Daily Poll: Do You Respond to Domain Sellers When You’re Not Interested?

I receive many emails from domain owners trying to sell me their domain names. 99% of the time, the domain names are not of interest to me at all. Almost all the time, I respond to let the person know. I think it is courteous. The downside to responding is that some people think this opens the door to sending me many other domain names to review. Occasionally, people will respond by asking why I don’t want the name or are otherwise rude to me for having the gall of not wanting to buy their domain name.

When you receive an outbound email offering to sell you a domain name, do you usually respond?


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. No. Some will send email after email asking for a response but I think this is rude as you can’t expect a response from an uninterested person.

  2. It’s a total waste of time.

    Maybe a few times in the past I was in the mood to do the person a favor by showing them how worthless the domain is, if it seemed they might be genuine in what they are attempting, but a lot of it is front running anyway. And maybe just a few times I’ve said it was a good domain but just not interested if they seemed nice and genunine enough too.

  3. You should have an option in the poll for “Sometimes”. Most of the time I do, but not all the time. Generally, no reply translates to “Not interested”, but not everyone sees it that way. It probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal if some people didn’t take it so personally when they don’t get a response from buyers that receive hundreds of domain offers per day, making it impossible to respond to them all and still get other work done.

  4. I always reply. One day that same person might have a domain you do want.

    When you approach an end-user asking if they are interested in a name, isn’t it nice to get a reply, whether its a “Yes” or “No”

    It might be a name you think is crap, but to the right person/company it might be exactly what they want, this is something that seller doesn’t know until he has sent the email and got a reply from you. There is no harm in saying “no thank you”…everyone deserves at least one reply, this is what domainers do, they email or call people asking if they are interested in specific domain names. Everyone has started off in this business with crappy names 🙂

    If you keep getting spammed with the same name then thats a different story

    Just my 2 cents

    • Giles, I fully agree with you.

      As a seller, when i want to search for a good domain broker for a 5, 6 or 7 digit domain to sell, first of all, i send junk domain list to that broker and see how he/she reacts to it.

  5. I used to reply to everything. Personal response, build rapport, offer suggestions, that sort of thing. Even if it was a domain name I didn’t want myself or for brokerage, that same person may come back in a few months or years with ones I do like. That was my thinking. Plus, like you said, it’s the courteous thing to do.

    When I looked at the amount of time I was spending on replies, I realized it was taking hours each week. Not just a few minutes here and there but really taking a lot of my time. So, these days it depends. I still try to reply to everyone at least once but if they keep emailing I don’t always reply to every one of their emails. I also don’t reply to the obvious Bcc spam. I haven’t resorted to blacklisting but since John is one of the smartest people in the room, and he just gave some candid advice, I’m going to consider it.

    Last month, I took my 6 year old daughter to see the Falcon Heavy launch from the Apollo/Saturn V Center. Just before the trip, I had around 30 emails in the inbox that had just been sitting there, some were a week old. All were emails about domains I wasn’t interested in but I hadn’t gotten around to replying to everyone.

    I hit select all and archived everything just before our trip.

    Time is worth a lot to me. I’m fine looking back on a choice like that if it’s to make the best use of my time I can make.

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