That's perfectly honorable in my opinion Justin. I never have a problem getting an offer of 300-400 on a $1000 domain and understand that a domainer needs to leave room for a mark-up and a margin for any error they made in estimating a domain's value... Offering 300-400 on an LLL.com on the other hand is plain stupid and one is truly in la-la land if they think they're going to get any LLL.coms for prices in that range any time soon (hint: spam iReit, not me!)
When someone offers $500 on an LLL.com... Seriously, I feel like making a website about such idiots and shaming their actions. That isn't looking for a good deal -- everyone who has more than a couple LLL.coms has been spammed to death already... All it's doing is wasting everyone's time and showing how much of a rookie the person sending the message is.
I missed an important message a few days ago because I had so many spam offers... Frustrating is an understatement.
It's one thing to decide you'd like a cheap LLL.com (or any kind of domain for that matter), but to spam hundreds (and/or thousands) of owners is spam and I think I'll start reporting these people's emails to spam lists so their emails start getting blocked... It's just gotten to the point where I'm fed up -- and I know there are people who have 100x the total domain value I do, so I can't even begin to imagine how bad they have it if they use public whois. I don't want to use private whois -- I don't trust private whois (after incidents like Registerfly), and in all honesty, why should I be forced into paying for something I don't want just so a few (albeit growing number of) spammers can't try to rip me and a thousand other domainers like me off?
I get the mails as well.
But I know this is a business which i take quite seriously now. In any business you have to face some annoyances, which I choose to take as a part of the game :\
Nothing to be hassled about really. In fact if a domain of mine were getting a lot of offers (even if they were lowballs), it would only make me happy coz they re-enforce the fact that this domain has potential, and people want it.
If it were a perfect environment where everyone offered prices / range a seller had in mind, this business would be as saturated and difficult as any other. The only reason this business is doing well is because some speculate a value of a domain more apropriately from others; they buy low and sell high. If it were a perfect math, small time domainers would be out of business very soon, very fast.
In any case, back in the wild wild west, there were steals to be have in the LLL market, old folks selling their names for bargains. Ever since DRT though, thats long gone.
Its pure economics really, its been saturated out. IMO Reece the amount of offers will start going down as people realize that its not working.
1 day of work for $XXXX profit back before DRT? Economics dictates "spam" "spam". I use to send emails back in the day and NEVER ONCE did I low ball. I always asked how much for a name. Usually instantly bought it when they named their price.
I've stopped for a while now, due to some people thinking its not ethical, but I personally consider myself someone who was interested in obtaining LLL.com at a fair market price.
Too much hassle to individually email each owner, easiest way if you wanted to buy one was to email them all.
I hope you're right Sam, I feel the same way about it.
I've never sent emails myself (did cross my mind a few times in years passed), however how you were doing it in the past - asking the owner to name a price seems to me to make a lot more sense then sending a lowball offer which may offend an owner who might otherwise have sold low by "domainer standards". I'd think someone would make much more money sending out emails offering today in example $12,000 or so on premium LLL.coms then they ever will sending out offers of $500, but what do I know
I really dont have a problem with this technique and as You've pointed out, its done to death. Anyone who has DRT would be foolish at this point to use the software to email out all the LLL.com owners, as we've all recieved those emails about a million times.
Well it's domainers that are doing it, thats for sure. They probably are members here and maybe they even posted in this thread!
Those that do this must realize that probably just about all 3 letter and brandable words (.com) are either owned by domainers who know their value or by companies, who also know their value.
This may have worked 3-5 years ago and I'm sure some domain owners that didn't know better got screwed, but the jig is up boys. It's not a unique idea and your not really smart. To me it's the equivelent of selling crap to take advantage of the elderly who do not know better.
