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.

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!

When an offer comes through at Sedo with a comment that wasn’t populated from the drop down menu, that comment is held for review by Sedo staff.

There are two ways to deal with such comments, and my response depends on the offer itself.

In the past, I explained why listing my domains with a fixed price on Sedo or other venues does not work for me.

If an offer with a custom comment is detrimental to the domain negotiation game, I usually call Sedo for them to review and potentially release the comment, in order for me to see what the buyer is attempting to convey.

Usually, Sedo does that within minutes and the process has helped me speed up the negotiation process. The method works in a similar fashion if I wanted one of my own custom responses to be relayed to the buyer without much of a full day’s delay.

Now, if the offer that comes with a pending comment is not of interest, I never wait for the comment to be released, but I simply cancel the negotiation on the spot. I don’t have time to waste and this way the lowballing buyer thinks twice before making an offer again in the future.

I love that 80′s song by Falco and there was plenty of “Vienna calling” for the past 30 days at Sedo.

An Austrian buyer took forever to submit payment for one of my domains; first claiming he sent payment, then stating he went on Easter vacation and eventually assuring everyone “the check’s in the mail.” How do you say “bullshit” in German?

I was almost ready to place him in the same category along with 66% of my Swiss buyers.

Sedo Germany kept hammering though, contacting the buyer by phone every other day and eventually handing over the matter to the uber-aggressive Accounts Receivable department.

The matter closed today and I’ve pinned one more flag on the international map of domain buyers.

TGIF Sedo, danke schön!

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.

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