domains Would you like to charge a domain inquiry fee?

Recons.Com said:

anchors the price expectation at a low point.

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Silentptnr said:

I dont like letting leads get away. Period.

I'll even try to offer alternative names that are similar but priced lower. Sometimes that can get them to take the one they want and pay up.

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Silentptnr said:

Let's ask some bigger domain investors how they would vote on whethere an upfront fee just to make an offer would be advisable...

@EJS @Kate Buckley @Rick Schwartz @Mike Mann @Domain Shane @MediaOptions @Bill Sweetman @AbdulBasit.com

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Domain Shane said:

This is my opinion only. For a portfolio of the quality of mine I think it would be a mistake. I have ZERO problems handling the inquiries that come in. Lowballers don't bother me one bit. They take a total of 5 minutes of my time per day to weed out. And what I lose in time I more than get back in a morning laugh. Someone like Nat needs to do it because of sheer volume and the quality of his names gets him thousands of inquiries a day. This insures they are serious. I would do the same thing. I actually do do the same thing with my nursery. We have the best landscaping company in town but we run one crew. A crew that has been the same crew for 25 years and a designer that has been there longer. We are booked months in advance and have never gone one day without work to do for 25 years straight. We charge $100 to give a bid. That's right, I charge just to give you a chance to work with us. To give us money. We do it because we get so many people that are just kick tires and have no idea what it costs to do good work. When we started charging a fee our sell through rate went up to 80% because we eliminated people that weren't serious. I'm sure we lost a few customers that would have gone with us but again, we are always booked so this gave us more time to spend on the people that did go with us. And we reimburse the $100 if they do.

So in short, if your quality is so good people are rewarded for working with you then you should and it helps, but it hurts you if you need more customers. 99% of people in this forum are in the latter whether they know it or not

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Domain Shane said:

This is my opinion only. For a portfolio of the quality of mine I think it would be a mistake. I have ZERO problems handling the inquiries that come in. Lowballers don't bother me one bit. They take a total of 5 minutes of my time per day to weed out. And what I lose in time I more than get back in a morning laugh. Someone like Nat needs to do it because of sheer volume and the quality of his names gets him thousands of inquiries a day. This insures they are serious. I would do the same thing. I actually do do the same thing with my nursery. We have the best landscaping company in town but we run one crew. A crew that has been the same crew for 25 years and a designer that has been there longer. We are booked months in advance and have never gone one day without work to do for 25 years straight. We charge $100 to give a bid. That's right, I charge just to give you a chance to work with us. To give us money. We do it because we get so many people that are just kick tires and have no idea what it costs to do good work. When we started charging a fee our sell through rate went up to 80% because we eliminated people that weren't serious. I'm sure we lost a few customers that would have gone with us but again, we are always booked so this gave us more time to spend on the people that did go with us. And we reimburse the $100 if they do.

So in short, if your quality is so good people are rewarded for working with you then you should and it helps, but it hurts you if you need more customers. 99% of people in this forum are in the latter whether they know it or not

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Domain Shane said:

This is my opinion only. For a portfolio of the quality of mine I think it would be a mistake. I have ZERO problems handling the inquiries that come in. Lowballers don't bother me one bit. They take a total of 5 minutes of my time per day to weed out. And what I lose in time I more than get back in a morning laugh. Someone like Nat needs to do it because of sheer volume and the quality of his names gets him thousands of inquiries a day. This insures they are serious. I would do the same thing. I actually do do the same thing with my nursery. We have the best landscaping company in town but we run one crew. A crew that has been the same crew for 25 years and a designer that has been there longer. We are booked months in advance and have never gone one day without work to do for 25 years straight. We charge $100 to give a bid. That's right, I charge just to give you a chance to work with us. To give us money. We do it because we get so many people that are just kick tires and have no idea what it costs to do good work. When we started charging a fee our sell through rate went up to 80% because we eliminated people that weren't serious. I'm sure we lost a few customers that would have gone with us but again, we are always booked so this gave us more time to spend on the people that did go with us. And we reimburse the $100 if they do.

So in short, if your quality is so good people are rewarded for working with you then you should and it helps, but it hurts you if you need more customers. 99% of people in this forum are in the latter whether they know it or not

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• Hundreds of Thousands of Inquiries: We have received hundreds of thousands of inquiries regarding our sites over the last 20 years, the vast majority of which go unread, let alone get answered. These inquiries include expressions of interests to purchase our names, to propose joint ventures, to sell us advertising, and to purchase advertising. A good portion are illegitimate and many are automatically generated by spammer scripts targeting all holders of key dictionary word based domain names. We have been unable to sort through the vast majority of these inquiries.
• A Solution: WebMagic® is building a system to bring important proposals to our attention and to allow us to focus our energies on contacts that are likely legitimate, rather than getting buried with spam, bulk script generated requests, ‘how much do you want’ messages, fishing attempts, and other none-directed or dubious email. This system will likely require a modest submission fee to bring proposals to light– a fee which will denote a level of commitment on your part. Proposals may now be submitted through our Domain Proposal Submission Form.
  
  Fishing email such as ‘How much do you want?’, ‘Is it for sale?’, and ‘I would like to give the owner a proposal and want to confirm contact information and your interest level’ messages are automatically deleted at our offices.

equity78 said:

The other thing the article was never about is this advisable? And it doesn't matter if Rick Schwartz would do it or Mike Mann would do it? It was about would you like the option? George K was surprised Efty had not implemented it already.

Lowballers and negotiating is not what the two entities mentioned use it for. Hell Web Magic is charging the fee if you want to give them money by advertising on one of their websites. They are basically saying, it's going to cost you to communicate, nothing about being a lowballer. Just like @Domain Shane wrote about his landscaping crew.

The line often most quoted from Wall Street is "Greed is Good" I have said for 32 years the best line and most pertinent line is, "Rich enough not to waste time."

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Domain Shane said:

This is my opinion only. For a portfolio of the quality of mine I think it would be a mistake. I have ZERO problems handling the inquiries that come in. Lowballers don't bother me one bit. They take a total of 5 minutes of my time per day to weed out. And what I lose in time I more than get back in a morning laugh. Someone like Nat needs to do it because of sheer volume and the quality of his names gets him thousands of inquiries a day. This insures they are serious. I would do the same thing. I actually do do the same thing with my nursery. We have the best landscaping company in town but we run one crew. A crew that has been the same crew for 25 years and a designer that has been there longer. We are booked months in advance and have never gone one day without work to do for 25 years straight. We charge $100 to give a bid. That's right, I charge just to give you a chance to work with us. To give us money. We do it because we get so many people that are just kick tires and have no idea what it costs to do good work. When we started charging a fee our sell through rate went up to 80% because we eliminated people that weren't serious. I'm sure we lost a few customers that would have gone with us but again, we are always booked so this gave us more time to spend on the people that did go with us. And we reimburse the $100 if they do.

So in short, if your quality is so good people are rewarded for working with you then you should and it helps, but it hurts you if you need more customers. 99% of people in this forum are in the latter whether they know it or not

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Keith said:

Giving a bid for landscaping or in other words, making a house call, is not remotely the same as reading/deleting an email. Charging for household maintenance and repairs is a standard practice.

If you are successful with domains to the point where you get “thousands“ of inquiries a day, which I doubt Nat does, then it is your sole job. At that point, work a little to sift through emails and get deals done for Christ sake.

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Keith said:

Giving a bid for landscaping or in other words, making a house call, is not remotely the same as reading/deleting an email. Charging for household maintenance and repairs is a standard practice.

If you are successful with domains to the point where you get “thousands“ of inquiries a day, which I doubt Nat does, then it is your sole job. At that point, work a little to sift through emails and get deals done for Christ sake.

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Domain Shane said:

You're not reading this correctly. How many times have you paid to get a quote on a service? Do you pay to find out how much it cost to fix your car? Not to fix it but to find out how much it cost to fix. Do you pay to find out how much it cost to clean your home? Not to clean it but to find out what they will charge.

THAT is what I do. I make you pay to find out what it cost. That is why it is the perfect example. You are putting in a fee for something that should be free to vet your customers......Because your product or in this case, service, is that good.

And please read Raymond's posts. We're not talking about limiting spam. We're talking about making the quality of offers better.

PS: It's not a house call. I make them come to me.

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Brands.International said:

The USD 20 will not prevent really serious buyer from proceeding.

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Keith said:

It prevented me from making a $30,000 offer. The only reason I ended up sending that offer is because someone gave me the sellers direct email.

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Brands.International said:

Well, if you would want the name really enough (or you would really need it, or you would really need to get it for someone), you would pay those $20 instantly, imo

But sure, some buyers can definitely get "offended" that they need to pay something, I can imagine that.

Strictly speaking, it is not very rational to miss sending an 30 000 offer (as I suppose you were serious and was about to send it only for a domain where you expected good profit margin in case your offer is accepted), just because you need to pay 20...

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Keith said:

It’s very rational. I don’t pay something for nothing.

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Brands.International said:

I see .. and how that 30 000 offer ended up? Was it accepted or rejected by seller?

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GeorgeK said:

Wow, very long thread that happened in just a single day. I've not done this for my own domains (yet; I might never do it, but was tossing it out as a thought), but can see the appeal of why Webmagic/Telepathy and others might desire it. It likely wouldn't be effective for an "average" domain name, but for the very elite domain names, one only really wants to deal with qualified buyers. There are different methods to qualify them, and a cash payment might be another means.

To go to the real estate example that was brought up earlier in this thread by some, one might hold an open house for a $400,000 or $1 million home. That won't happen for a $50 million or $100 million property, e.g. the kind that show up in the Mansion section of the WSJ on Fridays (you'll likely have to show you have a high net worth, or deal with a buyer's broker who has qualified you, etc., before the seller will talk).

Some folks suggested "just put a minimum offer". But, that won't help much if the "buyer" is behind some throwaway Gmail account and disappears after a negotiation (a negotiation that uses time/energy). [such a buyer that disappears after paying $20 still leaves the registrant $20 ahead!]

One advantage of making the $20 payment (or whatever amount) to enter discussions is that the owner will know the real identity of who they're dealing with (as opposed to a throwaway identity), as presumably Paypal or other payment methods will pass the real name/email with the payment.

It's interesting that if you go to GoDaddy and search for a domain (pick one you own), GoDaddy will charge people money to attempt to buy it (fixed amount + percentage commission). So, the GoDaddy "broker" is getting paid to talk to you, why shouldn't you get paid to respond? (or ideally cut out the middleman, and deal directly with the buyer)

Indeed, note that GoDaddy charges that fixed fee --- imagine if the fixed fee was $0, and they only charged a commission for success. Then they'd have many fake buyers using their negotiating platform, wasting their brokers' time (many buyers would back out, too). GoDaddy will charge the fixed fee to qualify their own clients --- i.e. they're not going to "do the work" of sending emails/phone calls unless they know they're going to get compensated....and on top of that they want a percentage commission afterwards. But, that fixed fee is important to them to qualify their own buyers. (probably other buyer brokers qualify in a similar manner, e.g. hourly fee, some portion paid in advance or with a minimum total fee, plus a success fee or percentage commission).

Anyhow, this is getting long, and I had to go to bed soon, but it might be productive to think of pros/cons (some of which are above).

One obvious "con" is that it reduces the opportunity to educate some buyers, who don't understand the value of domains (and are unwilling to spend $20).

Also, "spam" provides some data or business intelligence, which one might no longer get. If domain A gets 30 fake/lowball inquiries in a year, whereas domain B gets 2 fake/lowball inquiries in a year, and domain C gets no fake/lowball inquiries in a year, it's probably true that Domain A is desirable (worth renewing), and more desirable than domain B, and domain C is probably less desirable than domain B.

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equity78 said:

The other thing the article was never about is this advisable? And it doesn't matter if Rick Schwartz would do it or Mike Mann would do it? It was about would you like the option? George K was surprised Efty had not implemented it already.

Lowballers and negotiating is not what the two entities mentioned use it for. Hell Web Magic is charging the fee if you want to give them money by advertising on one of their websites. They are basically saying, it's going to cost you to communicate, nothing about being a lowballer. Just like @Domain Shane wrote about his landscaping crew.

The line often most quoted from Wall Street is "Greed is Good" I have said for 32 years the best line and most pertinent line is, "Rich enough not to waste time."

Click to expand...