In the past I’ve covered the language barrier of certain cultures, that stifles or renders communication impossible.
One of the great people that I met during NamesCon, is George Hong of Guta.com. He explained to me the intricacies of the Chinese domain market, and the fact that many Chinese domainers don’t speak a stitch of English.
Having received inquiries for some of my short or numeric domains in the past from Chinese investors, they seem willing to put an effort in using English, either by making a personal attempt or by using online translators. The Chinese language can be translated very accurately to English, using Google Translate, unlike Greek, for example.
To those inquiries I respond whenever there are indications of genuine potential. If there is no activity after the second exchange, I bid them farewell.
The type of inquiries that I don’t respond to, are the monosyllabic or single word ‘questions’ that offer no insight about any sales potential.
When someone isn’t bothered to ask anything other than “Price?” or “Sell?” then I am not bothered to reply either. Putting some effort in wording an inquiry is indicative of one’s seriousness, at least in my book.
Fortunately, the new feature of being able to block a sender’s email address at Domain Name Sales, delivers peace from pestering inquiries that offer no potential for a sale.
Want to pique my interest? Elaborate about who you are, why you want a domain and you might just grab my attention and land a better deal at the same time.
I had a similar enquiry a year or two ago from an end user in China who simply wrote ‘best price’, to which I replied with just a figure and usd and a few minutes later there was a counter offer amount to which I countered with an amount etc.
Afterwards one of the staff members at the company who could speak English took it from there and I guided her through the escrow process and eventually the deal was done.
Happy buyer happy seller (it was a .com I thought no one would ever be interested in) and neither knowing a word of the others language, apart from figures in usd, lol.
fizz – Yes, I’ve been through this type of exchange and it actually worked but for different reasons: my asking price was a pun on the domain’s numeric qualities.
Generally speaking, I’ve found inquiries that don’t form a single complete sentence to lead nowhere.
That’s cool Acro being able to make a pun with the price!
I agree that in general the monosyllabic enquiries go nowhere and in my experience they’re usually just tyre kickers spamming domainers, but I tend to just throw out a solid price, file the email away immediately and see what happens.
Sometimes you get lucky.
here, here