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Is the domain name price really ridiculous?

I got a reply from an interested buyer of one of my domain names saying that the price I quoted was ridiculous.

Is the quoted domain name price really ridiculous? How does the buyer know?

Does he/she know more than the domain name owner? Unless the buyer is working with domain names everyday then no.

And even if you have experience in the domain name business then you don’t know enough about a certain domain name. I recently refused to comment on an offer a fellow domainer received because I simply didn’t have enough data to do so.

So you think the price is ridiculous? Ridiculous compared to what?

Are you comparing a domain name registered in 1997 with a free to register domain name at GoDaddy?

Is the price ridiculous compared to your budget? To what you want to use it for?

Anyway here are 5 tips to potential buyers:

  1. Domain names don’t cost $10. Period. That is the renewal rate, if you have a .com, .org, .info and a few other extensions. These days some new extensions are renewed for $50, $200 or even $3,000 or more per year. An simple escrow transaction that protects the seller and the buyer in an acquisition has a cost of several hundred dollars up to thousands depending on the domain price. Add to that wire transfer fees, currency conversion and other related expenses and you get idea of a domain name transaction cost.
  2. Learn how much pre-owned domain names are selling for. Google it. People research socks before buying them yet they don’t research domain names. Google it before wasting people’s time.
  3. If you want a domain name for your butterfly collection and have $10 buy a free domain name. Don’t go around bothering the owner of butterfly.com. You wouldn’t like people knocking on your door offering you $100 for your home, would you?
  4. Domain name owners don’t really care if you want to create a website for a personal blog or for a school project. They have a set price that is suitable for a company and will not adjust it because of you. They won’t sell their $50,000 domain name to you for $25. They are not charity.
  5. You don’t know more about the domain name and the domain name owner’s business. Don’t think that you do.
    Do you know how much revenue the domain name you want to buy is making for the owner just sitting there? No? Do you know how much the owner paid for it? Most often than not the owner has paid 4, 5 or even 6 figures to purchase it. Actually it doesn’t really matter what a domain was bought for but its value is today. You can’t expect to buy a domain registered in 1994 for $30 just because that is the price the owner paid. Sorry but your uneducated feeling/guess/hunch or however you came up with an arbitrary price that feels “right” to you has noting to do with real value, reality, past comparable domain name sales and business potential.

I inquired about a 1 word .com last week and the owner told me he had paid more than what I was offering him which was $15,000. I searched online and found out that he had paid $60k in an auction in 2006! That shows that I even someone that works with domain names daily for the past 15 years can’t know everything and I certainly don’t know more than a domain name owner.

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About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

25 comments

  1. I just told a “buyer” his offer is akin to stepping into a BMW dealership with a budget for a Toyota.

    I don’t mind “buyers” stating their budget doesn’t stretch far, as long as they don’t have the expectation for me to come down to their price level.

  2. 2017 is the year of the lowballers for sure. I have spent more time ignoring lowballers, than ever before. I blame those stupid promo priced gtld’s that then ramp up 20-50X on renewal

  3. This can be attributed to the lack of awareness about the domain names. Which is usual. Well, you’ve written some nice points. Your article can act as a reference point to the lowballers.

  4. If you don’t have absolute premium names you will continue to get these offers.

  5. I saw a job ad for a SEO PPC manager in Palm Beach County. The ad mentioned the person in this position would manage a $250 thousand MONTHLY PPC budget. Imagine a company I had never heard (medical space) with a $3 million annual PPC budget and yet they were operating on what appeared to be a reg fe e .COM domain. Yet that seems to be how many developers and end users think. It is normal to pay an attorney a few dollars an hour and five figures monthly for their services. It is normal to pay an IT professional $100+ an hour or five figures for a project. It is normal to spend five figures on a business trip. But expectations are that a domain should cost $xx (despite the fact that a domain represents the investor’s time and expense holding an inventory of quality domains useful for a promoting a business).

  6. Davnderpal S Bhatia

    Something is really ridiculous here and that is the buyer’s attitude.

  7. Some understand, most don’t. Nice list though…

  8. Domaining is Great

    Great subject Konstantinos!

    I’m shocked. People research socks ? ?

    All this chat just made your domain be even more valuable.

    I say: ask for more !

  9. 3 days ago I received a counter offer on my outbound mails
    were I was asking $1400 USD for a domain name
    the counter offer was $14 USD

    the domain sold yesterday

    the new owner read the mail only after 3 days
    and 4 minutes after he opened the email
    he send the $1400 USD straight to my paypal

    so you need not only to own the right domain
    you need the right buyer too

  10. I have had low ball offers turn into big sales, so I always recommend replying to ALL offers.
    Many times people will low-ball you to just simply feel you out and find out WHO owns the domain, and latter on make a serious offer.
    Unless you own a super premium one word com etc there should not be a reason WHY you should not reply to a low-ball offer…
    That’s my 2 cents.

  11. Very well said and agreed to your points.

  12. Some people will never get it.

  13. Mr. K. Zournas and the watchers; I think I have couple of single word; all decent offer are welcome. And don’t worry about how much I paid for it; it will just raise the price.

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