What’s Your Inquiry Ring?

I have more than one email address connected to my smartphone. One of the email addresses is the one that receives my inquiry and offer emails connected to my Embrace.com landing pages. Whenever someone inquires about one of my domain names listed for sale on Embrace.com, it comes to this specific email address reserved for inquiries and offers.

Since those inquiry emails tend to be more time sensitive and may come from the next million dollar buyer, I like to distinguish them with a different ring from the standard ring I have for other email. Does anyone else do this? For me right now, I use a default ring called Anticipate. I think that is pretty appropriate, as there is some anticipation from when I hear the ring to when I pick up my phone and look at the email to see if the prospect is a serious buyer or a tire kicker.

DAN.com Payment Processor Adyen Running Television Ads

I’ve never really been a super early morning person, but the coronavirus pandemic has changed my morning habits. The early morning has becomes the best time for me to get a workout on the treadmill before our kids are awake and needing attention. While running on the treadmill, I watch CNBC to stay on top of financial news for the day.

This morning on CNBC, I saw a couple of television commercials for Adyen, the payments platform that is used by DAN.com to facilitate deals. Up until late last year, I wasn’t at all familiar with Adyen and I started using the platform to sell more of my domain names. Here’s one of the television spots that ran during a commercial break on CNBC:

Vehicle.com Sold for $121,675

Monte Cahn emailed me to let me know his company, Right of the Dot, brokered the sale of Vehicle.com for $121,675. A week ago, Monte reported that his company brokered the sales of Kick.com for $276,077.45 and Cogent.com for $60,029.60.

The Vehicle.com domain name is currently registered under Whois privacy at Namecheap. When I visited Vehicle.com this morning, I was taken to an Efty “for sale” landing page on Oxley.com. That website is owned by prolific domain investor Brent Oxley, who has acquired many high value domain names over the last few years.

Prospect Under No Obligation to Reply

Yesterday, I received an email from someone looking to sell a domain name that I don’t believe has value. Put another way, I wouldn’t hand register the domain name with your credit card, let alone pay someone a premium to buy it. I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I did not reply to the email. This morning, I received a sassy message from the same person telling me they expected to receive an answer from me and was upset that I did not reply.

A prospective buyer is under no obligation to respond to an unsolicited domain name sales email. Just like I am not obligated to reply to a spam phone call or a marketing letter in the mail, I do not need to reply to an unsolicited domain name sales email. Even when a prospective buyer requests a price, they are under no obligation to follow up if they do not wish to do so. It seems silly to have to write this, but sometimes something that seems like common sense to me may not be common sense to everyone.

Why I Don’t Hold Out for Top Dollar

When it comes to domain investing and selling domain names, there is a wide variety of thoughts on optimizing domain name sale prices. Some people, like Rick Schwartz, will almost never sell a domain name for less than the optimal market value. As you should know, Rick has done very well with his domain investments and this strategy.

I tend to utilize a different strategy for my domain name sales. For my “inventory” domain names, which make up approximately 90% of my domain portfolio, I try to achieve as high of a price as possible, but I am content selling for a fair price and nice ROI even if the sale price is not optimal.

More Sales Data Coming from DAN and GoDaddy

In the coming months, we will begin to see more domain name sales data shared publicly by two of the largest domain name sales platforms. This morning, GoDaddy and DAN separately announced that more domain name sales transacted on their platforms will be publicly shared and reported.

DAN announced its privacy policy change on Twitter, providing details about how sellers are able to opt out of sharing sales they transact on the platform: