discuss Minimum offer time wasting

[Dave]

Why do some people have minimum offers and then counter at something far far higher? Usually to ridiculous amounts as well.

I understand we can all ask whatever we want for a domain but why do this.

Take for example a name I recently tried to acquire. Nothing amazing, a nice two word .com. It's on a marketplace with a minimum offer of $500. I think fair enough and offer a reasonable $1000.

They come back with way into the 6 figures! Over $200,000.

Trust me this particular name is not worth that.

Why waste people's time like this?

Set your minimum offers much higher and closer to what you hope to sell for. Stop wasting everyone's time.

Cheers

 

[johnn]

Don't bother to find out why. There are too many ridiculous things here also.

- Names wanted - Budget $1-$99,000 - Surely they will offer you $20 for each name you send
- Auction - 600 Hours after the last bid or bin. That's 25 days after someone making a bid
- One word dictionary name - budget up to $500
And the list goes on.....

 

[equity78]

To play devils advocate there are just as many reasons it’s beneficial for a SELLER not to have a bin or a high lowest offer.

1) To gage overall interest by seeing ALL offers that come in not just over a certain amount (think about those $100 opening offer names on GoDaddy that have had hundreds or thousands of offers.)

2) The importance or desirability of a name can change the value dramatically as trends change— no need to box yourself in as things can change very quickly when a specific word surges.

3) Keeping your cards close to the vest guards against other domainers trying to weasel a name out of you for a fraction of what they intend to sell it for and what it’s worth. There are domainers who buy and immediately sell for way more to a client. If they don’t know your buy it now price that’s harder to do with your names.

4) Not giving the owner of domains similar to yours the knowledge of what your actual asking price is.

5) Leaving the price open allows you to make an on the spot decision to let a name go or not. How you feel about a Name today might not be how you feel about it 18 months from now. If that price is locked in you have no choice.

My main point is some domainers have no interest in selling some of their better domains to another domainer. So if you get quoted a high amount that is likely part of the equation.

If we are being perfectly honest domainers have far different criteria as buyers than as sellers.

You are right about some domainers not wanting to sell to other domainers at wholesale. But I am not sure how this seller even knew who @Dave was. So more than likely an end user would get this same reply, and 99 out of 100 times they move on to another domain, telling their colleagues or their board, this person is crazy.

Now there is a tricky thing with the min offer, we all don't want to waste our time and I agree with Dave when you see $500 min offer and someone comes back with $200,000 that's a bit outrageous, but I think seller's don't want to be pigeon holed into "If my min offer is X you can conclude my asking price is 5 or 10 x Max." Now I do believe for a name you want $200,000, make the min offer $10,000 it's still a ways to go but you don't want to get a ton of offers that are at $500 wasting your time.

 

[karmaco]

To play devils advocate there are just as many reasons it’s beneficial for a SELLER not to have a bin or a high lowest offer.

1) To gage overall interest by seeing ALL offers that come in not just over a certain amount (think about those $100 opening offer names on GoDaddy that have had hundreds or thousands of offers.)

2) The importance or desirability of a name can change the value dramatically as trends change— no need to box yourself in as things can change very quickly when a specific word surges.

3) Keeping your cards close to the vest guards against other domainers trying to weasel a name out of you for a fraction of what they intend to sell it for and what it’s worth. There are domainers who buy and immediately sell for way more to a client. If they don’t know your buy it now price that’s harder to do with your names.

4) Not giving the owner of domains similar to yours the knowledge of what your actual asking price is.

5) Leaving the price open allows you to make an on the spot decision to let a name go or not. How you feel about a Name today might not be how you feel about it 18 months from now. If that price is locked in you have no choice.

My main point is some domainers have no interest in selling some of their better domains to another domainer. So if you get quoted a high amount that is likely part of the equation.

If we are being perfectly honest domainers have far different criteria as buyers than as sellers.

 

[poweredbyme]

If you have lots of domains you are forced to set one minimum price for all

 

[poweredbyme]

Which make it a useless tool. So you need then go in and adjust individually, for domains you are asking 6 figures for. Setting a minimum offer so low on valuable domains is already setting your price expectations of the buyer, so low. You'll get pestered with lots of lowball offers, and you will never sell the domain.

As @NameZest says. Probably a noob. Experienced domainers know better than to leave a low minimum offer on six figure domain. I feel for @Dave. If I were him, I'd counter $1250 and say it's my last price. (assuming that the domain is still attractive at that price).

if you have 5000 domains and if each domain takes 10 seconds, you will spend 14 hours just to edit prices, or around 3 days. If you want to edit again, you will need to spend another 3 days. Even if you have 100 domains you don't want to edit minimum prices one by one. In the end setting min. offer low does not have a serious disadvantage but setting high is risky. If you set 0 as minimum offer it does not affect anything. . $500 min. offer is almost perfect

Also some marketplaces show how many offer was taken. This increases visibility of the domains which took 20+ offers. Seller may purposely put the minimum low only for this reason.

Another consideration is, if someone wants to sell a domain for $1,500 he would likely set $1,500 as BIN, wouldn't try to collect offers above $500. Majority of make offer listings is high priced domains, regardless of quality. If you are making offers you must be prepared to pay 2k or more. Negotiating for a few hundreds is pointless.

 

[Furquan]

I think most of the time an end-user can close the deal. The case is you were are a domainer. You wanted to buy that name for less. But when there is an end-user you can turn there $251 offer into $2k

https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-611#post-6710118

A recent sale, from $100 minimum offer to $1100

https://www.namepros.com/threads/report-completed-domain-name-sales-here.83628/page-681#post-7078815

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I am somewhat seeing both sides of this.

I agree with @Dave that to have a low minimum on a name where your real price is many orders of magnitude higher seems a waste of everyone's time and deceptive beside.

On the other hand I think some view it almost like an auction and the low starting is to get the bidding started. Someone (not in session) at NamesCon told me of a case where a $50 first offer eventually resulted in $20,000 sale (I might have details wrong but something like that).

Bob

 

[Name Trader]

@karmaco - I appreciate the devils advocate viewpoint But to be honest these are not necessarily anything other than tangential for making a sale. I take @Dave's viewpoint on this. You are going to piss-off a lot of potential buyers with such low starting bids. Not only that. it's a waste of the sellers time also. replying to all the offers. He should really have set the starting point at $50k, if he's asking for $200k. But, it's a free world. it's up to all the sellers and bidders. I would never have make any bid at all, if I'd known his asking price was going to be $200k. It's a waste of my time.

 

[ecomslice]

im sure in years time ill be saying the same, but those with years experience such as yourself s forget it from the eyes of those new.

for me its a safety net, i do not know what to price them at, when i get an offer in, i can then do research and judge what a proper counter is, I have and am willing to as i learn accept the min offer bid, and or counter slightly higher, or in some cases much higher.

also I have many that I will not be renewing, so instead of constantly lowering prices I can now just check when a offer comes in, if its a poop domain , which i have many lol, and its close to exp, then sweet , ill accept.

just my logic, for my portfolio at this time, trust me, id love to know and stick with bin , but i do not have a good feel for it yet. in time i will.

 

[biggie]

In addition to this it paints a bad picture of the domain industry when sellers ask crazy amounts much higher than their minimum offer.

I can't totally agree with that premise

because as you pointed to initially, we all have right to ask, what we for our domain names

so that right, however it affects you or me, on either side of the buyer/seller coin.... has to be respected.

knowing that, and in your case, you either counter offer or move on

and know that it's only "respect for the game" that you do it that way.

cuz, as the world turns, what goes around, comes around.

imo...

 

[Name Trader]

if you have 5000 domains and if each domain takes 10 seconds, you will spend 14 hours just to edit prices, or around 3 days. If you want to edit again, you will need to spend another 3 days. Even if you have 100 domains you don't want to edit minimum prices one by one. In the end setting min. offer low does not have a serious disadvantage but setting high is risky. If you set 0 as minimum offer it does not affect anything. . $500 min. offer is almost perfect

Also some marketplaces show how many offer was taken. This increases visibility of the domains which took 20+ offers. Seller may purposely put the minimum low only for this reason.

Another consideration is, if someone wants to sell a domain for $1,500 he would likely set $1,500 as BIN, wouldn't try to collect offers above $500. Majority of make offer listings is high priced domains, regardless of quality. If you are making offers you must be prepared to pay 2k or more. Negotiating for a few hundreds is pointless.

So you are saying it's a burden to have too many domains. Not a privilege It's almost a certainty that no more than 10% of your domains you would need go back in to adjust the minimum price. You might be able to even set your entire portfolio at one price, and the 10% at another price, in only 2 tranches, instead of 5000 tranches If you were to use the same min offer price for your entire portfolio. Assuming that the min price is set reasonably, depending on your portfolio. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for one way or the other. They are your domains. You can handle them whichever way you want. But it is a reality, that if you set a low min offer, and then you come back with a $200K asking price, in most cases, you have no f* idea what the domain is worth. I personally don't like to deal with those kinds of sellers.

I don't actually see the argument that you are generating leads from people making min offer pricing, if you are asking $200k for domains where min offer is $500. These are not leads. Because, most people making offers on $500 min offers are not buyers anywhere near $200k. And by the time you come to the realization, that your asking price is too high, those leads have probably gone and bought an alternative domain.

In the example we have been discussing, it is better to sell at f

 

[poweredbyme]

So you are saying it's a burden to have too many domains. Not a privilege

I forgot that we have more than 1 marketplace to list our domains for sale

Buyers must look at all major marketplaces and must not forget to visit the domain. Some domains have landing pages that show lower prices than the prices shown at marketplaces. If there is no custom landing page that shows a fixed price I try to contact the seller directly. I can buy any domain cheaper if the seller is willing to give me the domain directly, by bypassing marketplaces. The difference can be as high as 50% depending on negotiation skills that the buyer has. As here is a domainer forum most users focus on only selling skills and usually overlook buying skills or selling domain to an expert buyer. I noticed most sellers wrongly assume all buyers or all end users are novice and have tiny budgets while most domain buyers wrongly assume all sellers are expert or are dwelling on domains worth millions of $$. The mistake here is not to act on wrong or correct assumptions. The mistake is to act based on the seller or buyer, not based on the domain itself. Characteristics of buyer and seller of a particular domain will change quickly but the characteristics of that domain will always been more stable compared to its former and current owners.

A domain at "marketplace X" may be listed as "make offer" and at "marketplace Y" with a fixed price. Because one domain can be sold for only once. You can't buy a "make offer" listing without manual approval of the seller. "BIN" is final. So before making an offer, buyer must find where the domain is listed at a fixed price.
The domain in the original post might have 200k price tag shown at its own homepage or in a different marketplace.

It's almost a certainty that no more than 10% of your domains you would need go back in to adjust the minimum price.

Correct. Most domains don't receive any offer. But minimum offer has no impact on this unless it's too high. Main problem is "make offer", not minimum offer.

You might be able to even set your entire portfolio at one price, and the 10% at another price, in only 2 tranches, instead of 5000 tranches

Not exactly. More than 95% of my domains don't accept any offer, are waiting to be sold at a fixed price.

If I choose "make offer" to sell, my initial minimum offer is zero. If a domain receives too many lowball offers I raise its minimum offer value gradually to slow down lowball offers. If I wanted 200k for a domain, my first minimum offer value would be zero. That minimum offer would likely take couple of months to become 20k from zero. I would stop raising the min. offer at 20k. I would counter all offers above 20k with 250k, would decline all offers below 20k, even while the minimum offer was 500. So, if I were the seller in the original post, I would decline the offer of original poster without countering him with 200k and then would rise the minimum offer to 1k from 500. Revealing the final price to a lowball offer owner ends up losing a watcher. Seller will need that lowball watcher in case of he must start auction using one of lowball offers. Lowballers would not only watch my auction till the end but they would also promote my domain or auction for free. So lowball watcher should not be wasted for an unproportional counter offer like 400x. A seller must realize someone who makes an offer of 500, will not only decline a counter of 400x but will also never look back. Countering with 400x is ridiculus. I would decline and would keep +2 eyes on my sale.

But it is a reality, that if you set a low min offer, and then you come back with a $200K asking price, in most cases, you have no f* idea what the domain is worth.

Correct. When I have an idea on the price I usually list it at a fixed price with no possibility of making an offer. Make offer listings must be chosen only if you don't have an idea on the price, or if your min-max price expectation is big. There must be good reasons to negotiate when you sell and buy. Always ask yourself that why am I unable to sell/buy at a fixed price and list the reasons clearly in your mind.

When I have an idea on the price, I usually take +- 25% of it as its min-max values. Anyone who took statisctics courses would know what it means.

If I estimate a domain is worth $200k, I sell it for something between 150k and 250k. Now I have the first good reason: it may be worth to negotiate to receive a possible extra $50k while not taking the risk of "no sale" for setting a fixed price of $250k. "No sale" risk has opportunity costs like interest, low tunover, missed purchase opportunities.

On the other hand there is 100k difference or 50% between 150k and 250k, at the mean value of $200k. So I would be willing to accept 150k while trying to make an extra 50k. If my opportunity cost was too high, I would accept the first 150k offer (if I have waited since years or if I have just found a great opportunity that needs 150k cash: My second good reason to go for "make offer")

Ideally the estimated prices above $40k would benefit most from make offer listings. "make offer" becomes the only way for the prices above 100k. Neither buyer nor seller can correctly estimate a domain value above 100k at a statistically 95% confidence interval: Third good reason for "make offer". In fact I can't estimate domain prices at 95% accuracy (I would be very rich if I could) But it matters mostly when my estimated price is high enough. There is a quite low risk on leaving big money on the table and you can't eliminate that risk by collecting offers if you have an incorrect idea on the price.

 

[Name Trader]

If you have lots of domains you are forced to set one minimum price for all

Which make it a useless tool. So you need then go in and adjust individually, for domains you are asking 6 figures for. Setting a minimum offer so low on valuable domains is already setting your price expectations of the buyer, so low. You'll get pestered with lots of lowball offers, and you will never sell the domain.

As @NameZest says. Probably a noob. Experienced domainers know better than to leave a low minimum offer on six figure domain. I feel for @Dave. If I were him, I'd counter $1250 and say it's my last price. (assuming that the domain is still attractive at that price).

 

[Dave]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

@karmaco - I appreciate the devils advocate viewpoint But to be honest these are not necessarily anything other than tangential for making a sale. I take @Dave's viewpoint on this. You are going to piss-off a lot of potential buyers with such low starting bids. Not only that. it's a waste of the sellers time also. replying to all the offers. He should really have set the starting point at $50k, if he's asking for $200k. But, it's a free world. it's up to all the sellers and bidders. I would never have make any bid at all, if I'd known his asking price was going to be $200k. It's a waste of my time.

In addition to this it paints a bad picture of the domain industry when sellers ask crazy amounts much higher than their minimum offer.

 

[xynames]

Correct.

If you have a lot of domains uploaded to many different marketplaces, you will put a $399. or whatever minimum offer on every one doesn't mean this necessarily has any correlation to the value or desired selling price for the domain. All it serves is to weed out the ones who want to make $20. offers.

The serious buyers know this and make a price request they don't just come in with a $500. offer on a domain that they know is worth a lot more, even if it lists $399. minimum offer.

Occasionally, you will find some buyers, typically from non U.S. countries, who come in and argue that "well I offered $400. because you had a $399. minimum offer, so why do you want more" or something to that effect, but even they know the domain is worth a lot more and were just hoping to grab it for nothing, with $399. being nothing.


Over time as you get price requests you will of course update the domain with a BIN and higher minimum price, but if you have thousands of domains you are not going to do this for every domain in every new marketplace you upload to.


One marketplace where I would like to see the minimum offer capability is @Dynadot - doesn't have it yet.

 

[namemarket]

.....when i get an offer in, i can then do research and judge what a proper counter is,..

This is a very valid thing to say and I agree fully with you and why today I still use mostly quite low minimum offers. I've had several domains which were last looked at and priced by me years earlier which had very low min offers and low BINS but luckily for me buyer rarely wanted to pay BIN and most always did minimum offer.

That low offer in-turn gave me plenty of time to do research on both the domain and the buyer. I then could try learning who buyer was (sometimes well known, big or wealthy) and my name was more popular than I realized such as taken in lots of extensions so it gave me opportunity to raise BIN considerably which at times got a much higher offer or sale and even if sale failed was able to price it more accurately for future.

I'm not saying go from $250 or $500 to $200,000 but more like 5, 10, 15 or 20k based on your research. Brokers most always say use a BIN price because they can sell it easier and with less trouble that way but a small initial min offer is much better for most domains, imo.

 

[Name Trader]

More weird is that I found a domain with make offer on Sedo & asking price was set to $1999 I sent an offer of $1500 which is close to the asking price, the seller just ignored my offer! no rejection or even counter offer!

now try to find logical explanation for that

They no longer owned the domain and therefore never received your offer. Did you check it was still registered? Did you type the domain in your browser? Where did it go? To Sedo?

 

[Dave]

Thanks to everyone for their replies and input. When I get the chance I'll try to reply to more posts later.

How do they react when you increase your offer?

I don't usually as most of the time these are deluded registrants living in fantasy land, in my opinion. Fantasy land created from anomalous sales in the market.

Any counter offer from me will likely not warrant much of a price drop in my experience so I'd rather not waste my time or theirs further.

 

[Zilla]

I agree, I like BIN if I am in the buyer position, so, if I am seller, I also want just offer BIN, it save time to encourge the deal...

the reason seller want buyer make offer in most case he may have no knowledge on the price thus use make offer to discover the value ...or to test buyers budget or intention....

anyway, this is a game, for me if I made a mistake to lower sell or drop a valuable name that is only means I have no knowledge to earn ...just move on...it happens, while u dont understand the market, the common price, the domains possible meaning (language,culture, industry which u lack of knowdge)and value, u have to suffer this and take lesson learn.....but some one may not, they using high price to protect, the risk is nevet sell, but the advantage is once sell they get big return....

so, not need blame them, but just buy at your comfortable price and sell at your desired price..

 

[sircc]

I don't understand the frustration some of you seem to harbor. You want leads? Low minimum offers will get you those. Anyone who contacts you is a possible sale.

A domain owner can ask what they want, it's their domain. The ask is ridiculous? Simply move on.

For those complaining it harms the industry, really?? The higher the asking prices, the more we stand to get for our pigeon $hit domains.

 

[Ostrados]

More weird is that I found a domain with make offer on Sedo & asking price was set to $1999 I sent an offer of $1500 which is close to the asking price, the seller just ignored my offer! no rejection or even counter offer!

now try to find logical explanation for that

 

[EbookLover]

recently tried to acquire. Nothing amazing, a nice two word .com. It's on a marketplace with a minimum offer of $500. I think fair enough and offer a reasonable $1000. They come back with way into the 6 figures! Over $200,000.

From what I hear from domainers they have some sort of science behind it, that maximizes the profit of selling the domain.

From XXX to XXX,XXX, that's not science, that's just stupid. There's nothing scientific about stupid.

I would have counter-offered at XXX+1

 

[LarryDomain]

Ofcourse it's better to have the proper minimum for each domain, I am just saying for lazy people like me who doesn't have the time to set a minimum for each domain, the fast $500 min works.. I already know i wouldn't sell any of them for under $500 but there are a quite a few I wouldn't mind just selling so I don't have to pay registration for years on end!

 

[pokainc]

My min offers tend to vary at any given time, but mostly I tend to put $250 as the minimum offer for any of my domains:

1) It gives me a sense of the pulse of the portfolio. It shows which names garner most interest.

2) It does save some time

3) It's sometimes hard to figure out the exact value of domains especially for brandables, therefore the minimum offer has a lot of chances to be too high or too low.
"Well, just set realistic pricing", easier said than done for brandables for example or less liquid domains.

4) It could be that since you put the minimum offer, the domain gained in value that you only really figured it out after researching more when the offer came in. So your counter comes in at a much higher pricepoint relative to the min offer.

5) In some cases, when there's several domains to renew or bills to pay, you might accept 2-3 sales of $750 each for names you typically would sell for 2.5-3k. Re-adjusting the minimum offer often based on your changing financial reality or cyclical sales patterns is a pain.

6) If you fall on a buyer who has money but truly has no Idea of domain values, that $1000 or $2000 minimum offer that you would've perhaps set would be a non-starter, but if they start at $250 and you counter 5k for example, they would say how come you want 5k.... then after some back and forth you can reach an agreement. The low min offer can start a dialog.

7) Sometimes you can also fall on someone who had a few decent sales and just wanted to try a Hail Mary and didn't care if they didn't sell and hold on to the name.

**** I agree going from around 1k to 200k is a fairly ludicrous. But many buyers even find it ludicrous when you counter a $250 min offer with a 5k selling price.

**** If there was a way to put no min offer (to not set expectation), but at the same time automatically ignore lowball offers, I think that would be great.

**** As much as possible for names I value at over 25k or so, I try to put a higher min offer , but in order to do that, you have to spend hours trying to put at least a bin estimation for each domain (with excel), to then sort it low to high and then put the min offers.
With several thousand domains, it's brutal!