I am currently wrapping a long vacation. We traveled to Boston, Ireland and the Adirondicks. This week i am driving my son to college. i hadn’t planned on posting until after Labor day but the email I had received from someone in England was so enjoyable, It must be shared.
I have received emails offers for domains in the past. Some of the offers have been fair, others not so. I thought that I had heard every possible story. Many have told me they are students doing a senior project. A few described themselves as “mom and pop” stores just trying to start a website. A few of these traced back to either venture capital guys, domainers and in one case someone that had just sold his last “mom and pop” store for over 300 million USD.
Here is the email. Please let me know what you think or share some the crazy offers that you have recieved in the past.
“Thanks for getting back to me Larry,
with 14 years experience in web design and many successful domain transfers on behalf of my clients, please allow me to make the following assessment.
Webarchive http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:// .com shows that the ‘ .com’ domain hasn’t had anything but a collection of advertising links on it for 9 years, which I guess is a use of sorts. Those should create some kind of return, unless the registrar that has your domain parked is publishing those links, earning themselves on the ‘click-throughs’ and charging you per year registration fees – in which case its just been a cost for 9 years to you and company?
a. If that is a fair assessment, on that basis, at what price would you be interested in off-loading a negative asset?
b. If I’m wrong, what is its return to you per year and we could work a price of that?
On agreement, how would you like to go about transfering the domain?
Keen get your feedback on this and I hope we can setup a fair deal all round. Feel free to call me during UK business hours.
Regards,
xxxxx xxxxxxxxx + art direction + design”
The ‘negative asset’ comments are funny, but other than that it seems like a respectful opening for a discussion on a price.
Many developers, business owners and those aspiring to launch their own blogs are critical of domainers for hoarding all the good domains and putting up parking pages. Search Twitter for “domain squatting” or “domain squatter/s” or “cybersquatters” for examples. So this sort of inquiry doesn’t surprise me. So how did you respond?
@domainreport – the negative asset i feel was the most outrageous comment ever used by a prospective buyer.
@ leonard – I told him the domain is not for sale. He has since sent 2 offers.
Crazy funny.
Not a great first impression.
No way this guy has enough experience to make a serious offer.
Of course you hope I’m wrong 🙂
Good luck.
i have to agree with you on this one Rob
You can catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar.
@ hugh. I would feel guilty if I passed on to him my “negative assets”. LOL
I don’t see anything wrong with this introductory email.
Sure, it’s a little different, and his expressions are not exactly the same as in North America, but every culture is different.
You can’t be put off that easily if you’re going to deal in a global economy.
LOVE the “offer letters” – so awkward, they’re like first dates! (cheap first dates for the most part!) lol
A recent one I received was from a Cornell Grad student looking for the plural of one that she had – I also have the .co.uk and .ca’s. I was fair at 2k usd for all of them, but she was “a poor student just starting off….” The very next line was about her parents having a place on an exclusive barrier island in Florida in the same county of a summer home I have!!! lol
On a side note, I receive a lot of offers. I am always surprised at how few of them ask for the co.uk / .ca versions (if there – for the .com version) as well as don’t have their own versions for their core businesses. I travel enough around the world to see the importance of those extensions to their respective countries/users. Is $10 bucks too much for people to pay to lock in a country and forward the name “home?”……I am talking about several companies looking to build a “web” presence and are not localized entities… -it’s just another point where I know I’m about to get – -“Oh, I’m just starting out and am still on Ramen noodles” reply. lol
I would personally be very mad to receive an email like that. He basically assumes that the domain owner is an idiot.
I just love these “My Dog Ate My Homework” excuses for lowball offers. Maybe somebody should start a “funny offer letters” thread in one of the forums.
One of my favorites was from a “hippy chick” that was living in a van. She wanted to buy a $xxx,xxx domain for $xx, and was going to paint the domain name on the side of her van and drive around the country. It makes you wonder, if she is living in a van, where would she find money to host the site, and how was she connecting to the net?
So I offered to sell her a different domain that might be more appropriate: MarijuanaArrests.com. LMAO.
Obviously this introduction clearly identifies the misunderstanding of domain age and the value of being indexed for 9 years. Regardless of a parked page or not, a domain that has an index of 5 plus years has a TRUST rank that could be worth millions.
It is a novel opening approach.
I am surprised, however, that he did not open by asking YOU to pay HIM to take that negative asset off your hands.
chuck,
i never thought of that. I’m amazed he didn’t.
I had one of these recently – someone who pretended to be a small non profit organization, but later turned out to be a large domaining company. I’m still not sure why they wanted the domain though, as it’s parked and there is not much type in traffic.
@ Michael .. had this happen to me also..
dom parking companys have middlemen to chase
domains / grab them if possible ..while they
have a offer standing from a prospective buyer
or corporate client.
WAKE UP!!
Well, I’d say that I would agree that for some non-domaining aware people, they would think of a parked domain as a negative asset specially that it has been parked for around 9 years.
However, if they ask you to transfer your domain to them without even mentioning compensation, haha, you can reply: “you’re so funny. Nice try! ;)”
Buy Larry.com, you have enough money :), plus odds are that you can always resell it should you change your mind.