So I tried to be nice by responding to a random domain sales email email, accidentally hit “reply all” and set off a chain reaction

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I get emails all the time from people saying, “I have <something>.com for sale, would you like to buy it?” Most of the time the domain is complete junk, often something that was registered a week or two ago that most people wouldn’t even pay reg fee for…but sometimes a good name come up so I try to keep an open mind.

At the end of the day, I do like to respond to these emails because I only get one or two a week, and it only takes 5-10 seconds to respond and say, “no thanks.”

When I landed in San Francisco after flying back from Tokyo I was going through my email, and in a bit of a daze after the flight, saw an email with a domain for sale, told the seller I wasn’t interested…and then the emails started coming in. One after another, here’s what my inbox quickly filled up with:

That’s when I realized that the seller had emailed me and about 150 other people…and put us all as the recipient, no cc or BCC, we were all on the same email. When I hit what I thought was reply, in my daze after flying across the Pacific I hit reply all and well, my inbox quickly filled up with auto-responders and delivery failure messages like the one above 🤦‍♂️

The moral of the story – well I think there’s two:

  1. Don’t start doing emails the second you land after flying halfway across the world.
  2. Make sure you don’t hit reply all when responding to an email because you might accidentally email 150 people

All that being said, I still like responding to emails from people trying to sell me domain names. While I might not like the domain they’re emailing about now, or a month from now, you never know when someone’s going to stumble across a domain that might be a perfect fit for your portfolio.

While some people get frustrated with people who mass email, and while I don’t think it’s a great idea myself, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt – they’re trying. Yes, I think it’s not great form to email 150 people at once but at the same time, if you’re a new domain investor and you’re just trying to figure things out, I get it, and hey – I appreciate the hustle.

Of course that’s just my take. I’m interested to hear if any of you respond to domain sales emails like this, and if so, have you ever been foolish enough to accidentally hit “reply all” – I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton