Was I scammed?

[briman1970]

I bought this domain in hopes of using the "high" traffic to develop a site. Here's the thread... Clicky!

I talked him down to $200 from $500, my reason being the seller didn't want to do a traffic test and he "couldn't" show stats to me. BTW, he also stated in one of his emails that the domain "gets 1,000's of hits a day because it is so similar to Miller Beer's new ManLaws.com domain advertising campaign."

Here are my screenshots of the last 5-6 days. I parked at Sedo and Namedrive to get a gauge of traffic. I'd say I got an average of 40 uniques over 6 full days. That's an average of 6-7 uniques daily. WOW!

Sedo Stats
Namedrive Stats

Whatdoyathink? Was I scammed? How should I proceed? I tell ya, it's just not my month! :yell:

Thanks,
Bri

 

[Tippy]

He said he couldnt show stats, that would have been a sign for me to keep away, what should/can you do, I have no idea...

 

[Mark]

I agree with Tippy .... No proof of stats - No sale ....

The very mention of "Hits" is a turn off to me as well - Big difference in "Hits" and "Unique Visitors".

I'm sending him a PM to respond to this thread -

 

[quality]

Yep no doubt about it you were scammed but as we know you have to factor this in as a distinct risk in this business.....very little can be done now...caveat emptor buyer beware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hopefully it will avoid you making the same mistake in the future.

 

[dnb8]

new member, only 2 posts, 0 trader rating, no stats, yes You was scammed

 

[irishmat]

sorry to say but you should have seen this coming surely

 

[quality]

On second thoughts you may have been scammed but nonetheless might make a profit. Lets see you made $.65 revenue in 1 week so multiply that by 52 and you get $33.80 per year less $7 re reg so thats $26.80 on a $200 investment
which give you 13.4% p.a. return.........not so bad

 

[irishmat]

also remem a domain like this is completely at the mercy of how much advertising the miller ad is getting

if its pulled then you will get zero traffic

this should have been taken into account when buying it

 

[pertosda]

Is it me or scammers are heavily growing lately??

 

[DavidAusman]

Domain industry is like a game, sometimes you win sometimes you lose . If you are lucky, your hand regged domains worth thousands of dollars, but if thing goes the other way round, your ten of thousands of dollars investment brings you nothing.

Take it easy.. $26 payout for $200 investment is much better than bank interest rate

 

[-Adam-]

Regardless of where you go there are going to be scammers of some sort especially on the net. Unfortuantly briman it sounds like they got the better of you this time. But by posting this more people are going to be a bit more cautious and hesitant the next time they do a transaction with someone. Hopefully you are able to resolve this situation and maybe get your money back. Best of luck to you.

 

[SpareDomains]

On second thoughts you may have been scammed but nonetheless might make a profit. Lets see you made $.65 revenue in 1 week so multiply that by 52 and you get $33.80 per year less $7 re reg so thats $26.80 on a $200 investment
which give you 13.4% p.a. return.........not so bad

good point and that's parked, develop the site like you planned and you will probably make at least double that amount if not better and a developed site will continue to increase in value and pagerank, when buying domains for traffic stats are vital, no stats no buy, develop it now while there is the little traffic and turn around your loss.

 

[AttyDomains]

AttyDomains.Com Response

Response.

To date, we have had no contact from the Buyer. This thread was PM'ed to us by the staff. The domain manslaw.com was getting 1,000's of hits a day during Miller's May advertisement blitz. In fact, the jsonline.com reports that the site (MANLAWS.com) had over 13 million hits in the first couple months. So, it is not too remote to assume a site with a similar name could get a 1,000 or more per day.

There is bad news for the Buyer. Based on the alleged traffic drop off, it seems Miller may have pulled its MANLAWS.com TV commercials, for the most part. This would explain that alleged drop in traffic as the URL only appeared at the end of the commercial and at the extreme far left of the screen.

This may explain why Miller’s advertising firm in Florida would not return our calls or emails regarding a potential sale of the domain to Miller. This fact was explained to the Buyer as he requested what contact we had had with Miller’s agents regarding a sale.

We do NOT scam. To date, we have never had a complaint. Then again, we deal mostly with Lawyers and Law Firms.

What the poster of this thread failed to mention is that the Buyer initially contacted us via email and offered $150.00 for the domain as it was to be a “gift for a friend”. There was no request of number(s) of hits to the domain.

This is our final comment on this matter.

Http://AttyDomains.Com

 

[irishmat]

Response.

To date, we have had no contact from the Buyer. This thread was PM'ed to us by the staff. The domain manslaw.com was getting 1,000's of hits a day during Miller's May advertisement blitz. In fact, the jsonline.com reports that the site (MANLAWS.com) had over 13 million hits in the first couple months. So, it is not too remote to assume a site with a similar name could get a 1,000 or more per day.

There is bad news for the Buyer. Based on the alleged traffic drop off, it seems Miller may have pulled its MANLAWS.com TV commercials, for the most part. This would explain that alleged drop in traffic as the URL only appeared at the end of the commercial and at the extreme far left of the screen.

This may explain why Miller’s advertising firm in Florida would not return our calls or emails regarding a potential sale of the domain to Miller. This fact was explained to the Buyer as he requested what contact we had had with Miller’s agents regarding a sale.

We do NOT scam. To date, we have never had a complaint. Then again, we deal mostly with Lawyers and Law Firms.

What the poster of this thread failed to mention is that the Buyer initially contacted us via email and offered $150.00 for the domain as it was to be a “gift for a friend”. There was no request of number(s) of hits to the domain.

This is our final comment on this matter.

Http://AttyDomains.Com

seems fair enough, as i said before a dn like this is at the mercy of the advertisement

also briman what is this about a 'gift for a friend', were you playing games trying to get it cheap

 

[End User King]

That sucks

 

[slider]

There was no request of number(s) of hits to the domain.

In the original sale thread:

A popular beer company has a very similar dot.com to MansLaw.com - MansLaw.com is currently getting 1,000 of hits from people mistyping the domain from the beer ad. - if you’re looking for a short, simple, hot domain - cash in on MansLaw.com NOW!

I wonder why he didn't ask? Please do not try and make it look like traffic played no factor in the sale.

 

[briman1970]

First of all, I have to say that I did attempt to send an email before I posted this thread, but for some reason, it is showing up in my drafts folder, not my sent folder. It's likely that they didn't get the email from me. I am sorry about that. I woudn't start a thread like this without first attempting to reach the seller.

I've recently gotten my cousin interested in domaining. He told me to look for a good name and he would pay half for it. At this point, he has little idea what a good name is. Well, I decided I would go ahead and buy the name outright and give it to him for his birthday, which is around 3 months from now.

Of course, I was buying the name for the traffic. I figured if it got 1000's (1000s is at least 2000) of "hits" per day, it would at least be getting 100s of uniques per day if not over 1000. Heck, I'd have been happy with 100 per day. This domain was forwarding to a domain listing site, so it's perfectly logical to assume that the user who found this site wouldn't return, for the most part, because he was not getting to where he wanted to go. Therefore each unique wouldn't return to make another "hit".

Anyway, if it made money on PPC, I was going to give it to him for his birthday. If it didn't get plenty of clicks, I was going to keep it and develop it with more targeted content for the traffic. Whew... you can see why I didn't go into more detail with the buyer besides saying, "I am interested in purchasing your domain as a gift to a friend."

Anyway, that point is moot. I bought this name for the traffic, obviously. I offered $150 originally. He stated, "Thank you for the offer. However, we will need to decline your offer as that domain gets 1,000's of hits a day because it is so similar to Miller Beer's new ManLaws.Com domain advertising campaign. We have had several offers under $500.00 and rejected them all, to date."

The rest of our email negotiations I will hold off on displaying here until I can resend the failed email and see what his reply will be.

I'm sending him a PM to respond to this thread -

Thanks Mark! I appreciate the assistance.

 

[quality]

Does not make sense that he refused $500 but was then prepared to accept your $200 buck offer so that should have rung alarm bells with you.

 

[Phronesis]

Does not make sense that he refused $500 but was then prepared to accept your $200 buck offer so that should have rung alarm bells with you.

I agree. That and the inability to provide traffic stats. How can you not be able to provide stats??? That's a huge red flag.

Still, it's hard to believe that someone would be willing to ruin their rep for a lousy $200.

 

[briman1970]

On second thoughts you may have been scammed but nonetheless might make a profit. Lets see you made $.65 revenue in 1 week so multiply that by 52 and you get $33.80 per year less $7 re reg so thats $26.80 on a $200 investment
which give you 13.4% p.a. return.........not so bad

I appreciate your comment. I have thought about my yearly revenue and whether I will take a loss on the domain. Let's see... $26.80 per year X 7.5 years =$201. Therefore, if I keep the domain for 7.5 years, I will start turning a profit. That is, I will start turning a profit if the traffic stays consistent for over ¾ of a decade. Unfortunately for me, the ad campaign will most likely die in, at the very maximum, 1-2 years time from it's inception. Will I be making a profit on the name if I keep it? As the Magic 8-Ball says, "DON’T COUNT ON IT."

This was bought as a gift. I went over my budget a little because my cousin has been very good to me over the years. He invested substantially in a company I am still trying to get off the ground, etc. Regardless of how I proceed with the seller, I can't give this to him. It'd be like giving him a dollar store bag of socks.

I agree. That and the inability to provide traffic stats. How can you not be able to provide stats??? That's a huge red flag.

Still, it's hard to believe that someone would be willing to ruin their rep for a lousy $200.

Regarding all the comments about bells, whistles, flags and signs... I didn't buy the name without at least some proof that the alleged traffic was possible. The seller doesn't have any names on his list that are parked. I thought that maybe he didn't have much experience with traffic or parking, so not wanting to proceed with a traffic test was somewhat understandable. The name has some pretty good OVT with ext., but it was showing up as "http manslaw.com" and was something like 70 or 75 searches (which I thought was pretty good). Plus, when you typed it in Google as Manslaw.com, it showed up as #1. BTW, it's not showing in Google at all now. Maybe this has something to do with it?