Some deals take a very long time to finalize. I have had acquisition and sale negotiations that have gone on for years. Some deals get done and others die on the vine. If you don’t receive a response to an email you sent to a contact at a company, it is a good idea to check LinkedIn to see if they still work there.
I have been involved in many long term negotiations to buy domain names. Oftentimes, the domain name is not being used, so I follow-up every year or so to inquire if anything has changed. If the person with whom I am communicating has left the company, usually there will be some sort of email deliverability notice indicating an email address doesn’t function. This is not always the case. Here’s one such example.
For more than 5 years, I tried to buy a domain name that resolved to a registrar default landing page. The person with whom I was communicating at the company was pleasant, but the availability of the domain name did not change. I was told the domain name was not for sale.
At one point, I did not receive a reply to my email, so I Googled the person to see if she was still at the company and/or in a different position at the company. I found her LinkedIn page, and it turns out she left the company quite some time before my latest email.
I got excited but also disappointed. I was excited because maybe someone else would be able to get a different answer. Additionally, it was possible that there was a shakeup at the company and perhaps the domain name could now be for sale. I was disappointed because this would mean having to find a new contact at the company along with their email address while starting a discussion with someone from scratch.
Finding the new person wasn’t difficult, as his title was the same as the person with whom I previously connected. The email address was also easy because it followed the same naming convention. Unfortunately for me, the domain name is still not for sale!
That being said, if you’ve been discussing a domain name with someone for a period of years and they typically respond to your emails, you should check LinkedIn if they ghost you. Perhaps they have moved on to a different company or position, but the domain name discussion could continue with someone else.
I had tried to buy this one domain a while ago but could never make contact or get a response. It was not even being used. The domain had a lot of sentimental value aside from being a really good domain. It was the .com SLD for something very famous and popular originally where I had spent a lot of time with a lot of people online. Then all these years later God granted the discovery of the possibility of acquiring it, with competition, when I had long stopped even thinking about it, and He granted me the victory and acquisition. And in a huge note of irony as well, while Estibot is notorious for what probably most of us would agree is undervaluing domains, the Estibot valuation was very surprisingly and ironically astronomical compared to what I was able to pay, the biggest Estibot seeming “anomaly” of sorts I’ve ever seen in that direction. Make no mistake: God granted that, too. Now I use the domain as an end user and it’s not for sale.
On another note:
Can anyone tell me what this means? I have a site on a domain that gets some very puzzling traffic. The traffic is coming from single character domains which are IANA reserved. And it’s real human traffic though, not anything automated. I know this for sure, but I don’t want to reveal how I know that, but take my word – this is real verifiably human traffic, as in a real human being visiting the site and doing a thing or two on the page – but referred from single character domains (both .net) that are IANA reserved.
Can anyone help me out and explain that. Never seen anything like that before.
Hi John
I suffer from adhd and this is tldr. Can you tell me what you just said is 5 words or less. Thanks john
Can’t do five or less, Simon, but I can make it a lot shorter in two points:
1. God granted me a domain I had tried to get years before which had a lot of sentimental value aside from being a great domain.
2. Someone please explain how and why one of my sites gets verifiably real human traffic referred from two IANA-reserved single character .net domains which do not resolve.
Dan/Afternic/Sedo make this whole process difficult, afternic with all their layoffs unless you catch a bin, is not working like it should, dan probably on it’s last legs, so many defaults there.
Thanks for your eye opening piece. This is very educative. I love this.