The Money Won’t Always Be On The Table

Just about every day, I spend some time reaching out to end user buyers to try and sell a domain name. Frequently, I will receive an offer for one of these domain names, either as an opening offer or a counter offer to my price. More often than not, the counter is less than the price at which I want to sell the domain name.

When this happens and the buyer won’t budge from his offer, I have a few choices:

  • Sell the domain name for less than the price I want
  • Keep the domain name
  • Use the offer as a means of extracting a higher offer from someone else

No matter what decision is made, it’s important to keep in mind that the offer that was made to you may not be there in the future. I like to think that offers that have been made, especially those that were solicited by me, would be valid for an indefinite period of time. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

Some buyers may have money they are willing to spend at that point in time, and once the time passes, that money is no longer available. Others may have waning interest in the domain name after time passes.

When you have an offer on the table, it’s important to realize this offer will likely be pulled back in a short period of time, and that you can’t count on a buyer to follow through days or weeks later. As much as I hope that a rejected offer is followed up by a better offer, that’s not always the case and frequently isn’t the case.

Depending on your situation, it might benefit you to take a bit less than you wanted, especially if the responses are fewer than you expected.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

10 COMMENTS

  1. I have fallen into this trap very recently. My counter offer scared the end user away and I have never heard from them again! I did force an email to start renegotiating but I felt like I was begging and immediately regretted it! I actually think the name works brilliantly for this company as it is a shorter, more defined .com of their longer co.uk. Maybe one day they’ll come back…begging.

  2. Why is option #1 even listed? Repeat after me: I won’t take the first offer that hits the table!

    Asking for more money is the *only* way to get more money. Nobody will surrender it without a ‘battle’. šŸ˜€

    • Let’s say you bought a domain name in private for $10,000 last week because you think it’s worth $40,000.

      You then send out emails to potential end user buyers and you ask $50,000 hoping to close a deal at your $40,000 valuation.

      This week, after sending 20 emails, you receive a $25,000 offer from an end user buyer who won’t budge up.

      The $15,000 – (150%) profit in less than a week is certainly a good reason to consider option 1 šŸ˜‰

    • The option #1 is valid, for example, in the case you realize your domain may not be worth what it was when you originally bought it (it could be years earlier) for many reasons: the particular product/technology is not as hot/valuable as it used to be, the particular TLD no longer works (think of Rick Schwartz and his Flowers.mobi which he had to resell for peanuts), ecc.

  3. Excellent article, Elliot. This is an aspect of the business that I think has never been covered by domain bloggers. I’ve fallen several times into this trap, especially during my first couple of years in the industry. It’s human nature to think that one’s assets are (much) more valuable than they actually are and this often leads to passing on good offers. Unfortunately you realize this later, when it’s too late.

  4. Great post, thank you.

    Although I made a counter to an initial offer I recently received, first of the year in fact. However, I might have lost the momentum. I am negotiating through a web designer who’s client is in the Middle East, and the company have bought the .org and .net, so are keen for the .com, however they are now considering using their ccTLD, which could have server issues. Fortunately, my third party client is working hard for the .com to be sold to the company. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken the initial offer?

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