Domain Name Bartering

mmm91492

mmm91492

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Dec 5, 2014
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Freelancing work is picking up and I want to build out a new site that gives the impression of more of a boutique agency than a one-man shop.

I came up with a great name for the site but the .com is taken. The domain is a misspell / letter-replacement brand name and it redirects to a .com with the proper spelling and some extra keywords tacked on.

The site at that domain looks straight out of the nineties. Table-based HTML and links to the owner's defunct ebay store and wild west domains marketplace. It looks like she's an old-school computer repair tech / web designer.

Anyway, I snapped up the .co and sent her an email asking for a price to buy the domain. She replied saying she's willing to let it go for a price, but conveniently left the price out.

The domain currently redirects, has no index in Google, and no Wayback history or Domain Authority. It's essentially a fresh domain; all I want is the name, which can't be in too much demand considering she's redirecting it and all the other TLDs are available.

What sounds like a reasonable price to throw out? I was thinking $100 would be fair and make the deal worth her time.
 
if it’s an inactive site that’s generating 0 income then it’s going to cost her around 35$ to renew and host for another year. Is offer her 50$ to save her 35$. It’s all relative tho, how much is it worth to you.
 
From her point of view she registered this name because she wanted to own it, and a business has reached out to her unsolicited to buy the name. I doubt she bought it by mistake or is looking for a $50 escape ladder.

If that was me, and you offered $100, that would pretty much end the conversation I think. I guess if she was planning to drop the name you could get lucky with $50 or $100 but I could see that backfiring too, especially if it's worth a lot more than that to you and a perceived lowball kills the deal.

If that's all you want to pay, might as well give it a shot, but if you'd be willing to spend $500, $1000 on the name (Which isn't crazy at all to ask/expect when someone tracks you down specifically wanting your name when you haven't been advertising it for sale anywhere) I'd probabally toss $250 out there and see what she said - at least it should get you a response. Maybe she would have taken $50, maybe she wants $10,000.

I think if she notices you bought the .co that bumps up the price at least a bit, too. I couldn't imagine buying the .co and spending $50ish in 366 days for reg fees and only offering $50 to own the .com. However long you plan to run this site in years * the yearly reg fee on the .co = you can realistically bake that into your offer.

It's tough to say without seeing the name (You can PM me if you'd like and I can give a better answer to what she might be expecting / what you should pay), but for this type of situation I don't think $100 is going to be tempting enough but definitely keep us posted how it turns out, I'm curious to see.
 
Potatoe said:
From her point of view she registered this name because she wanted to own it, and a business has reached out to her unsolicited to buy the name. I doubt she bought it by mistake or is looking for a $50 escape ladder.
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This is sort of my thinking as well - she's held onto it for 20 years now, and the misspelling is the official name of her business, despite her main domain being the correctly-spelled domain with additional keywords.

(I realize I'm not being transparent enough to avoid confusion - here's a sort of hypothetical parallel: Let's say I invented some sort of protective garden canopy and I want to call it "Guarden." I go to buy guarden.com, only it redirects to gardenguard.com, which advertises a pesticide called "Guarden." I then offer to buy guarden.com from the owner of gardenguard.com)

In the end though, I realized the domain's only worth about $100 to me - I may be willing to negotiate up to about $150, but that's it. It may just not be worth it for either of us, which is fine.

I sent the $100 offer and will update when I hear back, thanks!
 
Okay.. I may have been well off with 50$.. I didn’t know she’s had it for 20 years.

Good luck, hope she takes the offer!
 
Golan said:
So, how it's going? :wonder:
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Haha well no response back so I bet she felt lowballed :tongue:

I'm gonna let things cool down and maybe send over a better offer a month or two down the line, or just go with a different name altogether. Nothing's set in stone yet.
 
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