So Many Spam Inquiries Done via Whois

Nearly all of the domain names my company owns are listed for sale on landing pages that clearly indicate they are available to purchase. Even those that aren’t – like this one – have a contact form to allow someone to get in touch very easily. In my experience, the vast majority of inquiries that are done via Whois record are spam.

In my recent memory, I can only think of two domain names that I sold after receiving an inquiry via Whois, and both were a fair amount of time ago. In fact, one was sold on a three year payment plan at Dan.com, and that deal closed two years ago. A second deal ended up being a BIN deal but I don’t recall exactly when it sold.

When I receive an email to buy a domain name using the Whois email, it’s almost always what I would classify as spam. Perhaps the purchase inquiry is genuine, but I think most of these messages are sent en masse. Case in point, I woke up to multiple inquiry emails sent to my Whois email asking to buy different one word .com domain names. These emails were sent from a first name + numbers @gmail email address.

There are numerous tells to these types of inquiries. Most often, they use a free email address and simply have the domain name in the subject. In addition, the domain name format is almost always lowercase, likely because it would be more of a challenge to proper case some domain names on a large list. Occasionally, there is a fairly low offer amount to try and kickstart a negotiation, but usually the email simply asks if my domain name is for sale. Given that most of mine are clearly for sale, it’s pretty easy to assume the person wasn’t interested enough in buying the domain name to even check if/how it is being used.

One notable exception to this is an occasional email through the contact form on my Top Notch Domains corporate website or through Embrace.com. This means the person saw my company name in the Whois record and did some further diligence on ownership, or they were able to understand the domain name is listed for sale via Embrace.com. Usually these people are interested in negotiating a deal directly with me rather than going through the platform I chose to use for a specific domain name.

I tend to not reply to inquiry emails sent via Whois. I figure a genuine buyer with enough of a budget will either complete the purchase through the platform where it is for sale or they will be persistent and convince me to reply either with a more serious offer or some other way to prove they are legitimate and have the means to engage in a serious discussion.