I know it might not make sense.

Equity deals can be complicated. In addition to a standard domain sales agreement, there needs to be other agreements necessary to memorialize the terms of the equity deal. These are usually far more detailed (and complicated) than a standard domain sales agreement.

When negotiating a non-traditional deal,

Using Twitter to Find Sales Leads

I personally find it annoying when people tweet to me to ask if I want to buy a domain name. The vast majority aren’t even domain names I would hand register, and it’s a bit annoying when I receive two notifications about the tweet (email and Twitter). I think there is a better way to use Twitter to find a good prospect to buy a domain name, and I want to share some tips.

Here are some steps you might use to find a prospective sales lead for a domain name:

ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com: At What Price Will it Sell?

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You’ve probably already read the story about ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com. In case you haven’t had the opportunity, Gizmodo has a pretty good article about the website.

ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com was listed for sale at Flippa last week. Quite a coup for the company to land a listing like this, which has received a tremendous amount of publicity. At the present time, the high bid is $70,100 with 5 bids pending and 333 bids submitted. As of the publication of this article, there are 4 days remaining in this auction that has met its reserve price already.

I am curious what you think the sale price will be when the auction ends. I posted a poll for you to vote. Your comments are welcome.


Timing of Sales Email is Important

Timing is everything, and that certainly applies to selling domain names. In my opinion, the time that you choose to send a sales email is critical and can be the difference between selling a domain name to a willing buyer and missing an opportunity to connect with that prospect.

In the majority of situations, I will only email a prospective buyer once. If the buyer doesn’t respond to my email, I likely will not email the person again because I don’t want to bother him or her (two exception being if the prospect replies with interest or if it is the result of an inbound inquiry). I generally assume a lack of a response indicates a lack of interest.

With that being said, if I send an email to a prospective buyer and she doesn’t respond, as a matter of practice I probably won’t send a second email to avoid being a pest. There’s a chance that the prospect had no interest in the domain name and that is why she didn’t respond, and there’s also a chance the email was received at an inopportune time. For me, chances are good that I will never find out.

For the most part, I try to send emails to prospective buyers

How Whoisology Helps Me

When I receive an inquiry, either via email or Domain Name Sales landing page, I do some due diligence on the prospective buyer. Most of the time, I have a limited amount of information to use to do my due diligence. The one thing I almost always have is an accurate email address. This is usually enough to learn about the prospect.

The Domain Name Sales platform integrates quite a few tools that can be used to learn about a buyer. You can easily search Facebook, LinkedIn, or  Google to find a match for the email address. This can be useful in determining who the buyer is, but I like to use Whoisology to glean additional information about the prospective buyer.

When I receive an inquiry, I like to

GraphLab Rebrands as Dato

TechCrunch published an article today covering the news that “Seattle-based GraphLab has raised $18.5 million in new funding and picked up a new name, Dato.” Smartly, the company is now using Dato.com for its new website.

When I read the TechCrunch article, the Dato branding and Dato.com domain name rang a bell to me. I searched through my email archive, and I saw that John Daly’s NameConnect domain name sales newsletter had Dato.com listed for sale for $9,000 on December 3, 2014.  Interestingly, according to NameBio, Dato.com was sold in May of 2008 for