Domain Sales

Get Back in Touch With Previous Inquirers

9

I recently saw a good reported sale of a domain name I had inquired about a couple of years ago. I made an offer via email and the domain owner told me it wasn’t for sale. I have no idea whether it wasn’t really for sale at the time or whether my offer hadn’t piqued his interest.

The sales price looks reasonable, and it wasn’t that many thousands of dollars from my offer. Had the previous owner given me that price when I first inquired, I am almost certain I would have bought it, since my opening offers are generally not the most I will pay for a given name, and it was certainly in the ballpark.

The moral of the story is that if you receive an offer that makes you want to sell the domain name, you might consider getting in touch with the people who previously inquired about the domain name. Even if you set a price higher than the high offer, you can possible make more money. Circumstances may have changed and it may bring back interest in that particular domain name for someone who had previously inquired.

At worst, you waste a day or two waiting for a reply. At best, you can generate some incremental revenue or create a private bidding war between two interested parties.

WarStrategy.com – For Sale

1

Domain Name for Sale: WarStrategy.com
Buy it Now Price: $4,500.00

Creation Date: July, 2001
Domain Registrar: eNom

I really like this domain name and think it would be the perfect site for either a MMO gaming website or a portal for war strategy games. Incidentally, Name Administration owns the longer tail WarStrategyGames.com.

Both WarStrategy.net and WarStrategy.org are registered by others. I have not changed the DNS since buying it a couple of months ago, so I don’t know if there’s any traffic. I should probably change it though, so perhaps by the time you read this the DNS will already be changed.

This will be listed for sale in a couple other places, so the first one to post “sold” will get it.

Sales Suggestion for Fabulous & Others

5

When I am looking to purchase a domain name in the aftermarket, one thing I try to research is whether the domain name was on the market before, and if so, the price listed on other websites. When I want to flip a name for $25,000, there’s nothing worse than a potential buyer telling me he saw it listed for sale for $15,000 on another website – even though it may have been a very old listing.

One piece of advice I have to Fabulous / Dark Blue Sea – as well as other domain investors who may do the same thing – is to NOT list the asking price in the Whois information. When a company like DomainTools archives Whois lookups, it archives this information forever, and I can see what Fabulous or Protopixel (a DBS subsidiary) had it listed for at one point when I am doing my due diligence on previous ownership.

Although many buyers don’t really care about a previous sales price when they want a particular domain name, it can never help in a negotiation (unless of course you got a significantly better price). When selling to other domain investors, this can be used as a negotiation point for a lower sales price.

Hand Domain Registration Today, Hoping for Sale Today

40

Maybe I will look smart with this, and maybe I won’t.   We’ll see…

I was looking for a long tail domain name to register today with the hopes of re-selling it to an end user later on today. One domain name I found was PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com, and I registered it at Godaddy this morning. I chose Godaddy because almost anyone who buys domain names has heard of them, and the trust factor for an easy domain transfer/push is there and could reduce any anxiety.

I chose PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com for a few reasons:

  1. Philadelphia is a historical city with plenty of tours
  2. There are a whole lot of tour guides in the city, especially with a bad economy.
  3. There are very few barriers to entry to be a tour guide, so having a good domain name can propel someone to a higher search engine ranking, generating more business
  4. Large companies own other big city TourGuide.com domain names (ChicagoTourGuide.com is on sale for $2,388
  5. It’s a .com and .com is still king 🙂

FYI…Sorry for going back and forth with past and present tense in this post. As I am writing this, I have not yet sent out any emails, but I am in the process of finding people the email.

I am going to send the following email to prospective buyers of this domain name:

Dear XYZ,

I saw that you are a tour guide in Philadelphia, and I think you might be interested in buying PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com, a domain name my company owns but doesn’t have plans to develop. When someone is looking for a Philadelphia tour guide, they are likely to search Google/Yahoo/Bing for “Philadelphia tour guide” or something similar. Have a website built on the exact match domain name can be very helpful to your search engine ranking for related searches.

Additionally, I believe it would be cool to be known as the “Philadelphia Tour Guide,” and that can be done more easily with PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com. You can build your brand with this great generic domain name. I am offering this domain name to several Philadelphia tour guides and tour companies over the next few days, and the first one to agree to buy it for $1,800 will get it. The domain name only costs around $11/year to renew at Godaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar.

I hope you consider buying this domain name. Please get back to me ASAP, as it will sell to the first person or company who agrees to the asking price. Payment can be easily made using Paypal or a trusted escrow service like Escrow.com.

Regards,
Elliot J. Silver

I am going to search Google and Philadelphia’s Craigslist to find people who are advertising themselves as a local tour guide, and I will send them an email about this offer.

Should I not be able to sell it, I plan to park the domain name at Parked, and I will have a for sale notice on it in case people are interested in buying it.

Does Your Domain Name Suck?

20

Al lot of people (myself included) look at some of their domain names and wonder why end user companies aren’t interested in buying certain domain names. Instead of thinking like a savvy small business owner or corporate titan, we think like domain investors, which isn’t always a good thing when it comes to selling domain names.

I think we must put ourselves in the shoes of our potential buyers. Ask yourself the following question about a domain name you’ve been trying to sell, and maybe you’ll see why you’ve been unable to sell it.

If I was in the _____________ business, would I want to pay a domain owner $x thousands of dollars to buy the _________.whatever domain name, when I can hand register ____________.whatever for just $10 from that company with the hot girls in Super Bowl commercials?

Many (if not most) business owners don’t tend to think of domain names as essential elements of their business. Not even business who predominately work online always think that a good domain name is critical to the success of their business. Most want to build a solid brand online, and that is different from using a generic domain name.

Think how a business owner would think, and tailor your sales pitch appropriately. You may find that your sales will increase.

Summer Doldrums

Lately, domain sellers always seem to be asking each other if others are experiencing a slow down. I haven’t had a bad year, especially considering last year was my worst year by far, but this summer has been pretty slow in terms of domain sale.

From my perspective, it seems that many domain investors aren’t investing as much as they have previously invested in the aftermarket. A number of my clients are in more of a hold mode right now, presumably waiting out this economic storm. This has caused a slow down in my business, and as a result, I am buying less after market domain names. It’s a trickle down effect.

End user companies are still buying domain names as their needs necessitate. Because these needs are demand-based, it is more difficult to close domain sales. It also seems that deals that do close are taking much more time to complete, likely a result of tighter spending.

Because many companies need to spend their entire marketing budget before year-end in order to justify the same (or an increased budget) for the following year, we may see an increase in activity in a month or two. That may be wishful thinking 🙂

In the meantime, I am continuing to build out the websites that I have and continue to market those sites that are operational. Bahamas.co is nearly ready to launch, and I am excited about these prospects.

What have you been seeing in the domain sales market lately?

Recent Posts

Handoff to Dan on Imported Leads Can be Confusing

0
I've been using the lead import option at Dan.com more regularly. Although the 5% commission is not ideal, transactions tend to move more quickly...

ArtificialIntelligence.com Goes Up for Sale

8
I tried to buy the ArtificialIntelligence.com domain name multiple times over the last 10 years. The emails I sent to the registrant went unanswered,...

EU Gives More IP Protection to Food & Drink Producers

0
Did you know that some well-known food and drink varieties are protected intellectual property regulations? Popular types of drinks and foods that are protected...

Price Testing

1
In 2022, my wife and I decided our kids were ready for some big mountain skiing and we planned a trip to the Rocky...

GoDaddy Making You Sign in to See What You Renewed (Updated)

3
This morning, I noticed something different in a domain name renewal email from GoDaddy. Instead of telling me exactly what domain names I renewed...