While I was away in Amsterdam, Rick Schwartz announced that the Candy.com deal is official and the deal has been signed, I wish Rick and the Melville Candy Company big congratulations on this industry moving deal. This isn’t the first major sale for Rick, who also sold iReport.com and Property.com.
One of the great things about Rick is his willingness to share insight into his domain sales, beginning with iReport.com and now with Candy.com via blog posts on Rick’s Blog. Although Rick is in a different position with his domain names than most of us, both in terms of quality of his names and his financial status, we can still learn about domain negotiations from what he has posted.
Selling a domain name for a large sum of money isn’t easy, no matter what domain names you own. The buyer must be willing to pay the seller’s desired price, and the seller must be able to figure out how much the buyer can afford to pay for the domain name before naming his price (if he wants to maximize the sales price). The negotiation can be trying and time consuming depending on a number of factors, and some people might not have the experience necessary to turn a big deal into a huge deal.
I would like to share an idea for a new domain service – domain sales negotiations. The difference between selling a domain name for five figures, six figures, and seven figures is minimal and the negotiation is often the deciding factor. While most of us don’t have names as good as the quality of Rick’s, they don’t necessarily have to be in order to achieve a huge sale. If there was a negotiation service where we could seamlessly hand off a negotiation to an experienced negotiator, unbeknownst to the buyer, it could help us maximize our sales.
Someone with Rick’s experience could help reel in the big fish, as he is experienced, and he would be far enough away from the transaction to be able to turn down a significant offer, when the domain owner wouldn’t be able to do so. I think a domain negotiation service would be good for domain owners who lack the negotiation experience.