Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

As a domain investor, I’m looking into maximizing my ROI from domain sales. When that happens, it’s because my asking price was met by the potential buyer.

On Sedo, where anonymous offers can be considered ‘safe‘ by those that place them, it’s not always easy to come to an agreement.

While flexibility by both parties is the key to any successful negotiation, there are times when a comment or a change in the price terminates the desire to communicate further.

A couple of days ago, I received a series of increased offers for a generic domain in my portfolio. Apparently, my asking price ‘shocked’ the newly registered account that the bidder was placing offers from at Sedo.

When I responded with a detailed message to their standard “Please justify your asking price”, things turned nasty. Upset that my price exceeded the cost of domain registrations over the course of ten years, the buyer attempted to teach me a lesson in economics, forgetting one simple thing in the process:

I don’t sell unless I want to, and I sell when the price is right.

When the offer/counter-offer exchange turns into a ‘conversation‘, the negotiation is pointless. Falsely believing that I will be upset, our anonymous teacher of economics turned the $x,xxx offer into $60, leaving the comment “Cool story bro.”

I did not wait for their comment to be approved and instead canceled this time-waster of a bonehead offer. No point in continuing talking to obnoxious people hiding behind anonymity. If a person is serious about a domain, they’d contact me directly via the WHOIS.

I have so many “sour grapes” stories at Sedo that it’s truly funny how I don’t even blink these days to such lowballing commentary. But it makes a cool story for my Saturday morning blogging.

Very rarely – if ever – do I post twice on the same day. But a “domains wanted” thread over at DNForum made me scramble enough material for yet another domain-related rant.

What the heck, it’s also Friday.

So when a buyer posts about their budget being in the “$xx – low $xxx” range, one would hope their expectations about domain quality aren’t that high.

Otherwise, either they have a small budget and high expectations, or a small brain. Or both.

However, when a fellow domainer jumps in to defend the lowball poster’s demands, that’s when I take offense.

And I quote my initial response from that thread:

Short domains: $x,xxx
Aged domains: $x,xxx
Short & aged domains: $x,xxx – $xx,xxx

There are some so-called “industry standards” that once broken will further allow a bunch of clowns to demand something for nothing.

Short domains, aged domains, short *and* aged domains – all are worthy of a domainer’s respect. When you violate this rough guide, you’re disrespecting an entire industry.

Sure, I could have walked away from the thread – then again, I’m known for voicing my opinion when I strongly feel I’m in the right.

A seller is in the wrong when they declare their domains are “premium” when they are not. A buyer is in the wrong when they demand unreasonably low prices for domains that are worth much more by definition.

TGIF!

During the past two weeks I’ve had an onslaught of offers on Sedo.

While some sales came to fruition after negotiation and/or public auction, the majority were of the same kind: lowball offers.

I spoke to my account manager about possibly introducing a system where offer-makers are identifiable, the way sellers are.

The method would allow serial lowballers to be blocked by individual sellers from making further offers; first, for a set period of time and then – if necessary – for good.

I don’t set minimum prices for the domains that I list on Sedo and the reason is simple.

Many times I’ve seen an initial offer of e.g. $100 jump into the $x,xxx territory once negotiations – and non-standard messages – get rolling. A higher minimum price can be a roadblock, even if it’s in the low hundreds. That’s because a minimum asking price is only a selling threshold and not a selling point, but those two are often misunderstood by potential buyers.

The truth is, a lot of end-users offer the least amount of money, if they can get away with it.

The exception, perhaps, was when I sold a three letter .com via Sedo last year. The $xx,xxx selling price had a $9,999 minimum offer set.

Still, it’d be great to pass the message along to the time-wasting lowballers: without offering money, you don’t get the domain honey.