It”s a bit strange to me, but there are a lot of domain investors that don’t know the best way to reply to a domain offer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as easy and as clear cut as it may seem, but in my opinion, if you are going to be a domain investor with a goal of selling domain names, you need to know how to reply to an offer to close a deal.
First off, it’s critical to research who your potential buyer might be by using the email address, name, IP address and/or anything else revealing about the potential buyer. This is important to make sure they aren’t going to use your reply in a UDRP or lawsuit, and so you are able to know why the domain name is coveted and how it will be used. I don’t like pricing domain names based on the size of the wallet of the buyer, but it would suck to sell a domain name for $5,000 when the buyer is going to spend millions of dollars to market a new brand around a specific domain name.
With that being said, I want to give you a recommendation to learn a good way to reply to potential buyers: attempt to buy a domain name from one of the industry leading companies or domain investors. I am sure some people will probably not like to get emails from non-buyers posing as prospects, but it’s a good way to learn from experienced domain investors and domain sellers.
For example, Buy Domains has successfully sold millions of dollars in domain inventory, and they get inquiries every single day from potential buyers. They’ve probably got a pretty good response down by now, and you may be able to learn from that.
The one caveat is that you can’t be too passive in this exercise because many companies may not even reply unless you make a significant opening offer, which says a lot right there without even saying anything. Needless to say, a company like Buy Domains will probably reply no matter what, and perhaps they will try to cross-sell, down-sell, or up-sell you depending on the domain name.
Although the domain business isn’t yet mature, there are plenty of leading companies out there whose insight can be gleaned by others. Your success can only help them in the future.
