As you may know, I own several highly valuable domain names. I’ve been investing in domain names for a while now and have built a quality portfolio by now. I generally receive offers a few times a month from parties interested in purchasing one of my domains. Being an avid “domainer” myself I know exactly how the domain acquisition process normally works. I’ve purchased several highly valuable domain names directly from their owners simply by contacting them and asking for their asking price. Often times this works, but, occasionally the would be seller wants to play hardball. Today I had an interesting situation…

Today I exchanged some emails with somebody who was interested in buying one of my better domain names. This person initially asked for my asking price to which I responded with basically “Make an offer and we’ll talk”. Every once in a while you will find that there will always be those people who do not understand the value of domain names at all. The response was an offer of $100. That’s right. One hundred dollars. I almost didn’t even bother responding, but in this industry you never know just how cheap the big players will try to buy a domain for. I’ve seen offers of $100 turn into tens of thousands of dollars pretty quickly so I decided to play the game a bit longer.

I explained that the domain was worth a significant amount of money and that I could hardly begin to consider selling it for $100. I received a new offer of $350. This time I came very close to deleting the email and getting back to what I was doing but just out of curiosity I sent another reply. This time I gave a ballpark price range that I would be looking for at the very minimum.

I received a quick response. Interestingly enough, this time around this person accused me of being childish for asking for such an amount. Apparently I was not being nice by refusing to sell what I consider to be one of my best domains for the equivalent of a few tanks of gas. Obviously it turned out that I had wasted my time by now.

What’s the moral of the story? Well, the first rule of domain acquisitions is that there really are no standards. You can play by any rules and of course if you are the seller you get to make the rules. The important thing is to make sure that you have a good understanding and knowledge of the value of your domain names before even considering a sale. When it comes down to it though, as the seller you do have the right to turn down any offer no matter how high it is. If somebody truly wants it they will raise their offer. I know this based on my own personal experiences as both the buyer and the seller.