“You Should be Happy That I am Willing to Sell”

When I quote a price for a domain name and the prospective buyer replies to me, more often than not, there is a comment about the price being too high. Whether this is true or not, the buyer is obviously looking to get a better deal than the price I’ve set.

A friend of mine shared a response he either gave or heard about someone else giving (I can’t remember which), and I think it’s great. “You should be happy that I am willing to sell the domain name” or “you should be happy this domain name is even for sale” is something that can be said the next time a buyer tells you that your asking price is too high.

There are tens of millions of domain names registered. Many of these domain names are developed websites or full blown businesses. Others are owned by people or companies who intend to use the domain names for something. I would guesstimate that the majority of domain names that are currently registered are not actively listed for sale. A prospective buyer could easily want to buy a domain name that isn’t for sale for any price, and he would need to come up with an alternative domain name for his idea. Luckily, he or she wants your domain name, and you are willing to sell it for the right price.

The next time someone complains about your pricing, you can remind them how they should appreciate the fact that you are at least willing to sell your domain name. Had they chosen a different domain name, it might be significantly worse than your domain name, or ย it might not even be available to purchase at any price.

Letting the prospect know it could just as easily not be for sale might put things (like your price) into perspective for them.

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

34 COMMENTS

    • I have to say that I agree with that.

      If someone wants to sell their domain name then they need to be realistic about their domain name price or else no one will buy it.

      I think the reason why there are some crazy prices is because everyone hopes to make millions off a domain name and strike it lucky like the guy down the road who owned an ice cream shop and sold .whatever for 7 skillion dollars.

      It just doesn’t work like that in the real world. If you can sell your name for a few hundred bucks and find a buyer then that’s pretty good ROI considering what we pay for domain names.

  1. Not to mention the amount of defensive registrations that are out there. Domainers provide a very important secondary market and without this secondary market many of these names would not be available at any price.

  2. *

    I find that it’s best not to respond to such statements at all.

    Perhaps it “feels good” to respond, but I doubt if it results in too many sales.

    Instead, tell it and yell it to the computer screen.

    ๐Ÿ™‚

    *

    • Forgot to add, it’s very tempting for me to reply with a:

      “You should be glad this domain is not owned by Rick Schwartz or Michael Berkins or the price would be 5-10x higher.” But it’s a waste of time and keystrokes to even bother.

  3. I think it is more of a gut feeling and way of looking at our domain assets.

    I wish all of us, especially myself, took this view.

  4. I will agree with Mis Domainer. Sometimes what you say could be read/understood differently from what you have in mind.

    I remember an enquiry I got for my domain name not too long ago. The buyer wanted to know if I would sell.

    I replied that yes I will sell if his offer was very good.

    And then I asked. How much was he willing to pay.

    He didn’t reply till date. Maybe because I highlighted some keywords to indicate my level of seriousness, I can’t say.

    Personally, I didn’t feel those words were some how arrogant but then I felt maybe what may no seem to mean anything at where I come from could me a negative perception from where the end user came from. I am from Africa and he is from US, or so it seemed.

  5. Tell them to try buying a domain name from Google. Or try buying a domain name from any major corporation. Even assuming you can find the right contact. Nobody at the corporation really benefits so there is little motivation to cooperate. And of course I’m talking about domains that aren’t even being used (not ones in use obviously).

    In general what I have found is the best people to deal with when buying a domain (other than a clueless owner who doesn’t know the value) is someone who owns a great quantity of names and is realistic as far as what they can get for the domain. They are in the business of selling and they know they could sit on the name forever until another willing buyer comes along. So they tend to be somewhat reasonable in prices they quote and/or negotiations.

  6. I pretty much agree with the majority on this one, however I think it depends on the individual your negotiating with, I try to be as professional as I can but there are times when it strays away professional where I’m compelled to communicate with the buyer on a lower or different level..

    It’s like living in between two neighbors, the one on the right is intelligent and votes Republican, the one on the left is as dumb as a bucket of rocks and votes Democrat, this is the guy I would say; “you should be happy I’m willing to sell”

    • Stirring up a pot of soup with a post like that is obviously what you want, Raider, and I’m glad to serve it up. You can have blue corn or tomato.

      It’s much better to be a nonpartisan who is an independent minded free thinking person and non-ideologue. Partisans are captive ideologues who are slaves to their party line and party ideology. They are not free. Independent minded people are free to embrace the best of both, decry the worst, and pursue additional alternatives.

      Welcome to America, the Land of the Free and place of opportunity, where you can have any flavor you like, as long as it’s only blueberry or cherry for breakfast and dessert, or blue corn or tomato for lunch and dinner.

    • I’ll try to make this my last post on the subject, I understand your point John, but I don’t consider myself a slave to any party, over the last 5 years I see myself more as a Libertarian than a Repub, voicing my outrage over a President who over steps congress, Governing the country dictatorially by the stroke of pen, not to mention all the corruption that makes Watergate look like a liquor store break-in.. I’ll stop it there, all it takes is one poster to get me going and I cant stop.

      My sincerest apologies to Elliot for injecting politics into the discussion,

    • Well, Raider, those who profess to be “Libertarians” over the years truly seem to me to be only extreme ideologues as well. Although the idea of freedom and independence would be fundamental to any term based on the word “liberty,” they do not appear to be intellectually free at all either. Some of them are also more like merely super hard-core Republicans in disguise. I even know someone who claimed to be a Libertarian for a long time but sure sounded like a Republican, and eventually made the switch from L to R. In general they tend to be simply extremely anti-government and to virtually deify and worship their idea of “property” rights. As far as I have seen so far, this ideology of theirs leads them to adopt an extremely misguided and socially harmful position on issues such as Net neutrality.

      Don’t misunderstand me though. Despite everything I’ve written you might find that I agree with you on various issues more often that you would have thought. However, being completely independent I may be found to agree with and support issues on each side of the aisle, along with some besides and in between.

  7. To all,

    your ability to respond as written above… is all dictated by one thing. “Top Shelf Domains” “Tier One”.

    Otherwise, take a deep breath of fresh air. The air we all breathe

  8. *

    Raider, I would beg to differ with you politically, but I would never call you stupid on an internet post.

    Please offer me and other Democrats the same courtesy.

    Perhaps you would do well to keep your politics out of this kind of discussion and stay on topic. I believe there is a Namepros thread where you can wear your politics.

    Thank you for your future consideration.

    *

    • Do forgive me, I posted that extra bit after I looked at the debt clock, $17.6 Trillion, $55,000 each of my kids owe the Government and they haven’t finished High School yet.. NOT all Democrats are idiots, just MOST of them, the fact Obama got re-elected is proof of that.

    • And of course ‘you are the only one’ that believes it all happened in the last 5 years. ‘Try’ to keep on subject, ‘if’ you can.

      (apologies Elliot.)

  9. *

    Raider,

    You’re just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

    Liberals don’t need your insulting apology. I voted for PRESIDENT Obama, and I would do it again.

    Quit before you’re even further behind.

    ๐Ÿ™‚

    *

  10. I would suggest some of you who have chosen one of the two “allowed” sides of the aisle should really channel all this energy into an immeasurably far more important but neglected thread on the DomainInvesting.com homepage immediately preceding this one, but unfortunately one can already more or less predict exactly where the R’s and the D’s will stand on Net Neutrality and the related issue of Internet oversight I raised in my one of only two posts present there now. Sad. But at least they both may do something good for each issue in their own way.

    https://www.domaininvesting.com/netneutrality-com-website-launched-namecheap/

    • Anyone who throws their support for a crook deserves much worse IMO.. Aside from all the illegal executive orders, SCOTUS has ruled against him 13 times since 2012, all ruling were unanimous, look it up.. Maybe you don’t know, maybe your one of those low information voters who gets their news from ‘The View’ I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time.

    • looking for a crook try bush and cheney

      looking for a crooked court try SCOTUS

      is it possible to impeach a supreme court justice

      corporations are people, sounds like the sham we had in northern ireland where business got a vote as well as their owner, and guess who owned the businesses.

      that was eventually ruled undemocratic, just like america is now where you get to vote for who the rich and connected choose to put on the ballot.

      republican or democratic, you chose but they are both owned.

  11. “The price is too high” is a common objection when selling anything. A professional response would be to agree with the person that the price is “high” (not “too high”) and then transition to the value proposition.

    “Thanks for your interest in DumbAsABucketOfRocks.Democrat. I agree with you, domain names are selling for very high prices these days. Still, with the internet growing so fast, it looks like the prices will only go up from here.

    DumbAsABucketOfRocks.Democrat is a really important domain because it is an exact match for the Democrat brand. We get quite a lot of interest in this domain from Republicans and even some interest from democrats who are perhaps not smart enough to realize it’s an insult.

    Given the high value of this domain, would it make sense for us to explore setting this up on a lease to own plan?”

  12. LMAO! Nice one William… However I think I would refrain from offering the lease option until negotiations have been exhausted.

    Oddly, soon after I made my last post here, I received a voodoo inquiry for a 3 word dot com, offer was $100, I replied back with $3K, he replies back with $1K, then after more research I found his twitter tweets, he’s quite the conservative, Christian, very Family oriented and active in charities for Cancer research, I usually don’t discount my names by more than 20%, but for this guy I plan to making an exception.

    Wont have to use the happy line for this one, The emphasis on value for dot coms is the biggest selling point IMO, forget the name itself because the user now has hundreds of GTLD’s to choose from, Selling them on the dot com is key, it’s the reason the name is priced so high, So if you can educate them and make a comparison to the lessor TLD’s or GTLD’s which is even better, it makes it harder for them to argue your domain is overpriced.

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