I want to share a piece of advice for those of you who opportunistically acquire good domain names privately. Check out whether or not the domain owner has other domain names of interest before sending your inquiry.
Let’s say you are in the market for good one word .com domain names and think Exclaim.com would be great for your portfolio (my company owns the name). Â Before inquiring, it might be good to have a short list of other domain names the owner has so you can inquire about those, too.
When you are buying domain names on a one off basis, the domain name might be priced much higher than if you are buying a package of domain names. In addition, by inquiring about more than one domain name, the domain owner will likely be able to tell that you are a domain investor rather than someone who is planning to build “the next big thing.”
I regularly use tools like DomainIQ, Whoisology, and DomainTools to identify the domain names in a particular portfolio. I find it advantageous to know this information before inquiring because that insight can help you learn more about the owner of the domain name. Any insight can be helpful in a negotiation.
The tools I mentioned above aren’t free to use for the most part. I find the costs to be fair though, especially when I am buying very expensive domain names and the insight can help with my negotiations.
Before you inquire about a domain name, or even in the midst of a negotiation, it can be helpful to see what else the domain owner has.
Solid advice, Elliot. Another benefit to knowing what other domains the owner has is that this may give you a sense of whether the owner is a domainer or end user and how domain-savvy (or not) they are. The more you know about the person you hope to do business with the easier it will be to work out a deal. The human element is very important in these negotiations, which is something that’s often overlooked.
Now that was some business advice gold there, as in BusinessAdvice.Gold.
Or better yet, that was some Elliot Silver gold there, as in ElliotSilver.Gold. 😀
Interesting enough is that you can put a domain name in whoisology and most of the time it will show owners email address when other services like who.is does not. Also use the history feature in who.is to see who they bought the name from. You may know them and can find out what the seller bought it for…
If you found out I was able to buy a million dollar domain for $1000, you’re still not getting it for $10,000 and anything less than a fair price. A $20 million Beverly Hills estate is still worth $20m even if the seller was able to get it for $50,000.
Great advice Elliott…
It makes sense that if someone owns a domain
you are interested in – chances are high
they own others that will ALSO be of interest
to you — maybe something even more spectacular
than the name that originally brought them into
your crosshairs…
~Patricia Kaehler – Ohio USA – DomainBELL
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