Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

This June it will be my 7th year using the services of Sedo for parking, selling and buying domain names.  While PPC has had its ups and downs, domain sales have never been stronger.

It’s not just the volume of sales, it’s the ability of Sedo to use its best asset: its people.

Potential buyers come from all places, cultures and speak different languages. Negotiation can sometimes break off for no apparent reason, even right in the middle of a transaction that otherwise looked promising.

Having had an offer from a Belgian bidder, I researched the particular domain and feeling confident about their apparent budget, I responded with a suitable second counter-offer.

At that point, the buyer pulled out of the transaction, leaving me scratching my head; for a domain that was acquired for $10 I was definitely disappointed.

So I spoke to my account manager at Sedo, and she performed a little bit of magic for me. After contacting the buyer and explaining – in their native language – what the process entailed, she came back to me with the news that a new round of negotiations would begin.

This afternoon, I found a notification in my mailbox that the buyer from Belgium had placed an offer that matched my asking range; on top of that, they were expressing their apology for misunderstanding the process.

I could not be happier; from $10 to $x,xxx for a .ORG that’s a great ROI.

It shows how important it is to have recovery mechanisms in place, such as establishing direct contact with the other party. This is not the first time that such a negotiation was re-instated; Sedo has done this for me on several occasions.

Thank you Sedo, it’s been a great seven years thus far!

As a domain seller, I’m always looking to maximize my ROI; Sedo’s platform offers some room for negotiation.

However, the use of the pre-selected options is rather minimal and some are rather useless. For example, “Please justify your asking price” sounds like a time-wasting response.

There is one option that is quite ominous and that’s “This is my final offer“.

When placed by the offer-maker, it’s an indication that he’s ready to pull out of further acting upon the domain.

Or is it?

A week ago I was in the middle of one such negotiation, when the deal stalled. My asking price and the placed offer were quite apart.

Then, the potential buyer played the “This is my final offer” card.

Big mistake.

When the gap is large, making such a statement won’t push me into “surrendering” the domain. Domain buyers beware: if you use Sedo to attempt to buy domains anonymously, you immediately indicate that you don’t want to negotiate directly; after all, my contact info is in the WHOIS.

So I typed up a nice response to the buyer, explaining why his offer was laughable; for a domain registered before 2000 he was instantly gaining Google juice for the exact terms. I didn’t forget to send him a couple of other potential buyers, using ZFBot as my search tool.

Then I waited. On the last day of the offer, he accepted my asking price.

Epic triumph.

So don’t go around playing the “Final Offer” card to a domain seller that knows when you bluff.

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.

I’ve a headache already from all the things related to the Super Bowl and it’s not due to the beer or the zingers.

So I’ll talk about Sedo’s little feat of last Friday instead.

Sedo is celebrating 10 years this coming week – and yet the celebrations are modest, although the public “thank you” list is growing.

That’s very pragmatic for a company that rose to international stardom in the domain parking and aftermarket business; a decade of growth achieved by continuous improvement and expansion of services.

On Friday, Sedo pulled off yet another feat on my behalf: in 11 minutes flat, Sedo performed some little magic over the Internet; from accepting the sale, to confirming payment, to receiving the pushed domain and crediting my account.

That shattered the previously experienced record of 23 minutes by more than half!

A decade of growing existence is an important milestone for a company that aims higher with every corporate achievement; the secret is its people.

Thanks Sedo – happy 10th anniversary!

If I could share my appreciation over a single business for 2010, that would be Sedo.

My relationship with the PPC provider started in 2004 and I must admit it started a couple of years late. Until then, parking my domains was something that I wasn’t considering. I lost several thousand dollars in revenue this way.

Lesson learned:  Despite the ups and downs of the industry, Sedo is for me the perfect combination of a PPC provider and domain sales platform. At some point, I asked Donny Simonton of Parked if they’d consider doing the same; he responded that adding a domain sales platform wasn’t in their immediate plans.

As time passes, Sedo becomes a mainstream, household name outside of the domain industry – something that is necessary in order to facilitate sales to end users. While PPC revenue fluctuates, the number of sales have increased for me and nowadays I use Sedo for roughly 90% of my domain sales.

This year, I had a record number of sales on the Sedo platform, without sweating much.

Sedo handles the sales process very efficiently nowadays; while I’ve slowed down my buying I’ve enjoyed the increased revenue from selling on Sedo, often involving targeted emails about ongoing auctions to maximize sales revenue.

After meeting with the Sedo staff in Boston, I was thoroughly convinced about the seriousness with which Sedo treats its  PPC business and sales platform. Recent improvements in the Sedo system have generated increased revenue, despite the financial straits the economy is still going through.

So thanks, Sedo – here’s to a splendid and equally successful 2011.