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3 Reasons to Identify a Potential Buyer

Elliot Silver
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When someone emails you an offer for a domain name, its important to do whatever it takes to find out who the potential buyer is. Not only is it important to allow you to maximize a potential sale, but its also important to head off any potential legal issues that could come as a result of even good faith negotiations. The OpenDental.com UDRP decision shoes how negotiations can lead to a UDRP loss even when the domain name was initially registered prior to the Complainant’s use of the term.

Reasons why it’s important to identify a potential buyer:

1) Achieve a better price: Most people register domain names because they see the potential business that could be built on the domain name, although many people are buying domain names because they believe they make great investments, rather than because they hope to build a business based on their vision. Like just about every type of asset and other goods, most people will sell if the right offer comes around. This is why people engage in negotiations whether they intend to sell a particular domain name or not.

A buyer wants the best possible price and generally will not share the maximum price it can and will pay for the domain name in order to get a good price. Some corporate buyers have big budgets, but they won’t disclose who they are, since the seller would probably be less inclined to give a good deal. If the domain owner can determine who the potential buyer is and what his budget might be, he could achieve a higher sales price. Likewise, the domain owner could also realize he is wasting time with a fruitless negotiation, if the buyer is in fact a poor college student.

2) Legal leverage: Some people make offers on domain names in order to bait the domain owner into negotiations in an effort to gather evidence of a bad faith negotiation. Although a domain name would appear to be generic in nature, many companies will argue that they use the term for a brand or slogan, and therefore it’s not generic. With UDRP cases sometimes a toss-up, it makes business sense to pay $1,500 to file a UDRP rather than pay $50,000 for a domain name. If you know that this potential buyer may have a claim to your name (or has a litigious/UDRP-happy past), you can avoid negotiations.

3) Time/money wasting: With domain appraisal scams still in existence, a domain owner needs to know whether he is dealing with a serious offer or someone who is running a scam. Time and money can be saved by not replying to a domain appraisal scam email, and they are fairly simple to identify.

Ever since I added privacy to my best domain names, I haven’t received many unsolicited offers to buy them. Since a few of them are stand alone businesses, I figure if someone intends to make a strong enough offer for one, he will know they are fully developed and have advertising contact forms in plain sight. That said, I have a number of clients and friends with sizable domain portfolios, and I have been helping some do due diligence on potential buyers for a few years. This has paid off in many cases, and I think it’s important for you to investigate all potential buyers before you reply to a domain inquiry email.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will post 5 methods I use to determine who a potential buyer is.

My 2009 TRAFFIC Awards Nominations

Elliot Silver
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I saw that Mike made a few nominations for the 2009 TRAFFIC Awards, which will be given out at the New York TRAFFIC conference, and I want to share a few of my nominees. This year has proven to be the most difficult one I have faced in the domain industry, and there are several individuals who stand out in my opinion and deserve recognition and praise.

BEST DEVELOPER OF THE YEAR:

Shaun Pilfold – Kelowna.com: Shaun has spent much of this year building a business on the geodomain, Kelowna.com. Instead of a standard geodomain name (like mine) with tourism information, event updates and a bit of news, Shaun has taken Kelowna.com to the next level. Shaun’s company has sunk significant resources into the business, hiring journalists, editors, and sales staff, while marketing the heck out of the business. During the Kelowna forest fires, Kelowna.com provided the best local coverage and won a lot of praise from the local people. Shaun’s company owns a plethora of great domain names, including Jobs.ca and more.

Richard Douglas – Oakville.com: Richard is one of the smartest people I know, and he has privately provided a tremendous amount of advice to me about development, SEO, marketing, hosting and more. Richard’s Oakville.com, which launched in the past year, was built on a great platform that will allow the company to scale. From geocoded directory listings to a great news distribution service, Oakville.com is quickly becoming recognized in the community. Oakville.com was also a partner of the RBC Canadian Open, a PGA event held in Oakville, and the site received recognition from the Oakville city government and local business leaders. Richard also runs the domain blog, TooManySecrets.com, which has great development insights.

DOMAIN HALL OF FAME

Mike Berkens: There is no doubt in my mind that Mike Berkens deserves to be in the Domainer Hall of Fame. Without question, Most Wanted Domains, the company Mike founded, has one of the top generic domain portfolios in the world. In addition to this, Mike’s blog, TheDomains.com, is one of the best sources of information about the domain industry, and Mike breaks down how outside factors will impact our domain investments and developed websites. Mike attends most of the domain conferences, and he is very approachable, always willing to give advice and offer honest feedback.

THE “WE GET IT” AWARD

Candy.com: This one was pretty easy. A small candy company bought Candy.com for $3,000,000 and have greatly increased their brand recognition and traffic. They went from being somewhat unknown to owning one of the best generic domain names that money could buy – and arguably the best in their industry. At every tradeshow, the Candy.com team will be instantly recognizable whether other vendors and buyers actually know them. This was a very smart strategic move.

What is a Domain Appraisal Scam?

Elliot Silver
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I have received a number of emails from readers asking about offer emails they receive that seem fishy. Many times, these offers are domain name appraisal scams. These scams come in a variety of formats, but each has the same objective – getting the domain owner to pay for a domain appraisal when he thinks a potential buyer is interested in purchasing a domain name.

Typically the email offer will be for a domain name, and the scammer will suggest getting an appraisal for the domain name. Usually the scammer will tell the domain owner he is willing to pay either the amount of the appraisal or a percentage of the appraisal, depending on the email.

The email will list a few domain appraisal websites, one of which may be either owned by the scammer or a commission is earned for appraisals. The scammer generally has a 33% chance the domain owner will choose his appraisal service (probably much more considering the price comparison of the appraisals). After the domain owner pays for the appraisal, hoping to close a deal, the scammer is never heard from again.

While these scams probably aren’t illegal, I call them scams because the emailer probably didn’t intend to buy the domain name – just to get the domain owner to buy a domain appraisal.

More info with examples can be seen on these sites:

DNForum

Namepros

Domain Name Wire

Late Night Sunday Update

Elliot Silver
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My parents have been in town this weekend, so things have been a bit hectic. Here are a few quick Sunday hits, most of which are unrelated to domain names.

– The Javitz Center in New York was packed with exhibitors for the New York International Gift Fair, and it seemed like there was a lot of order taking and very little commiserating about the economy. The scene was much more upbeat than I thought it would be prior to attending. IMO, this is a very good sign, although I am still a bit pessimistic about our economy. If retailers are busy placing orders for the upcoming holiday season, it means the economy may have turned a corner.

– I made a great salmon dinner tonight and wanted to sort of share the recipe. I basically winged it from a memorable dinner I had a few years ago, but I think it tasted just as good. I spread a very light layer of dijon mustard on top of a salmon filet. I then nearly covered it in finely crushed ginger snap cookies. I baked it for about 20 minutes in an oven that was around 350-375. It tasted great.

– I posted an article earlier today in error. I started writing a couple of blog posts for tomorrow, and instead of scheduling one post for tomorrow, I posted it this afternoon, and the domain news aggregation sites picked up the feed. If you got a 404 error, I apologize.

– I have had a few people complain and/or inquire about my blog not having a full RSS feed. It’s not an error, but rather intentional as I want to maximize the value for my blog advertisers. Sorry to those who use iPhones or other devices and are unable to access my feed.

Defensive Domain Registration Advice

Elliot Silver
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Many companies defensively purchase typos and alternative extensions to prevent others from owning them. Defensive domain name registrations aren’t simply for brand protection though. They can also be done to ensure a company prevents another similar company from entering a newly created industry or niche using the type of product as the company’s brand or website.

I spent a couple of hours at the New York International Gift Fair today, and among the hundreds of exhibitors, I saw a company that had a new type of product. This unique gift item may or not be a hit, but it certainly is a one of a kind product that can and will be knocked off by others. The .com of the product type is currently sitting unregistered, available for anyone to register for under $10.

While this product is not similar to door knockers, I will use   door knockers as an example. A few years ago, I saw a guy selling unique metal door knockers at the show. I forgot what they guy’s company was called, but when I was looking it up a few months ago for a friend, I was curious to find out who owned DoorKnockers.com. You probably guessed it… the guy who I saw at the show owns it. Smart guy.

Now back to this new product. I left the show intrigued about the product, but we weren’t convinced to buy it (for my parents’ business). We stopped by dozens of booths, so they are all blending together right now.   I Googled it, but the problem is the guy took a very common utilitarian product (hundreds of thousands of Google results), and he made it completely unique. Because of this, I can’t find his company when searching for the term.

I get that many companies want to have a unique brand rather than a generic industry term for the company name, but even if he simply registered this product .com name, he could at least prevent others from knocking his product off and owning the space online.

The takeaway here is that if you develop your own special type of product and the .com is available, register it. Even if you don’t want to set up a website, at least you can forward that to your brand’s website and prevent someone else from buying it.

Domain Names & SEO | Sulumits Retsambew

Elliot Silver
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I am not a search engine optimization expert by any stretch of the imagination. At best, I am fair at SEO on my websites, and at worst, I am dangerous to them :). One thing I can tell you though is that a domain name is critical to a successfully SEO’d website, and having the prominent keywords within the domain name is important to its search engine results page (SERP) positioning.

NetBuilders, a well respected Webmaster forum, began a SEO contest a couple of months ago, with a prize of $1,000 going to the webmaster whose website achieved the #1 position for a keyword phrase it coined, Sulumits Retsambew (webmaster stimulus spelled backwards). With the competition nearly over, I wanted to have a look at the top 5 results to see how important experienced webmasters believe domain names are to good SEO, with a virgin term like Sulumits Retsambew.

Here are the top 5 organic results (not including Google News):
1. SulumitsRetsambew.org
2. SulumitsRetsambewBlog.com
3. SulumitsRetsambewNo.com
4. WebmasterStimulus.org
5. Stevz.com/tag/sulumits-retsambew

With the competition ending today, it seems clear that the domain name should have the keywords of the search term, however, it appears that .com isn’t necessarily king for SEO. Clearly some people spent more time than others on this competition, but you don’t need to have the .com for good SERP positioning.

The major caveat is that most search terms for which people want and need to rank aren’t virgin terms, and you can’t start from scratch. Domain age is something that search engines look at for positioning as well, and generally the best generic .com domain names were bought years ago, so it would be an uphill climb if you register a new domain name and try to compete with other older domain names and websites.

Bottom line is that having a keyword domain name is very important in SEO, but extensions other than .com can still rank very well.

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