If you are similar to me, I bet that the majority of the inbound offers you receive are really low. I have found that most offers are either made by people trying to lowball me or people who are uneducated about domain name values. The result is that they offer tens or hundreds of dollars for valuable domain assets.

Early last year, I won a name inexpensively on NameJet. The cost was less than $500, and I thought it was worth a few thousand to the right buyer.I went prospecting, and I came up empty. I offered it for a couple thousand dollars on a few venues, but I didn’t find a buyer. It was a name I thought I was going to hold for a while.

At the end of the summer, I received an unsolicited offer for the domain name via the Voodoo landing page. The offer was for $20,000 and it came from a legitimate source.

At first, I was stumped about how to respond. I didn’t want to risk the offer by asking for more, especially because it was clear to me that this domain name was not really worth $20,000. I also didn’t want to immediately accept the offer fearing that the buyer would think he offered too much out of the gate. In all my years buying domain names, I’ve probably only bought a couple for my initial offer. Everybody counters, and I didn’t want to give him the idea that he would be overpaying.

I decided that my tact would be to call the buyer and ask him what his plans would be for the domain name figuring he would sell me on his idea and I’d agree to the deal. His idea was pretty fascinating, and he had the background to make something big happen. I agreed to sell him the domain name shortly after that. I think a personal conversation helped with this  negotiation  because I didn’t risk losing the $20,000 offer and I also didn’t immediately accept it either.

The end of the story isn’t nearly as good as the beginning. Unfortunately, the buyer didn’t seem to receive the funding he was expecting, and he put the purchase off until January. Since then, I haven’t heard back from him and I assume the deal is off. Easy come, easy go.

What tactics do you find effective when you receive an offer that is well above your ideal sales price?

I want to share a piece of advice with you that can benefit you in two ways. When responding to an inquiry on one of your domain names, always set a deadline on your price quote.

The first reason for doing this is because your financial situation may change from the time you price a domain name until the time a buyer agrees to buy it. For instance, you might be more motivated to sell a name today and would give a better price than you will be in 6 months. Why create a potential problem with rescinding an offer that was given months prior.

The second reason you should set s deadline is because it creates a greater sense of urgency for the buyer. Much like those infomercials that encourage viewers to act now, your deadline will create more urgency. It may also help hasten a decision when multiple domain names are being considered.

I don’t really see a disadvantage to doing this aside from potentially putting off a buyer who isn’t ready to transact. Even if the buyer comes back after the deadline, you can always agree to sell the name for that price if you want.

I like to use either a week or until the end of the present week when I set a deadline, depending on circumstances related to that particular negotiation.

Do you give buyers deadlines when they ask for pricing, and if you do, what amount of time do you typically give.

One of the nice aspects of parking with Internet Traffic and Voodoo is the ability to add a “for sale” message across the top of your domain name landing pages. I have found that people are more apt to visit the landing page and inquire vs. sending an email after looking up the Whois information.

Having a message in a bright header is great, but the wording of the message is also important in order to get the visitor to inquire about the domain name. You are given a few options for this message:

• Message wording
• Pricing (or no pricing)
• Where to send visitors to make an offer or inquire

In my opinion, it’s important to test the wording on your landing pages to see what drives the most offers, as well as what drives the most sales. I would assume it’s only a statistically significant test if you receive enough offers that the test is valid, but you can test just the same even if you don’t receive many offers.

I recommend looking at Frank Schilling’s company landing pages to see what his wording is and compare it to the default in the Domain Name Sales platform back end. Check out what other people are using, and test your own variations. It might be helpful if you have different portfolios and do some A/B testing just to make sure all things are as equal as possible.

At the end of the day, the quality of the domain name is what will drive the most offers, but you want to make sure it’s clear that the domain name is for sale (or lease) and the visitor should easily be able to get in touch to discuss.