DNS Brokers May Have More Insight Than Us

Many of my domain names are parked on the DomainNameSales.com platform, so a fair percentage of the offers I receive on my domain names are submitted via DNS. When I can’t get a buyer to reply to me, or if I don’t think I will have luck negotiating with the buyer (or I am busy), I forward the lead to a broker from DNS. In addition to their skills negotiating, the DNS brokers may have another tool not at my disposal: data.

For people who have very large portfolios and receive many offers for their domain names, a useful tool is the “Inquiries by Buyer” tab. If a person has made offers for other domain names in a person’s portfolio, this tool will allow the owner to track those inquiries. Knowing what the person offered (or paid) for a different domain name can give valuable insight, and that information can be used as a comparable. For instance, “You offered $x for x.com, and we feel y.com is worth 1.5x that offer.

For most people, though, this tool isn’t very helpful. I don’t have many repeat DNS buyers / inquiries, so I don’t glean any insight from this tool. I would presume that most others are in this position as well.

I would imagine brokers from Domain Name Sales have access to information about buyers from across the entire platform. If a buyer made a $10,000 offer via DNS for a domain name owned by someone else that uses DNS, I wouldn’t have access to this data, but a DNS broker would. They can use information from previous inquiries and sales to offer pricing guidance.

I reached out to Jeffrey Gabriel, Vice President of Sales at Domain Name Sales, and here’s what he had to say about this:

“We take all of our customer’s private information they trust with us very seriously. We do not share it with anyone. With that being said, we use many tools to assist our Brokers in qualifying leads, shortening the sales cycle, and maximizing sales prices for all of our customers. We have buyer’s on our platform that inquire on many domains at once or have over a long period of time. Seeing their history can help us qualify the buyer at times, HOWEVER going into an opportunity with a preconceived notion might not be the best approach. Keeping an open mind, a positive attitude, and being prepared for that specific deal is more valuable than anything else.”

I don’t really need or care about having this information for myself if the  broker is able to use it on his or her own  to get me a better sale price for a domain name.

This was discussed on Domain Boardroom, and I received permission to publish this here because I think it might be beneficial to others.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. The brokers could be your worst enemy too as they can use the info to go after your domains.

    They can be a buyer too and low ball the prices or reg domains similar to yours.

    Remember this, they do NOT need to adhere to the “conflict of interest” rule.

    Like Wall Street, their main goal is making money at all cost!

  2. When a broker from a company you don’t do business with contacts you about a domain name from an interested party, it’s usually easy to understand the broker is not not representing you.

    However, when you already do business with a company, you might forget the broker from that company who is contacting you about a domain isn’t representing you, even though he might sound like he is. he could be fielding a phone call on behalf of your domain. But he could also be representing a repeat buyer and trying to find out the least you would take for a domain name but acting like he’s working for you.

    A serious conflict of interest? Probably not, but you have to treat brokers who like end users and not assume anyone is working for you unless there’s an agreement otherwise.

  3. P.S. Just to clarify, I am not referring to “DNS” brokers here at all. I have never had any dealings whatsoever with “DNS” and cannot say anything one way or the other about what they specifically do or don’t do. I imagine that since they are associated with Frank Schilling and his ventures that they are perhaps fairly atypical compared to what I am used to in a broker or intermediary. So when I posted above “Since when do any of them ever actually negotiate?” I was only remarking about my experience of brokers or go-betweens who try to buy in general. I’ve only ever had one do a little negotiating with me, perhaps I could say “one and a half” if you could call another experience actual “negotiating.” As I have posted here before, in my experience they never engage in actual conversation or “negotiation,” something I have always considered to be poor practice. As the buyer most of the time myself, I certainly do things very differently and am not afraid to discuss and “negotiate.”

  4. P.P.S. 🙂 The one instance I would refer to as full single example of actual negotiating behavior by a broker or intermediary, it resulted in me be willing to sell a certain .US for $5K from an unsolicited offer. It wasn’t much discussion, but just a little dash of “negotiation” played a big part.

  5. @Bulls and @John,

    I like to think our relationship with our clients is a relay race marathon rather than a quick sprint. Our platform is transparent, so people like Elliot can see what is going on. If one of our Broker’s decided he did not want to negotiate for some reason, then Elliot could see that. He could also see if we are not looking out for his best interests.

    I think we are pretty relentless in our followup and are more than ready willing and able to negotiate. Give us a try John.

    Here is my phone number 1-800-818-1828 x6261. I will help you setup your account. We can negotiate a commission ;0)

    Jeffrey Gabriel
    Vice President of Sales – DomainNameSales

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