The bright side of receiving unethical (unregistered) sales emails

[Eric Lyon]

We've probably all received those emails before. The ones that pitch a domain that's slightly shorter than one we already own (Normally they target developed domains). In most cases they actually own the shorter version and trying to make a profit by pitching the benefit of a shorter or more targeted version domain than you developed on. However, occasionally you get an email from someone that actually doesn't own the domain they are trying to sell. Matter of fact, nobody does.

It's moments like those where you have to say Thanks for the reminder rather than "Damn spammers".

Naturally everyone that gets an email of a domain they might be interested in should first check the whois. It was this first step that alerted me to the domain being available for registration. In short, the domain that was offered to me happened to be a shorter version i originally wanted 3 years ago when I developed one of my service sites. I forgot all about it over the years and the email I received last night at 2am served as a reminder.

I was actually considering spending the $500 they were asking since my longer version had done so well over the years. So you could imagine my surprise and happiness when I noticed the domain had actually dropped and was now available for registration (Which I of course used a $1.99 godaddy coupon to get immediately).

So now (Thanks to the unethical sales tactic of a bulk spammer) I was able to secure the domain I wanted 3 years ago for only $1.99, Forwarded it to my longer version, Get all the traffic the shorter one got since it used to be developed, and I also get all the previous repeat clients the shorter version service had when they contact me (I set up the same email they used in their old contact page).

So I must reiterate, Sometimes these annoying unethical domain sales spammers actually do us a favor by pointing out domains that are now available we once wanted and forgot about. It's very rare that I would ever thank a spammer, However, in this case I sent them an email reply thanking them for the reminder and let them know I registered it. Which I still haven't heard back from them again, so maybe they'll now remove me from their spam list knowing I wont fall for their $500 (Unregistered) domain sales attempts.

At any rate, just thought I would share that annoying yet happy moment from last night :p

Eric Lyon

 

[RicoShay]

Well done / congrats. I've heard a similar story before where someone grabbed themselves a pretty good domain thanks to those spammers.

Shame they didn't reply to your thank you message

 

[Ms Domainer]

*

Yes, I reg-feed an awesome domain via a tip from a spammer who was offering it for $587.00.

I almost thanked him, but decided not to, just in case he sent another tip my way.



*

 

[Domainace]

That's the reason I don't mark these as spam, much as I want to. Every now and then, they alert me to a name I want.

 

[Name Trader]

This has also happened to me (more than once) but decided not to say anything about it. But the percentage to total spam messages is really small. But it's a free notification, so I live with that.

 

[Kate]

I can do the monitoring by myself, I don't need the help of spammers.

 

[RevolutionaryDomains]

.


Thanks for sharing the good news. Happy to read you
were finally able to secure the domain you wanted. It
is nice to read something positive come out of these
scam/spammers sending their crap email solicitations.

 

[quadxnet]

lol that's awesome. As someone that's relatively new to the domaining world I will have to start doing this. As simple and obvious as it is, it hadn't crossed my mind.