How you respond to inbound offers on your domains could help, or hurt you

responding-to-domain-offers

Like most people that have been in the domain industry for a while I’m used to getting offers on my domains. Also, like most people that have been in the industry for a while, I’m also used to the fact that most of these offers are going to be well below market or even wholesale value. Heck, I’ve known people who have seen a legitimate $500,000 and $500 offer come in on the same day (for a name they later sold for over $1M).

So let’s just say, inbound offers can be all over the board. In most cases they tend to be a lot lower than your expectations, which sometimes leads to a response. How you respond here can either help or hurt you in the long run. I’ve seen Domainers respond to offers typically in one of three ways:

  1. No response – this is the most common and you’re doing no harm here
  2. A short and kind response – something like “sorry but your offer is too low, I was looking for something in the $x,xxx – $x,xxx range for this domain, let me know if you can increase your budget?”
  3. An angry, crazy, and just plain mean response – something like “you idiot, your offer is way too low, I would never sell it for that little!”

Here’s the deal. At the end of the day (or at least in many cases) you don’t really know who you’re dealing with. The person on the other side might have a much bigger budget than you thought, or maybe they don’t but they’re just a nice normal person that doesn’t know anything about our industry. Either way I’m a big believer in treating people with respect because I think what goes around comes around.

I also find that people who are unhappy in their own lives tend to take it out on other people who really don’t have anything to do with the problems that person is having. So next time you get a low-ball offer and are ready to fire off a snarky email, think about your life, think about how you would like to be treated, and go with option #1 or #2 above. Honestly, lives to short to take your anger out on other people.

The truth is, people like doing business with people they like. The person making an offer on your domain might not be someone you’ll ever do business with but a friend of theirs could. You never know who is on the other side of an offer but I’ll tell you this, whether the deal works out or not, I’d much rather make a friend than an enemy.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton