Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Recently, I had the pleasure of exchanging a couple of emails with a person who provides quality 3D infographics for financial data, on his .info web site.

After receiving an offer for the matching .com on Sedo and not reaching an agreement on the price, I assumed it came from the .info or the .us – both owned by the same person I mentioned above.

I emailed him, making sure he got praised for his creations displayed on the year old .info, and asked how much he’d pay for the 10 year old .com that I owned.

His response left me speechless, as he stated he had no budget for the .com and that through “Google placement” he’d make the .info have more traction, overshadowing the .com. He also stated that he hadn’t placed the bid on Sedo.

At that point, I had killed two birds with one stone: first, I knew this was not my secret bidder and second, I knew he would not be the one to ever bid on the .com!

So I contacted Sedo, asking them to mediate a sale to the original bidder, offering them a reasonable discount over my initial asking price. The buyer accepted, and the sale closed and was paid in two days.

Moral of the story: eliminate those that won’t be interested in your domain and achieve a sale by seeking alternate buyers.

Many thanks to Sedo and particularly Lisa Allen, for making this sale appear effortless!

As I said in the past, Sedo pays fast. How fast, depends on your willingness to participate in the seller/buyer exchange.

If you fail to respond to messages regarding a transaction, or if you do not take the initiative to inform the transaction manager about completing that action, chances are that you are delaying receiving that paycheck.

As usual, for my latest Sedo sales payment was disbursed via direct deposit/ACH to my business account, the same day that I received the notification from Sedo. Obviously, I did my part of the work by issuing and uploading an invoice per the sellers’ requests.

It is important to stay on top of your brokered sales on Sedo or other venues, if you want your money fast.

For updates, follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/acroplex

As a native Greek speaker I often feel the frustrations of domainers attempting to engage in international sales.

English might be the language of commerce, however it’s not necessarily spoken or fully understood by everyone.

Many times, the exchange can lead to misunderstandings, particularly when the style and tone of a written communication is either overly formal or overly casual.

The solution is to communicate in the buyer’s own language, when trying to establish a sizable sale.

Usually, a buyer is pleasantly surprised when communication arrives in their language, such as Spanish, Italian, French, German, Arabic, Dutch, Russian, Greek or Mandarin Chinese.

There are many ways to reach out to a potential buyer and the language barrier – along with the price negotiation – is one important element of your selling strategy.

Use it to your advantage by hiring a professional copywriter fluent in that particular language, in order to accurately convey your message.

It really doesn’t feel like it’s been a full decade of selling domain names, and yet I sold my first domain in early 2000 for low four figures.

In those days, the market was still raw, GoDaddy was the new up-and-coming force and Frank Schilling was still in Canada building homes and planning his life-changing move to the Caymans and domaining.

Things have changed since then; domainers nowadays have an astounding amount of resources to tap into. There are domain forums, networking groups, domain conferences and newsletters, blogs and publications.

Having completed yet another domain sale to be published in DNJournal tomorrow, I marvel at the way some domainers promote their domains and how they evaluate their virtual property.

When attempting to maximize your domain sales, make sure that you don’t leave money on the table. Research your investment and when an offer comes along, there is a single strategy that will boost both your confidence and your bank account.

That’s “the power of no” – something that Rick Schwartz has applied time and again to every domain offer that didn’t make the cut.

When evaluating a domain name for sale, you will soon learn how to accurately gauge its potential. Then you will exercise patience until that offer comes along; in the meantime, you will be able to turn down every suitor that doesn’t make the cut.

Rick’s blog is a great resource of aggressively dished information about domain selling strategies. Visit it often and read it as if it were your favorite Sports Almanac.

Follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/acroplex for updates.

In late 2009 I accepted an offer on Sedo for one of my domain names; a dictionary .net with several uses. The buyer was from a country in the Middle East and a newcomer to Sedo.

After waiting patiently for payment for more than 30 days, it became obvious that the buyer would not fulfill their obligation and Sedo canceled the transaction per my request.

They also banned the buyer from the Sedo marketplace as a deadbeat and provided me with the buyer’s name and info. Unfortunately, the buyer’s locale made it impossible for me to proceed with any form of legal action, as I would have done if they were in the US.

Fast forward to the future, 20 months later.

I received a sizable offer for the same domain and decided to send the domain into a Sedo auction. Unfortunately, it ended with a single bid: that of the person who had made the offer.

The buyer paid promptly and issued a request for an invoice, thus revealing his name – and that’s where the transaction turned very interesting: it was the deadbeat buyer from 2009.

I’m a realist when it comes down to domain pricing: the market’s liquidity dictates the pricing – as long as one decides to sell instead of holding long term.

Naturally I would have proceeded with the transaction, as I’ve done with hundreds of others on Sedo. But this wasn’t an ordinary transaction, it was a mockery of honest trading. It’s one thing when someone gets a good deal based on circumstances or the willingness of the seller to sell lower; it’s another thing when they reneg on a deal and break the contract.

I contacted Sedo, notifying them that the deadbeat buyer was somehow back on Sedo and that I wasn’t going to proceed with the transaction. What matters to me isn’t losing a sale but rather, having justice delivered. It’s a matter of ethics to honor a contract and by going around that, the buyer was essentially not playing a fair game.

Sedo deliberated for only a couple of hours before letting me know that they agreed with my position; the buyer had been banned for a while and was allowed back in at a later time per his request for “good behavior”.

Sedo froze the payment at escrow and informed the buyer that they’d have to come up with the remainder of the payment, honoring the initial contract.

It was a brilliant move by Sedo: the buyer’s eagerness to pay indicated that they had both their money and their reputation at stake. If they didn’t pay, they’d have to reverse the charges and lose every chance of every being on Sedo again. To my pleasant surprise, the next day the buyer accepted to honor the original contract.

I sat tight for a few more days while Sedo processed a split payment and finally the deal was complete. It took 20 months from the initial contract to the completion of the transaction but that’s fine since justice was delivered. It also more than doubled my anticipated revenue from the sale.

The way that Sedo handled the transaction was truly fantastic and communication via the phone was superb in every aspect. It’s also gratifying to see that the buyer decided to play fair in the end, so kudos to him for that.

You’ll find out about the $6,200 sale in next week’s DNJournal.