Daily Poll: Do You Respond to Lowball Offers?

I am sure everyone gets offers they would consider to be lowball offers. People from around the world, with different experiences and budgets, want to buy domain names, and many don’t have a clue about the domain name aftermarket. They know they can spend less than $20 to buy a domain name and probably think they can pick a random domain name and buy it for $20.

Just yesterday, I was offered “$14/year” for a domain name I value into the six figures and has received many 5 figure offers. There is a certain amusement I get when I receive an offer like that which follows a much more serious offer from someone else.

Depending on who the offer is from and what they say in the message field, I may or may not respond. I don’t want to waste my time, but more importantly, I don’t want to deal with someone who is angry about the fact that my company owns a domain name they want and can’t afford.

Do you respond to lowball offers?


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. While I am sure opinions will vary on this one, I personally feel that the only professional thing to do is to respond to all offers in a professional (and as timely as possible) way. The low offer maker may well not understand the domain market, and legitimately think that their offer is at least not unreasonable. By responding, you start a communication, that may well lead to a reasonable offer later.

  2. From my real estate career: “After careful consideration and deliberation, the seller has decided not to accept or counter your offer. You are welcome to submit another offer, we would love to put something together with you that makes sense.”

  3. Or course, you never know it could lead to a bigger sales like what I have.

    Remember- the buyer is testing the water just like you do.

    No harm no profit!!
    Heck, it is free just to respond.

  4. I always respond to every single one. I had a $250 opening offer on a domain that was easily worth 10x that wholesale, and we ended up closing for $25k. I just responded politely with some close comps and that kept the discussion going. Sure that was lucky and most are a waste of time, but I’m pretty sure that one deal made it worth it to respond to everyone for the rest of my life even if no others pan out.

    I’ll never understand why domain investors get insulted with lowball offers, refuse to respond, etc. The average person doesn’t even know domain names have an aftermarket and sell for more than registration fees, so you can be sure 99% of them have no idea how to value them. It’s your job to make the sale so you have to be willing to put in the time responding to offers.

    The silent treatment only works for ultra-premium domains. Ignore them and they’ll probably move on and give their money to someone else. Respond politely and you’ll either get lucky and they really did have a budget, or they’ll call you crazy and move on. It doesn’t take that long to say “Thanks for your offer but I’ll pass, the domain is worth much more than that.”

    • Nice story – thanks for sharing.

      If someone is very clear that their $25 offer is their maximum budget on a name worth $xx,xxx, I don’t typically waste my time with a long winded, educational response. I almost always reply (95%+ of the time), but my responses are typically more curt (“no thank you” or “the domain name is worth 5 figures”) when I am confident there isn’t a chance of a deal.

  5. All of the responses above are true.
    But, it is frustrating to receive a ridiculous offer.

    If someone offers $ 20k for an office building that is worth more than $ 30 mil., a real estate broker figures the buyer has no idea what it is worth. And, the broker has no interest in educating that potential buyer.
    If the buyer offers $ 10 mil., then it is worth talking.

    When someone offers $ 20 for any of my domains, I just ignore it. I have tried many, many times over the past 15 yrs to educate a potential buyer but I can not think of any time it produced any realistic negotiations.

    I have over 30 yrs of corporate sales experience. As a professional sales person, I try to consider every inquiry with an open mind. But, when someone lowballs I figure it is a waste of time to respond.

  6. Personally, for a while I believed in responding to all offers no matter what, but in recent years my opinion has changed due to the amount of time wasted and very little progress made communicating with low ballers. To those that say most people do not have a clue what a domain is worth, you are right, but if you take in consideration that most people have no idea what commercial property is worth, yet those people aren’t going to walk up to a realtor or property owner without doing some homework beforehand and certainly aren’t going to make a laughable offer if they really want the property. Right? I truly believe in many cases people will make low ball offers for two reasons. *The first reason I believe low ball offers are made is to break the spirit of the domain owner trying to get their pricing substantially reduced. I know it happens, but not very often and rarely on quality domains. *The second reason I believe low ball offers are made is due to jealousy, the low baller resents the fact that a domain owner has something they want and cannot afford it or just aren’t willing to pay the price. The exception is pure ignorance, but in my opinion a very low percentage fall in this realm.

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