Why I Respond To Every Offer On My Domains

In the world of Domaining low-ball offers are a very common thing. As a Domain Investor you have to live with the fact that many people assume that all domains cost about $10 so any domain in your portfolio must have been purchased for that price. You may have piad $25,000 for one of your domains but get a $50 offer from a guy who is sure he’s giving you a 5x return on your investment. Heck maybe you only paid $2,500 for the domain but you spent months negotiating back and forth with the owner taking up your time and using a skill that you, and very few others possess. Once you buy the domain you immediately get an offer for $5,000 but you turn it down, you know that you have something that is worth much more than you paid.

Buying things that are worth more than you paid happens everywhere, all the time. Best Buy might buy a TV for $500 and then sell it to consumers for $1,200 – if Best Buy has the lowest retail price, people buy their because they think they are getting the best deal. However there are so many other stores to buy the exact same TV that your decision is based entirely on price not on uniqueness or brandability. You don’t think twice about the fact that a store would be making a healthy profit off of what they sell you, you want the best deal.

In the real estate world someone might have purchased a home back in 1995 for $250,000 and now expect $2.5M for the house even though they did nothing to improve it. They might have buyers lining up to buy the place at $2.5M. These buyers don’t care that the owner only paid $250,000 for the home, they care about what the home is worth now.

Let me say this again, These buyers don’t care that the owner only paid $250,000 for the home, they care about what the home is worth now. People have an understanding that physical real estate can dramatically appreciate over time. It wasn’t always that way, but now in society people have become comfortable with that fact. People have not become comfortable with the fact that virtual real estate can dramatically appreciate over time.

This is why I respond to ever offer on my domains, because people, in general, don’t get it yet. So I respond to every offer on my domains because at the end of the day you never know who could be making the offer. A $200 offer on a domain name last year turned into a $5,000 sale, if I had ignored the low-ball offer I wouldn’t have made the sale, and I had an interested buying coming to me which is really the best person to sell to…as long as you can explain to them how digital real estate is like physical real estate.

The key is not to let a low-ball offer offend you. Don’t be naive. Do you really think the guy (or gal) emailing you with the offer reads Domaining news or is plugged-into the domain sales scene? Do you even think they have ever even heard the word “Domaining” before? This industry is brand new, imagine going back in time to the point in our history when homes had only been available publicly for sale for less than 30 years? It takes time to evolve but we can do our part by educating people and finding that buyer who will take the time to understand the true value of domains and why what you are giving them might not be such a ridiculous price given where the domain market is right now.

When I respond to low-ball offers I’ll often share similar domain sales with them as well as a link to DNJournal’s YTD Domain Sales Chart. I can confidently say that DNJournal has helped me close a number of solid sales thanks to the data Ron provides. For most end-users, this is the first time they have ever seen a chart showing domain sales, they had no idea. So next time you get an insultingly low offer on your domain, don’t take it as an insult, just know we’re early and still 99% of people out there have no idea what we do. If you sell domains that means sales needs to be your strong suit and one of the #1 rules of sales is “Always Be Closing” – turning down anyone that has expressed interest in buying something you have is not how you close deals, it’s how you prevent them from ever happening.

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton