Mike Mann Domain Buying Tip

I saw a note that Mike Mann posted on Facebook, and I thought it was valuable enough that it should be shared with a greater audience than just Facebook. With Mike’s permission, here’s a tip on how to get the best price when you want to purchase a domain name from a broker or aftermarket website:

“Tip on buying a domain from brokers: get quotes on 5 names at once so they don’t know which one you really favor, may get lower price. Then negotiate on the the one you like if quote was fair. Some do 50%, we do 15% max. Or walk and buy elsewhere. They may come back to you with a special discount later.”

One of Mike’s companies is a sales venue called Domain Market, which lists thousands of domain names for sale. Mike was also the founder of BuyDomains, which he later sold to Namemedia.

In essence, this advice is a standard negotiation tactic (used on USA Network’s Suits the other night actually), and it works very well when buying domain names. If you don’t let the other party know which domain name you want to buy more than the others, they can’t price it higher than they would if they knew how much you covet that particular domain name.

If you are interested in buying a domain name from a private domain investor, it will generally behove you to research other domain names the person owns and get group pricing. It might also benefit you if the seller thinks you’re a domain investor buying a package rather than an end user looking to buy one name for a project.

Based on my experience buying domain names from various companies, this is a great tip.

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

17 COMMENTS

  1. @Uzoma

    Last time I checked, unlike a Facebook’s profile, Elliot’s (or any other) blog didn’t require an account or friendship in order to be visited 🙂

  2. Sounds like buying a carpet in Middle East.
    I have tried it few times it works sometime and the rest of the time -!- it all depends upon what value you talking about. 😉

  3. Almost always when I ask for a price on a domain at BuyDomains, they follow up over the next few months with reduced offers if I don’t buy it at their first price. usually a 15% to 20% discount to their original price.

  4. I got a offer from buydomains that was actually for a domain I let drop lol… wasn’t worth the $8 for me to renew so I most certainly wasn’t going to be interested in the $5000 price they offered it to me at BUT I will say they are persistent, I started getting email offers with increasing levels of discounts every couple weeks until I finally opted out of those emails.

    @Joe just so ya know, Facebook statuses are publicly available and searchable now 🙂

    gotta love the power of the FB open graph protocol.. all kinds of goodies to be had in there.. especially for local search perks for businesses

  5. oh, but you see… the beauty of the Open Graph API is that you can query that information, logged in or not 🙂

    here is one site that is using it, just for reference purposes… go ahead and try this http://youropenbook.org/?q=Sold%3A+Luxury.co+60K&gender=any

    no matter if you are logged in or not… from a marketing stand point this stuff is golden and I have used it on several sites, from a privacy stand point it can sure suck for some people that have a false sense of privacy on facebook though.

  6. I used to use exactly this tactic in antique markets, and forgot all about it for domains. Should work a charm. Not sure how with domains, but I would usually pick some random object first, and then pick my desired object 2nd or 3rd, saying something like “how about you throw these in for the price?”
    Thanks for the reminder.

  7. @Robert Cline

    You copied all my site. I am not surprised people think you are clown.
    Probably you did not noticed that this site was protected.
    I have many proofs to sue you now and I will do that.
    You are just sad guy with low quality domains who believes that he earns something one day.
    You do not have ambition at all as all people laugh at you and you still come and talk rubbish.
    Your comments have no value for no one but you cannot catch this!
    How can you earn anything with intelligence like this?
    You will pay for your theft more then you paid for all your rubbish domains.
    You are just thief who does not respect other people work.
    I promise you I will not leave this until you pay for your dishonesty!!!

    Dear Elliot,
    I think you should not tolerate dishonest people on your site but of course its your site and all up to you.

  8. Great post. I’m interested in a .com owned/sold by DomainMarket, to use for a future super small business. Every other extension is available (or was until I snapped up .net .org and .us a few minutes ago) making me think it has little value but the price is $3000. This also makes me think there is little to no interest. Their ownership of the .com is due to expire soon, do you think DomainMarket will let it drop after getting 0 interest? Thanks!

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