discuss Never quite understood the buyer's psychology

abstractdomainer · Sep 19, 2020

As funny as this may sound, and after having sold a lot of geo and EMDs, I never really understood why a buyer bought that additional name, when they were managing with what they had.

To give you a perspective, let me demonstrate it with an example.

Say, a buyer owns a website called HappyCleaning (dot) com [just making this up to take it as an example. The buyer is based out of a city in United Kingdom, lets say Glasgow.

I go ahead and purchase a domain name - GlasgowCleaner(dot)com. The process of outbound starts. I pitch the domain name to the buyer in one of the following methods:

1) Single liner mail telling them that this name is for sale
2) Explaining that the name is for sale and they should buy because of certain benefits
3) Claim that their name is not good and they should rebrand (given they are present in that city only)

Maybe show up some numbers like search terms, cost per click, conversion rate for such terms or something else. And then, somehow reach out to 20-30 targeted leads and sell it.

While I have done this time and again, made this pitch as a seller, and made it work, I never really understood what made the buyer buy that.

They almost never rebrand to the newly acquired name. They either buy and keep it or simply forward it to their existing domain. And this raises a question:

Why did the buyer buy?
There may not be direct traffic associated with the name, neither is that a brandable. Unless the buyer performs some SEO/take some action etc (I do not know much about SEO), the name in itself, just by forwarding to their site doesn't bring much value to them, does it?
But still, they seem to buy!

Why do you think such a buyer buys? I never really figured that out. It worked and hence, I kept doing it. But curious this time, to know your thoughts.

karmaco · Sep 19, 2020

Such buyers are limited and buying less and less. Not sure how you are selling at all with this little bit

below— never thought it a good idea to insult a prospect. The reason for some sales— dirt cheap and to keep it out of the hands of a competitor.

3) Claim that their name is not good and they should rebrand (given they are present in that city only)

Bob Hawkes · Sep 19, 2020

abstractdomainer said:
Why do you think such a buyer buys?

One possibility is that even though they are happy with their existing name, they want to keep the other one out of competitor's hands. Another possibility is that they have vague plans down the road where the one you are offering might become a better fit. Finally, if the price is sufficiently low, I once read many business owners hold a bunch of domains, knowing they will only use actually 2% of them ever, but the cost isn't much to have the future option if they do decide to use it.
Bob

garptrader · Sep 19, 2020

A couple years ago I did a study of all my sales going back to 2007 or so to see how many were being used by a business to sell a product or service. It turned out only about one in five domains were being used in that manner. Eyeballing a sample of sales the last couple years the trend seems to be intact. I have no means of determining at this point what portion were bought by end users vs investors except to assume higher-price sales are more likely to be end users. No doubt many low $xxx sales were bought by investors which either still had them for sale or had subsequently dropped them. This year I have had four $xxxx sales and thus far only one is the primary brand of a business with another forwarded to their website while the other two did not even change the nameservers.

The vast majority of the world does not think much about domain names or place much value on them. Thus, when they find themselves looking for one the typical budget is less than $50. It is easier to forward a domain to an existing website than to create a new one. I

passini · Sep 19, 2020

Bob Hawkes said:
One possibility is that even though they are happy with their existing name, they want to keep the other one out of competitor's hands

I agree, you own the domain so your competitors can't use it. Forwarding the name is ok, rebranding costs money and if your website ranks well on Google I think the last thing you want is to risk going down in the serp changing things...

DomainRecap · Sep 19, 2020

I really depends on whether the new domain is an upgrade over their current one.

Is it closer to their brand or even an exact match, is it shorter and easier to remember thereby lending itself better to email and promotion, is it a .COM vs a lower-tier TLD, etc.? If it's better then they'll likely rebrand their site, but if it's only a lateral move or just an EMD or Geo-option, the best tactic is to leave it forwarding, and keep it out of their competitor's hands.

And who knows, maybe they did use this secondary domain in an advertisement, a brochure, an email mail-out, or other promotion and made back their investment.

Furquan · Sep 19, 2020

I own a .pw domain where i have a live website which make me some good money but recently i bought the .COM version and not going to upgrade it. Reason is i dont want to lose all the juice which my .pw website get because of good backlinks. It was just safe buy....

abstractdomainer said:
Why do you think such a buyer buys? I never really figured that out.

abstractdomainer · Oct 15, 2020

karmaco said:
Such buyers are limited and buying less and less. Not sure how you are selling at all with this little bit below— never thought it a good idea to insult a prospect. The reason for some sales— dirt cheap and to keep it out of the hands of a competitor.

3) Claim that their name is not good and they should rebrand (given they are present in that city only)

Ya this happens. Most of the buyers for me have been professionals practising in that area/geography and want to quickly rank or sound credible as such, it seems.

Bob Hawkes said:
One possibility is that even though they are happy with their existing name, they want to keep the other one out of competitor's hands. Another possibility is that they have vague plans down the road where the one you are offering might become a better fit. Finally, if the price is sufficiently low, I once read many business owners hold a bunch of domains, knowing they will only use actually 2% of them ever, but the cost isn't much to have the future option if they do decide to use it.
Bob

Could be the case. But I see that my buyers who are in the $300 range mostly are mostly small professionals and creative agencies as such, given the niches I target.

passini said:
I agree, you own the domain so your competitors can't use it. Forwarding the name is ok, rebranding costs money and if your website ranks well on Google I think the last thing you want is to risk going down in the serp changing things...

I agree with that as well. Makes sense. People buy and forward and that has been happening with some of my domains, although my sales are all xxx.

abstractdomainer · Oct 15, 2020

DomainRecap said:
I really depends on whether the new domain is an upgrade over their current one.

Is it closer to their brand or even an exact match, is it shorter and easier to remember thereby lending itself better to email and promotion, is it a .COM vs a lower-tier TLD, etc.? If it's better then they'll likely rebrand their site, but if it's only a lateral move or just an EMD or Geo-option, the best tactic is to leave it forwarding, and keep it out of their competitor's hands.

And who knows, maybe they did use this secondary domain in an advertisement, a brochure, an email mail-out, or other promotion and made back their investment.

Ya. Mostly my names are geo or EMDs and hence, it looks like a defensive registration as such. However, a couple of buyers were very happy to buy the names I offered, saying that it didn't cost much and they may use it going forward.
If not, he said the investment was rather very small and shouldn't be an issue.

discuss Never quite understood the buyer's psychology

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