advice Received my first inbound offer, counter offer rejected

[Jay Ha]

I was about to put my phone away and get some sleep at around 3 AM when I received an e-mail from Undeveloped saying that I got a 200 USD offer on one of my 5-letter names. Knowing that I had a 199 USD minimum offer I thought that this guy is after a bargain.

I looked up the guy's name knowing that he resides in a specific country (from my google analytics and Undeveloped also shows me their location). I found his LinkedIn profile and I'm 100% sure it is him. He works at a multi billion dollar chemicals company, in their commercial development program. That company's domain name is a 3-letter .com which is worth several millions. Their pockets are pretty deep, that's all I can say about them (please don't throw guesses on public).

Anyway, here's the whole convo with his name hidden for their own privacy:

Now I know that I hit high on my counter offer. Several reasons include it was waaaay too late in my timezone, really didn't feel like selling a name for the amount he asked, and given that he works in a commercial program, I didn't really buy his story about the nickname thing.

Just wanted to share this experience since it was my first in ~5 months of domaining. Has any of you guys went through this situation before? How does it usually turn out? Any comments on how I handled this brief convo? Anyway, thanks for reading!

 

[NYJimbo]

I kinda was.

LOL, its cool. If he ever comes back, tell him you are willing to lower it for his wife. Whatever it takes to make the sale.

 

[Wali Dahot]

Good learning experience for you and all the newbies like me. I too thought domaining to become rich overnight formula, but with time on NP I realised it isnt. At start I placed hangregs way above their values and now I place a 20 year old geo targeted domain at around 1k as it will be a great ROI..

 

[BRANDERX]

BINs are the way to go..

Take it or leave it..

but I know not everyone can do that.

@Jay Ha congrats, & make sure there are no other listings of your domains on different marketplaces.

 

[J Sokol]

Congrats @Jay Ha! I love it when we newbies get some sales under our belt. Hope this will be the first of many.

 

[Name Trader]

I've only just seen this post and looking at the first page of replies. If you do a google search for "atoio" you will find on the first page, that you bought this domain for $8 in late Nov 2018 here on NP's with no other bidders. You would also notice that "Atoio" is in fact a first name. I'm sure the buyer did such a search. And now in early Feb 2018, approx 2 month's later you are asking for $34,000. This is totally ridiculous. Before giving them a price, you should have researched the company to find out if they have a product, or pending product, or if they intended to use the name in their business in some other way.

Congrats on the sale for $500. I'm surprised he asked his wife to spend the $500 on her name, when he had already offered $400 and wasn't going to tell his wife. It's only $100 more. I wouldn't have asked to spent only another $100. Doesn't sound logical to me. Let's see what happens with this domain.

 

[Name Trader]

Okay, now i understand.....though I still believe there was "more juice" you could have squeezed out of the sale of this name.

If not this buyer, then maybe another person with a partner called "atoio", may come along, at sometime in the future. Or maybe a startup might decide upon this name, also, some time in the future. I think the OP made the correct decision. It's cash/profit in his hand vs an unknown future.

 

[slader23]

This will be a learning experience for you. If you hand regged that name mid $xxx to low $xxxx is a feasible range to sell. 5 figures is a fantastical valuation, especially if they don't actually need the name.....

 

[RevolutionaryDomains]

It is probably the previous owner's listing, I'm only listing it on Sedo and Undeveloped for now.

Could be why he offered around that price. You might want to reach out to GD customer service and have them pull that listing.

 

[Jay Ha]

I am still in contact with the buyer, he said that around 400 is his limit. I countered with 500 which should include the 9% undeveloped commission. He should accept now I guess..

 

[Dave]

Valuing domains based on an assumption of how much money the buyer has is silly.

You wouldn't do the same with real estate or antiques would you?

 

[BaileyUK]

Hopefully, but personally I'd probably still walk because I would feel like you'd been trying to scam me. I know that wasn't your intention, but buying and selling is quite an emotional thing .

In all fairness, this guy was likely to stay in the background for the purchase, seeing it was his Wifes nick-name. It's not like he could move-on and buy another name . I bet he had some wonderful banter with his wife when the $34,000 counter came in. "Sorry honey I just don't think your worth that much"

My advice is never try to read too much into the potential users possible motives when it comes to price . that's unless it is something very darn obvious or something with multiple buyers in place.. You'll end up going screwball forever looking back on sales made (or lost)

This could have been very easily a missed opportunity if the last owner had renewed. It would've gone through Sedo (or was that Godaddy) at that original listing price

 

[domains21]

This was fun to read. It had suspense, shock and a (hopeful) happy ending. Congrats on the sale!

 

[Name Trader]

My comments above, explains why sellers should ALWAYS totally sanitize their sales threads, and why I am a stickler, insisting that they do.

 

[Jay Ha]

You wound yourself up for disappointment.

Agreed, as soon as he said he asked his wife to up the budget from $400 to $500, that is pretty much surface level bs you try to feed to a simpleton when your story has run out of legs.

Either way if your happy with it, all the best, I think it had at least $1,500 in value, but you kind of gave him a price where a valid counter wasn’t possible.

I am happy with this 500 USD sale. I simply had this name for 2 months and already offered it for 70 USD on NP for a quick flip. 500 USD is good.

Congrats on the sale.
With such a five figure asking price, why settle for a three figure. I suppose the buyer should be able to afford at least mid four figures since he already saw an asking price of 34k.

Just my reasoning...

I had this name at make offer with a starting price of 199 USD. When he offered 200 USD, I countered with the 5 figure.

 

[BaileyUK]

I think it's more about not leaving money on the table (effective negotiation) considering it could be the only inquiry, they are saying with good negotiation skills one can get x,xxx.

Congrats @Jay Ha , 8 to 500 is not bad, well done!!

I accept, that, this is a guys first inbound sale and he will learn how 'Offers and Counters' play their part in the psychology of arriving at a final figure. But, that can be done by concentrating on that aspect as further advice. I just don't think the "I would have done better" highlights that aspect

 

[Jay Ha]

I accept, that, this is a guys first inbound sale and he will learn how 'Offers and Counters' play their part in the physiology of a final figure. But, that can be done by concentrating on that aspect.

True. A long way to go in learning how to pick names, not to mention learning how to negotiate their prices. I would have countered 2,500 USD to be honest if I didn't have the initial idea that it was a person that works for a Fortune 500 company and acting on behalf of it. So my counter was based on a 2 minutes google search. It was only when I thoroughly researched the person in contact and that big company the next morning, that I realized it is the same name but a different person. So I bought the wife's nickname story and just wanted to get it over with.

 

[farouk20]

Was the company Sony?

https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/design/stories/toio

Nice play on words possibly? Or defensive buy?

A Toio

Lol .. op will just collapse

 

[wwwweb]

Lol .. op will just collapse

Given their brand is called Toio doesn’t really add infinite value to atoio.

Unless the wife’s nick name is Anotonio, the story kind of sounded a bit BS.

Not sure how the $500 deal happend after counter., but without knowing all variables, and the wife story, of this was a real end user who had an immediate use, the seller probably have been better to sit on his hands for a bit.

 

[Jay Ha]

He probably was the old owner,I can find names like that in 5 seconds ,they may be possible brandables but until someone grows a brand its worth squat, Get the guy back and tell him he can use the domain for nothing for 3 months if he has a short term project,that will open the doors for more talk ,then tell him you found a better one you like for 1k and you need to get that to pay for it. Then sell it and buy 10 more crappy names just like it

Hi Ben, thanks for chiming in. The name crappy has already been sold. I have already used the funds to buy some more crappy names + a Valentine's gift for my wife. This year's Valentine's day was sponsored by Atoio.com

 

[Jay Ha]

Totally get what you guys are saying. Kinda didn't feel like selling it because I wasn't convinced with the guy's reason behind his inquiry especially when I already knew it is a -very highly ranked- Fortune500 company. Thus the high counter offer.

This is definitely a learning experience for me. Not mad I probably lost a sale though. I was eager for this kind of test to be honest.

 

[Coinking]

I thinking, you wanna rich over night.
If i received same offer i counter $1000.
And buyer come at $700-800.

 

[Furquan]

Well here's an update: Did some research on the name, IP, and location. It seems this is an IT engineer. Will fix my counter offer to suit his financial ability.

I don't think he even pays $1k if I read correctly he somewhere said in chat "sell it to business you can make more money"

 

[wizard]

Well looks like you lost that one counter offer was ridiculous it doesn’t matter who he works for doesn’t mean they will spend that amount anyway best of luck

 

[Sami Ketolainen]

I hope you learned your lesson here.

You can't wait that someone would pay 34k for that name since there are 100x times better names in the market in that price. With that 400$ you would have made couple of nice catches example at expiring auctions if you have time to check out the names and make research.

Unfortunately, these mistakes happens usually if you haven't negotiated often.

 

[Furquan]

I am still in contact with the buyer, he said that around 400 is his limit. I countered with 500 which should include the 9% undeveloped commission. He should accept now I guess..

That's a realistic counter if he interested than he seal the deal.

Otherwise just move on.