Some domains might look like they get a lot of inbound inquiries, but beware of false hope

Every once and a while I buy an expired domain that starts getting a high volume of inbound offers right out of the gate. Years ago I used to get excited, it was like striking gold, I thought to myself, “yes – I found a hot domain that everyone wants.”

Then of course, I’d scratch my head. Are all of these really interested buyers or is something else going on. So far 100% of the time, it has been something else going on and the domain itself is a lemon. Yes – getting inbound offers on a domain is usually a good sign, but a really high level of inbound offers on a non-premium domain can mean something entirely different.

Here’s an example of a domain that continues to get a ton of offers, none of which are from actual interested buyers, the domain name is CCV.me:

domain-offers

Yes, you read that correctly, over the last few years this domain has received 1,612 offers. So you’d think, well some of those had to be interested buyer. Sorry but no.

So what’s going on here? In most of the cases where I’ve seen behavior like this, the domain was usually a website that closed down that is mentioned in articles or as a resource on another website. People then click on the link, land at the site, for some reason don’t read the offer page and instead assume the contact form is related to the old site, and away they go.

There’s a really handy tool that can help you with your research here, it’s called The Wayback Machine and it’s located at Archive.org. It turns out this domain was used for a pretty scammy website that looks like it sold credit card CCV numbers. I bought it because at the time I was interested in 3 character .ME domains, now, not so much.

So if you ever buy an expired domains and see the offers come rolling in, don’t get too excited right away, do some research and make sure they are real offers…otherwise you could waste a lot of time responding to people that have no idea they were making an offer on a domain name in the first place!

Has this ever happened to you before? I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton