Five Tips for Winning Domain Sale Negotiations

You just received an email from someone who is interested in buying a domain name you own. Maybe this is your chance to make big bucks!
Before you respond, make sure you know how to handle these negotiations. Be smart, and you can walk away with money in your pocket.
Here are 5 tips when negotiating to sell a domain name.

1. Try to find out who the buyer is

Who can afford to pay more for your domain name, a big company or some guy in his basement? Before jumping on the offer, it’s important to research the person who contacted you and learn more about them. Note that in some cases this will be more difficult because large companies tend to use brokers or free email accounts and pseudonyms to inquire about buying domain names.

2. Don’t fall for the “poor college student trick”

Big companies know you’ll try to charge them a lot for domain names, so sometimes they send an email with a story designed for you to take pity. “I’m a college student working on a project and I think this domain name will be good for it, but I don’t have much money.” Oh, if I had a dollar for every time someone said this to me in an email. Don’t fall for it. Do your research and ask questions.

3. Come up with your bottom line price

I had a friend who used a domain name for her small business. A buyer came along and asked about buying it. I asked her what the minimum price was that would make it worth switching to another domain name, and she said $10,000. By setting this minimum price, she was able to hold strong when the buyer tried to negotiate. They offered a low number and she said $10,000. They raised their price and she held firm, explaining that this was her minimum number. After a couple more offers they finally met her price.

4. Ask the buyer to name a price first

There’s a bit of debate about this. Do you name a price to set an “anchor,” or do you ask the buyer to suggest a price? The benefit of asking them to throw out a price is that it might be more than what you were going to request! If someone contacts you out of the blue about buying one of your domain names, it’s fair to try to get them to suggest a price and then negotiate up from there.

5. Remember: “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered”

If you get too greedy, it’s possible that the potential buyer will get fed up and decide not to buy your domain. So negotiate wisely. Of course, you want to negotiate for as much as you can get. But if this person doesn’t buy your domain name, how long will it be before you get another offer on the domain?

With these five tips, we hope you have success negotiating the sale of a domain name. If our tips work for you, let us know!
Have an idea for a domain name that might be worth a lot of money? Register it on Namecheap!

Andrew Allemann is editor of Domain Name Wire, the longest-running blog covering the business of domain names. Domain Name Wire has covered the business of domain name investing for over ten years.