Do Some Research First

What is the first thing you do when you receive an unsolicited spam email? In general, I mark it as spam in Gmail or simply hit delete. My guess is that most domain owners do the same thing when they receive a purchase inquiry. My advice is to do some basic research before sending an inquiry email.

I want to share a few things I research before sending an offer or an inquiry:

The owner’s name or a good company contact – When I am inquiring about a domain name that is owned by an individual or a small company, I try to find out the owner’s name. A personalized email “Hi Elliot” looks more professional than something else like “Dear sir.” I will simply delete many of the later assuming the person is blindly spamming.

Prior sales prices or domain broker listings – It’s a good idea to see if the domain name previously sold or was listed in a newsletter before making an offer. If the domain owner bought the name in 2013 for $40,000, he probably won’t sell it to you for $2,000 today. Additionally, if the owner listed the domain name for sale in 2015 for $75,000, it probably doesn’t make sense to offer $2,000.

Clues that the owner doesn’t want to receive your email – There are a fair amount of Whois listings that have something like “nospam@domain.com” or “goaway@domain.com” as the Whois contact. If that is the case, it’s better not to waste their time unless you have a very serious offer.

The owner is a domain investor – You might take a different approach to acquiring the domain name if the owner is an investor. This doesn’t mean don’t approach of course, but don’t be stupid about it. I received an inquiry email from a made-up person, and using the @email, I was easily able to see that I know who this person is. I responded using his name and said I wasn’t interested. I assume it was some sort of script, but who knows.

The domain name is already listed for sale at a good price. It’s silly to send a $5,000 offer for a domain name using Whois lookup information when the domain name is listed for sale on Sedo for $2,000.

If you have any other advice on research that should be done before buying a domain name, I invite you to share it.

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
  1. Elliot: Thank you. Good rudimentary, common sense etiquette, analysis and communication offered for those whom may be lacking in general business saavy. ~ Alan

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