From $25, To $250, To $2,500 – Why Sticking To Your Guns Can Pay Off

You never know who might be making an offer on your domains, which is why you should never ignore an offer, not matter how small it might be in the beginning. I spoke about this on a panel at WEBfest and can’t emphasize it enough, don’t ignore offers, and definitely don’t insult the person making the offer. Yes, you may know that their offer is too low but telling them to get lost or ignoring their email definitely won’t do anything for you. Another great example of this happened last week so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

I received a $25 offer on a one-word .TV name I own. Like I said, never ignore an offer. So I responded back letting the interested buyer know that his price was too low but that I would consider higher offers. Notice I didn’t say, “You can’t afford this name find another” or anything that might turn the buyer away. At the same time you don’t want to throw out a price yourself, you want the buyer to come up with the price themselves because you never know what increments they will use to get to their next price point.

In this case, the next offer came at $250. Still too low and I let the interested buyer know that once again their offer was still too low. At this point they responded by asking me to throw out a price. I refused. As you probably know by now, I never like to throw out a number until I absolutely have to in order to close the deal. In my mind I had pegged this name at around $1,500. A day went by and I thought I might have lost them, then they came back in $2,000, at this point I responded back “$2,500 and it’s yours,” and it was a done deal.

I paid $150 for the name so not a bad return, still only $2,500 so nothing to write home about. What it does illustrate is another situation where many investors would tell the buyer to take a hike when really the potential to sell to them even above your expected price point might be just within your reach. Businesses don’t do business with businesses, people do business with people. Hear out any offer, no matter how small, and be courteous every step of the way and you might just find that a low offer can turn into a nice sale.

As always I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share your own stories of low offers that turned into solid sales, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton