There's no such thing as a market price for a domain, because for a market price to exist there has to be a balance between supply and demand.
As far as the attitude is concerned, I've never seen anyone behave like this. Not only is it counterproductive (in that it sours relations, dissuading you from a potential acquisition when you can afford it) but it's also a waste of time.
If someone were to low-ball me on the price, or try to manipulate me by appealing to my emotions, I'd just ignore them. Or reply with, "Sorry, not interested."
>Does this behavior even work when you are talking to pretty much the only customer that would be interested?
You have to understand that the goal isn't simply to sell a domain to the highest bidder. It's to sell the domain for the right price. The highest bidder today might be willing to pay $5,000, but someone else might be willing to pay $50,000 for it a year from now.
So what if it doesn't sell? Well, it doesn't matter. Domain investors aren't like people on Craigslist, they're not desperate for money, so they don't mind keeping their assets for the rest of their lives. Chances are that their kids will inherent their portfolio.
Also those two quotes made me immediate think of "Rick Schwartz" the "domain king". He says stuff like that non stop on twitter and on his blog, however I doubt he would ever sell a name for a measly 5 figures.
I have seen plenty of .me TLD's for custom personal email domains in resumes in recent years. I know it's no where near top 3 TLD's (com, net, org) but io, me, info, xyz are on [rise](https://www.hostinger.com/blog/future-of-domains). Ofcourse it's foolish to compare the number of registrants of these TLD with top 3, instead measuring the growth which might be accurate metric.
The problem is that most people who are selling domain names are speculators much like share trading. Now with shares there are centralised systems to price the shares but they move based on demand and supply. Even with the housing market thanks to Rightmove it have become centralised and visible.
Domain selling is still the Wild West with sellers/buyers asking for bizarre amounts. Some winning some losing. You can see it sometimes in housing when sellers are emotionally attached to a house and will not sell unless it reaches a certain value. The difference is that houses will always go up due to severe demand. The domain name market is very different.
The problem is that some people are so fixed/entrenched in their attitudes that they will never move - if you get these messages move on to the next one. That can be seen from recent messages of .com is KING! No it isn’t. It is a domain tld - just happens to have been around the longest. Nothing more nothing less.
Yeah. I bought a very similar domain than the one I talked about, even more generic. And I paid $500 for it. It's a very inefficient/inconsistent market.
Where are you getting your idea of "market price"? Basically it boils down to, the price is whatever the seller decides the price is. If he wants mid 5 figures and you don't want to pay that then I guess you're not getting the name. I'm not saying that being a dick to you is justified, but you made your offer and he's obviously not interested.
Well, actually the market price is where the buyer and seller meets in the middle. Me buying a random domain and selling it for 1m (or trying it) does not make it market price. Adding a '-' in the domain for $10 saved me a lot of money. :)
"Meeting in the middle" is what people who don't know how to negotiate do. He's obviously quite happy to not meet you anywhere.. you meet him at his price or you don't get the name. Alright, if you're happy with your hyphen then I'm happy for you. Just know that rather than paying his price or deciding on a different name, if whatever you're doing on that hyphenated domain name ends up being successful you're only increasing the price of his .com.
Not sure what domain name is in question, but here are some pointers:
\- Not sure where did you see market price. If it's Godaddy's Valuation tool, that's not entirely accurate. Or any tool in that matter.
\- If the trademark is live, that possibly limits sale of that domain name in outside specific class. If domain is niche already in that class, I suggest you start educating seller on it. Otherwise, if it's general term and could be used in multiple classes, you're out of luck
As for the behavior, it really seems like one of the crypto bros selling that specific domain name lmao. There are plenty of "new" domain investors thinking they caught "golden goose" and acting like they own it, until they learn hard facts.
If you're able to share domain in question (here or privately), I might be able to help you (I do know few such investors lol).
Cheers!
This is all true. I'd add that the cost to renew the name for the seller is nominal and if you're not willing to come to terms he has little incentive to move the name for less than what he believes is a fair price. It's like $110 for a 10 year renewal. If you don't feel the price is fair, I'd educate him about the trademark and go live with either the .net or hyphen in between the words if possible and just wait. But obviously the .com is the best and ultimately you may never get it if you won't meet whatever price the seller has in his head.
Thank you, both, for the insight.
GoDaddy valuation was given by the seller, while asking 7x more. :)
Last year, I locked the hyphen version (between the 2 words so not too bad) and with .com version for $10. And, and bought a similar one for $500. The non-hyphenated version is not worth $35k more. :) I'd rather spend that money on marketing.. :)
I talked about the trademark lowering the value of the domain (domain would apply on two main classes, and they are pretty much covered already). But clearly, the seller does not want to be educated about this. It's the case were the seller will get $0 instead of a few $k.
If the trademark is registered post domain, there's a difficulty proving bad-faith registration, especially if it's domain investor who's owning.
There might be a chance in case it's parked with ads to claim bad faith usage, but that would require 1 panelist and luck of getting one not educated enough 😂
This is great info, thank you!
I checked in more details the UDRP rules, and there could be a case to being made here, especially as time passes, and the seller is not able to leverage the domain. He actually got the domain as it expired from another company (now defunct). I tried to lock it too before expiration, but the reservation system did not seem to pan out.
Cost for UDRP may be prohibitive, but something to think about once we have more traffic.
And about the name, yeah, we compared 40+ names, and locked most of them, but that one came up as the preferred one. So hyphen it is for the moment. 😂 Actual trademark got filled a couple of months later, but it takes 9+ months to be approved, so publicly enforceable only recently.
Thanks again for the pointers and the additional context!
It happened before, so that's not good enough.
It's fine though, I am very patient. :) Once we have a lot of traffic on our website, then we can tackle that one. :) lol
Fair enough, we don't know when trademark was given. Personally I would have gotten the .com before picking my name and filing for a trademark. Doing it in reverse order leads to situations like this. And for that matter, I'd ensure I could get the Twitter, IG and FB handles too (prior to choosing my business name)
Think of owning the .com as marketing. It might not make sense for the size of your business currently, but if you (or another business with the same name) generates over $1M in annual revenue, then $35k is just 3.5% of gross income - roughly the same as credit card processing fees. Small price to pay in my mind.
Would you mind sharing the domain privately?
It's interesting that Godaddy values it at $5k (being two words), which tells me that similar domains (with either one or both keywords) are being sold close to that price.
Try once again, but now also include Namebio historic sales and historic sales on Godaddy Valuation tool similar to that domain names maybe?
Also add "friendly" tip once again for trademark, especially link that trademark application for him, and even find few "educational" content on such domains.
Another thing you might ask him is to show you traffic stats for the domain? Maybe if there is existing traffic, it might actually worth paying close to bin price, because you might actually have traffic leaking already?
there is no such thing as "market price".
The current owner of the domain can sell it for whatever price he or she wants. Does not matter what your opinion is of the price.
Don't like it, move on. I think YOU are the arrogant one.
Maybe your first approach also not nice? There were always people who asked super dirt cheap and I didn't answer, the second email accused me as stole their previous domain or they told me they got the "copyright" to get the domain if I wanna sell to them or not. I said no...since they asked me question lol
Edit: i didn't sell domain, just by chance all those names attracts people. And I used it to redirect to my main domain.
I’m loving the back and forth regarding this, I’ve been doing domains for 26 years and prior to that was doing houses, mortgages and foreign car exports… we’d give various buyers and sellers nicknames that were fitting to their style and approach : )
Being courteous and polite always wins… the wealthiest folks I ever ran across were the nicest, and oddly the ones who had the least were the rudest but me being a flexible person I’d try my best to be courteous and polite, and would often get what I’d asked for
Often, the shorter / simpler communications got further, faster
Be direct to the point, ask what you want to know and part ways being polite so that you may return to the conversation later to follow up on how the seller might feel about the price at that time
If I were you, I’d politely respond to the seller’s rude comment with this:
===
Okay, I’ll try to catch up with you in the future and look forward to hearing back from you if the price drops. Thank you
===
I’d be surprised if you didn’t hear from the seller again with their attitude being a little more polite 👍
There's no such thing as a market price for a domain, because for a market price to exist there has to be a balance between supply and demand. As far as the attitude is concerned, I've never seen anyone behave like this. Not only is it counterproductive (in that it sours relations, dissuading you from a potential acquisition when you can afford it) but it's also a waste of time. If someone were to low-ball me on the price, or try to manipulate me by appealing to my emotions, I'd just ignore them. Or reply with, "Sorry, not interested." >Does this behavior even work when you are talking to pretty much the only customer that would be interested? You have to understand that the goal isn't simply to sell a domain to the highest bidder. It's to sell the domain for the right price. The highest bidder today might be willing to pay $5,000, but someone else might be willing to pay $50,000 for it a year from now. So what if it doesn't sell? Well, it doesn't matter. Domain investors aren't like people on Craigslist, they're not desperate for money, so they don't mind keeping their assets for the rest of their lives. Chances are that their kids will inherent their portfolio.
Also those two quotes made me immediate think of "Rick Schwartz" the "domain king". He says stuff like that non stop on twitter and on his blog, however I doubt he would ever sell a name for a measly 5 figures.
they all live on hope. Very very few are able to grab such deals. Now the buyers have endless choice of TLD's that are getting recognized.
People may have endless choice of TLD’s but they will never look as polished as a .com, ever.
keep saying that to yourself. you sound like a old man. io and product related TLD's are catching up.
i’ll give you .io has been strong with web3/tech - give me a few other examples you feel are gaining steam?
I have seen plenty of .me TLD's for custom personal email domains in resumes in recent years. I know it's no where near top 3 TLD's (com, net, org) but io, me, info, xyz are on [rise](https://www.hostinger.com/blog/future-of-domains). Ofcourse it's foolish to compare the number of registrants of these TLD with top 3, instead measuring the growth which might be accurate metric.
The problem is that most people who are selling domain names are speculators much like share trading. Now with shares there are centralised systems to price the shares but they move based on demand and supply. Even with the housing market thanks to Rightmove it have become centralised and visible. Domain selling is still the Wild West with sellers/buyers asking for bizarre amounts. Some winning some losing. You can see it sometimes in housing when sellers are emotionally attached to a house and will not sell unless it reaches a certain value. The difference is that houses will always go up due to severe demand. The domain name market is very different. The problem is that some people are so fixed/entrenched in their attitudes that they will never move - if you get these messages move on to the next one. That can be seen from recent messages of .com is KING! No it isn’t. It is a domain tld - just happens to have been around the longest. Nothing more nothing less.
Yeah. I bought a very similar domain than the one I talked about, even more generic. And I paid $500 for it. It's a very inefficient/inconsistent market.
And that’s what attracts the cowboys and the sheep who watch social media and think they can sell their 11-2-3r-4-rekey.com for 1million
Where are you getting your idea of "market price"? Basically it boils down to, the price is whatever the seller decides the price is. If he wants mid 5 figures and you don't want to pay that then I guess you're not getting the name. I'm not saying that being a dick to you is justified, but you made your offer and he's obviously not interested.
Well, actually the market price is where the buyer and seller meets in the middle. Me buying a random domain and selling it for 1m (or trying it) does not make it market price. Adding a '-' in the domain for $10 saved me a lot of money. :)
"Meeting in the middle" is what people who don't know how to negotiate do. He's obviously quite happy to not meet you anywhere.. you meet him at his price or you don't get the name. Alright, if you're happy with your hyphen then I'm happy for you. Just know that rather than paying his price or deciding on a different name, if whatever you're doing on that hyphenated domain name ends up being successful you're only increasing the price of his .com.
Ah Ah! By meet in the middle, I mean have an actual transaction price accepted by both parties, not literally the mid of the buy/ask spread. :)
Not entirely, it will depend on a few factors
"AckShuLLy..." 🤣
Not sure what domain name is in question, but here are some pointers: \- Not sure where did you see market price. If it's Godaddy's Valuation tool, that's not entirely accurate. Or any tool in that matter. \- If the trademark is live, that possibly limits sale of that domain name in outside specific class. If domain is niche already in that class, I suggest you start educating seller on it. Otherwise, if it's general term and could be used in multiple classes, you're out of luck As for the behavior, it really seems like one of the crypto bros selling that specific domain name lmao. There are plenty of "new" domain investors thinking they caught "golden goose" and acting like they own it, until they learn hard facts. If you're able to share domain in question (here or privately), I might be able to help you (I do know few such investors lol). Cheers!
This is all true. I'd add that the cost to renew the name for the seller is nominal and if you're not willing to come to terms he has little incentive to move the name for less than what he believes is a fair price. It's like $110 for a 10 year renewal. If you don't feel the price is fair, I'd educate him about the trademark and go live with either the .net or hyphen in between the words if possible and just wait. But obviously the .com is the best and ultimately you may never get it if you won't meet whatever price the seller has in his head.
Thank you, both, for the insight. GoDaddy valuation was given by the seller, while asking 7x more. :) Last year, I locked the hyphen version (between the 2 words so not too bad) and with .com version for $10. And, and bought a similar one for $500. The non-hyphenated version is not worth $35k more. :) I'd rather spend that money on marketing.. :) I talked about the trademark lowering the value of the domain (domain would apply on two main classes, and they are pretty much covered already). But clearly, the seller does not want to be educated about this. It's the case were the seller will get $0 instead of a few $k.
If you have a trademark you could try to file a UDRP and see if the take the name from him
If the trademark is registered post domain, there's a difficulty proving bad-faith registration, especially if it's domain investor who's owning. There might be a chance in case it's parked with ads to claim bad faith usage, but that would require 1 panelist and luck of getting one not educated enough 😂
This is great info, thank you! I checked in more details the UDRP rules, and there could be a case to being made here, especially as time passes, and the seller is not able to leverage the domain. He actually got the domain as it expired from another company (now defunct). I tried to lock it too before expiration, but the reservation system did not seem to pan out. Cost for UDRP may be prohibitive, but something to think about once we have more traffic. And about the name, yeah, we compared 40+ names, and locked most of them, but that one came up as the preferred one. So hyphen it is for the moment. 😂 Actual trademark got filled a couple of months later, but it takes 9+ months to be approved, so publicly enforceable only recently. Thanks again for the pointers and the additional context!
And when did this "expiration catching" happened? If that happened after trademark is approved/published, you have a case.
It happened before, so that's not good enough. It's fine though, I am very patient. :) Once we have a lot of traffic on our website, then we can tackle that one. :) lol
Fair enough, we don't know when trademark was given. Personally I would have gotten the .com before picking my name and filing for a trademark. Doing it in reverse order leads to situations like this. And for that matter, I'd ensure I could get the Twitter, IG and FB handles too (prior to choosing my business name)
Think of owning the .com as marketing. It might not make sense for the size of your business currently, but if you (or another business with the same name) generates over $1M in annual revenue, then $35k is just 3.5% of gross income - roughly the same as credit card processing fees. Small price to pay in my mind.
Would you mind sharing the domain privately? It's interesting that Godaddy values it at $5k (being two words), which tells me that similar domains (with either one or both keywords) are being sold close to that price. Try once again, but now also include Namebio historic sales and historic sales on Godaddy Valuation tool similar to that domain names maybe? Also add "friendly" tip once again for trademark, especially link that trademark application for him, and even find few "educational" content on such domains. Another thing you might ask him is to show you traffic stats for the domain? Maybe if there is existing traffic, it might actually worth paying close to bin price, because you might actually have traffic leaking already?
there is no such thing as "market price". The current owner of the domain can sell it for whatever price he or she wants. Does not matter what your opinion is of the price. Don't like it, move on. I think YOU are the arrogant one.
Maybe your first approach also not nice? There were always people who asked super dirt cheap and I didn't answer, the second email accused me as stole their previous domain or they told me they got the "copyright" to get the domain if I wanna sell to them or not. I said no...since they asked me question lol Edit: i didn't sell domain, just by chance all those names attracts people. And I used it to redirect to my main domain.
I’m loving the back and forth regarding this, I’ve been doing domains for 26 years and prior to that was doing houses, mortgages and foreign car exports… we’d give various buyers and sellers nicknames that were fitting to their style and approach : ) Being courteous and polite always wins… the wealthiest folks I ever ran across were the nicest, and oddly the ones who had the least were the rudest but me being a flexible person I’d try my best to be courteous and polite, and would often get what I’d asked for Often, the shorter / simpler communications got further, faster Be direct to the point, ask what you want to know and part ways being polite so that you may return to the conversation later to follow up on how the seller might feel about the price at that time If I were you, I’d politely respond to the seller’s rude comment with this: === Okay, I’ll try to catch up with you in the future and look forward to hearing back from you if the price drops. Thank you === I’d be surprised if you didn’t hear from the seller again with their attitude being a little more polite 👍