Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by 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.

When pricing domain names for sale, the old rule of “buy low, sell high” applies.

So if you start off with a low acquisition cost, or even hand-registered a domain name, anything above that cost should be considered a fair selling price, right?

Wrong.

Allow me to explain why I don’t share the “flipper” mentality with regards to domains.

Pricing a domain name for sale – or accepting an offer for that particular domain – is based on a combination of parameters, most of which don’t apply when one simply wants to earn a buck or two.

To maximize your return on investment, consider the following:

• What is the domain’s potential for a business? Could you launch or replicate that potential yourself, all while waiting to sell?
• Is the term positive, with numerous search engine results? Is it a term that is marketable or does it have type-in traffic?
• Can you refrain from selling to the first offer – even if it seems sizable – until the perfect storm of an offer comes along?

Quite often, to price a domain accurately for sale you have to dig into records of past sales; this helps gauge potential and to feel more confident about your “gut feeling”. Of course, the saying goes: “Past Performance Is Not an Indication of Future Results” – so be diligent in how you interpret related domain sales.

Old domains, short domains, generic “dictionary” domains – all have an intrinsic value above most others. The same goes for dot com’s versus other TLDs. But don’t let that fool you: there are times when a secondary TLD can perform very well in terms of valuation.

To further gauge potential, I use ZFBot – an invaluable tool for domainers that searches millions of domains for matches against a string. You can use it to find potential buyers, as I’ve done time and again in the past, to send them into an auction frenzy or make cold calls.

Lastly, consider this when getting ready to place a price tag onto your domain: are you leaving money on the table, if you were to sell it without doing research?

That’s why it takes time to price domains and one cannot rely on most automated tools; it’s a gut feeling that one learns to trust with time.

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

I’ve no recollection of my first domain purchase but it probably happened on eBay, more than ten years ago.

Back in those days, eBay held a higher reputation than today, even with non-tangible goods such as domain names.

Since then, my domain acquisitions diversified and I’ve completely removed eBay from my list of options.

Nowadays, I buy domains from the following markets:

• Domain forums
• Via direct emails to the owner
• Sedo
• NameJet
• GoDaddy TDNAM
• From offers I receive via email

On occasion I might purchase domains on Bido, Afternic and domain conferences.

So what methodology do I use in order to price domains and place offers or bids accordingly?

Firstly, I’m a big fan of aged domains. If a domain is from 1999 and older, I’m interested. If it’s from 1995 and prior, I’m definitely interested.

Some aged domains might appear to be esoteric or might contain dashes. That’s when the visual and/or aural test kicks in.

Are these domains marketable? I add a point. Are they pronounceable? That’s a plus. Do they look “right” in print? Jot one point as well.

Obviously, if I can get any worthy domain for a huge discount, it’s always a great deal. Opportunities for discounts exist: the owner might be short in cash, they might be unaware of the domain’s worth or they might simply want to get out of business.

If a domain has potential and there is a danger of it being snapped by others, I “seize the day” and make an offer within 10% of the asking price; sometimes I might just pay the asking price outright. The latter method took my $2k investment in 360.org to a $25,500 sale a few months later.

Overall, I trust my “gut feeling” and although I do follow the market trends, I’m staying true to what I consider positive elements in a domain.

Lastly, never be ashamed to ask for a discount, provided of course that it does not blatantly disregard the street value of certain types of domains: generics and short ones.

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