A recent domain inquiry arrived from a party that operates their own clothes boutique, from an upscale area no less.
The introduction included the disclaimer that they did not possess great financial resources for the domain.
Nevertheless, it was a direct, polite inquiry that arrived via the Uniregistry Market, and I ran the obligatory background check on the person.
As it turns out they produce pants, among other fashion items, that cost in excess of $2,000 dollars a pair.
I’m quite content with wearing $40 dollar pants myself, and with that in mind, I quoted a price of $2,500 dollars for the brandable domain they were after.
The response was negative, re-iterating that their resources were pretty low, at which point I was tempted to mention the two thousand dollar pants they produce – but I didn’t.
Closing a deal involves an understanding of the buyer’s finances, and in this case my potential buyer simply didn’t want to disclose what they can afford. But seriously, the domain would cost them 1.25 pants and a few extra buttons, when taking into account the Escrow.com fees.
Moving on to case #2, where a recent sale via Escrow.com upgraded a buyer’s fashion-related domain, from a .IO to a .COM.
The buyer produces a futuristic urban fashion line for men and women, and the .IO extension might have been the suggestion of a geek from the Valley, but in the case of a non-tech clothing line, the .com is much more appropriate. In fact, any industry-specific gTLD would be more appropriate than exotic ccTLDs like .IO.
There is no doubt that developed domains rank higher than parked domains, but in this case, the .COM is what they were after, and they got a nice upgrade for the price.
My initial quote was countered with an offer about 15% less and the deal closed via Escrow.com; at that point I completed the Escrow verification process, as described in an earlier post.
Not every domain inquiry becomes a sale, but every inquiry can be a valuable lesson, or an anecdote worthy of sharing.
FYI: Occasionally, when I try to leave a comment, within 4-5 minutes, your comments times out and not able to leave a comment…not good.
Paul – The captcha has a 6 minute timer. Normally, hitting back on your browser would get you to the half-finished post, and you’d have to hit the little arrow icon next to the captcha field to refresh it.