Selling domains: Dealing with buyers w/ no offer

[heirJORDAN]

All the beginners reading this, take note of my registration date. That is roughly when I started registering domains. I'm just now having luck with selling domains. I am not a "reseller" but this can go to show how hard it can be to find a buyer.

As for the purpose of this thread; I am looking for advice on selling a domain. I have recently had 2 separate buyers interested in the same domain. I looked into the little info I could and they are legit parties. My problem is, they refuse to make an offer. They are asking me to initiate one.

For this reason, they've agreed to give me time to assess the worth and come back with a price. Personally, I find appraisals to be worthless because this is a blank domain with a for sale landing page, and will likely fail all "standards". I take the buydomains approach of taking interest as rising in value. (Whether that's right or wrong )

Therefore, how should I approach this? I don't want to scare either potential buyer while the domain is hot and I have a chance to unload a domain I no longer have interest in developing. But I don't want to undersell neither. What should I do?

Sorry for the novel, but I thank anyone in advance who could help.

[south]

Start high!

[fab]

Start high!

Reasonably high. Too high drives them away.

[heirJORDAN]

Agreed.

Would you guys say mid$xxx, minimum? Maybe start at a low$xxxx and leave room for negotiating to a common ground?

(I know it doesn't help pricing it by leaving the domain in anonymity, but seeing how it is pending a potential sale; I view it as better business to keep it that way.)

[bocajohnh]

Originally Posted by heirJORDAN

Would you guys say mid$xxx, minimum? Maybe start at a low$xxxx and leave room for negotiating to a common ground?

If you want to sell, you need to put a sellable price on it and not look back. Since you are not sharing the name, then YOU have to decide what a reasonable price is.

There are a few methods to use to validate your asking price, at least to yourself. The main way for people starting out with selling is finding comparable recent sales. Namebio.com has good filtering to let you find similar names that have sold in a variety of forums. If it is a keyword name, and you can't find close comparable names, look for more or less popular synonyms and adjust your price accordingly.

For a real realty check for the state of the recent market, look for comparable names for sale here at DNF. While the names selling for low prices are "never as good as my name" (tm), you might find similar names that the buyers could use. Look in the "Names expiring, give me a dollar" section, or the names selling for $20 or under $100. If you have a comparable name, then getting $200 or more for a name similar to ones going here for $20, you know you are setting a good price.

If you don't want/need to sell, and don't mind seeing the two buyers walk away, then put a super high price on it. This strategy works for the big dogs who don't need or want to sell. By saying "No" over and over, they get the buyer to jack up his purchase price.

[biggedon]

Originally Posted by heirJORDAN

All the beginners reading this, take note of my registration date. That is roughly when I started registering domains. I'm just now having luck with selling domains. I am not a "reseller" but this can go to show how hard it can be to find a buyer.

As for the purpose of this thread; I am looking for advice on selling a domain. I have recently had 2 separate buyers interested in the same domain. I looked into the little info I could and they are legit parties. My problem is, they refuse to make an offer. They are asking me to initiate one.

For this reason, they've agreed to give me time to assess the worth and come back with a price. Personally, I find appraisals to be worthless because this is a blank domain with a for sale landing page, and will likely fail all "standards". I take the buydomains approach of taking interest as rising in value. (Whether that's right or wrong )

Therefore, how should I approach this? I don't want to scare either potential buyer while the domain is hot and I have a chance to unload a domain I no longer have interest in developing. But I don't want to undersell neither. What should I do?

Sorry for the novel, but I thank anyone in advance who could help.

first

realize that "you" own the domain

when you put yourself in the position, where the buyer has control

then you have already undersold it.


at this point in my domaining life, i would just renew the domain a few more years.

what's it gonna cost you?

if they come back, then add that fee to the price that you don't have.

or wait for a serious buyer, who is willing to put the money where their mouth is


all depends on the domain, your financial situation, how long you can wait for roi, and it really never matters who the buyer is

for incoming inquiries...

it's just about how bad they want it and how much they are willing to offer for it.

and....both of those buyers (interested parties) could be on the same team, just co-op'n, if they both don't wish to submit offers.

lot of game being run


imo...

[south]

Originally Posted by biggedon

first

realize that "you" own the domain

when you put yourself in the position, where the buyer has control

then you have already undersold it.

.

That.

Dude, why not PM the name to those of us that have responded to the thread, and we'll put our opinionated numbers to it.

[emark]

As with most people, the price is what a domain is worth to me. That's usually more than others think it might be worth. Quite often it's also more than the buyer (enduser) might think it's worth. I always refer to the price as being an "asking" price.

Along with my asking price, I also make a statement like "as with most things in business, the price is negotiable". It then puts the ball in the buyer's court.

My 2¢.

[heirJORDAN]

Thanks for the replies, I took in the different point of views.

I considered the co-op, but I've taken the names/emails, and google searches have pulled completely seperate (established) business entities. One is a brick and mortar business, the other is a upstart clothing label. I wish they would offer, but they are playing the card of being clueless to domain value. Could very well be game. Which hurts, because their budget could be much larger than what I see it's value being.

I inquired about this exact domain before it expired in 2007, and the old owner wanted $1,000. For whatever reason, he let it drop 2 months later, I reg'd it, but never developed. I'm not pressed for money, but I hate to see this opportunity not be pursued.

I have no problem PM'ing the domain to those interested. Please ask.

Thanks again for all help.

[JoshuaPz]

If you've already mapped your end-user inquirers to actual companies then you're off to a great start.

Oftentimes, Manta.com will provide you the approximate annual sales figures for any company listed in their business directory. Learning what each of these companies is capable of paying and cross-referencing that with how much relevance your domain appears to have to each company's core business will help guard against you leaving money on the table.

I've actually written up an end-user pricing "cheat sheet" that I and many others have found to be very accurate in terms of pricing domains based on the approaching end-user's employee count and revenue figures. The cheat sheet is based on the 200 or so end-user flips I've completed over the past year. I think DNF is much more stingent about promoting your own websites than the other forum is though, so PM me if you'd like the link.

If you find one of the firms to be far better established than the other, I would approach the better-established first, negotiate with them until you figure out that max. amount they can offer, and only approach the smaller company if you find you can't sell to the larger one for an amount that satisfies you.

Addendum: the fact you have multiple interested end-users does not mean you're safe pricing your domain name into the stratosphere. One time I pitched a commercial domain name whose keywords receive 1300 exact months searches to 22 end-user candidate and received 5 "what's your price?" inquiries. As it turned out, not a single one of those 5 end-user candidates was willing to pay upwards of $150 for the domain name. Yet I've secured several mid-$XXXX sales on several mediocre-sounding domains in which only a single end-user candidate expressed interest. Just negotiate with one end-user at a time, starting with the [seemingly] wealthiest.

[heirJORDAN]

Thanks, that's a very nice site! The party I consider to be established, I learned they've been in business for 9 years. And according to their manta profile, they earned $500k-1m; with approximately 20-49 employees.

While these can be vague and I'm not particularly sure what year this is based on, or even if it's an average over the past 9 years. But this information alone has helped tremendously. I'm doing research on national and state averages to their field. Hopefully this is above average to give me leeway in the negotiation process.

[adomainstar]

I think the best way is to use dnsaleprice.com to determine the best price for your domain name. You can use this website to compare each and every domain you have with similiar domain name that have actually sold in the past. you can do this research right now if you'd like to test it.