We all get emails from people who don’t use their full name or don’t provide enough information for us to identify who the buyer is. Although you may not necessarily price a domain name based on who is buying it (many people do, some don’t care and have a set price no matter who is inquiring), it is wise to at least see who is inquiring or making an offer on one of your assets.
The first thing I generally do is to search Google for the person’s name and email address to see if I can pinpoint who they are. Although some people disguise their identities, I have found that most serious buyers that inquire about my names don’t generally do this. Perhaps it’s because I don’t generally passively await offers for most of my higher end names, but that’s what I have found.
One trick I use to find out the identity of a buyer is to search Facebook for the person’s email address. If the email address is connected to a Facebook account, that account will be listed. Although many people keep their information private, you can almost always see the person’s real name, and you can often see where the person is from and possibly what they do.
This information should help you identify the potential buyer, and you can try to learn why they want a particular domain name. You can use this information to either price your domain name or negotiate with them accordingly (if they have a trademark for example).
Thanks to NameBio for sharing this tip with me a while ago.
ok…
i get it now… be smart… makes sense. hasn’t worked for me but it might work for others.
thanks
This tactic is also being used the other way around. Shortly after sending out sales letters to potential buyers, I get friend requests on FB. Buyers/Prospects want to know who they are dealing with.
Even better: use Rapportive. It’s a Gmail plugin that automatically pulls in information from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for every person you receive or send emails to. It’s free and honestly, I can’t live without it.
Use everything at your disposal. Google search, Linked (hopefully you received an inqury from a business professional, Facebook search, and as Puranjay said, use Rapportative.
Another good site to use is pipl.com. It will do a meta search for you through facebook, linkedin, phone directories, myspace and many others.