MrFrisbee

Hi,

I hope this is not inappropriate to post, however, I have been asked by someone to try to buy them "play*lister*.com" domain which is registered by showing as for sale at domainnamesales.com. (Remove the * from the domain - not sure if this helps to "hide" someone finding it but I am just trying to be careful about who might see this. I hope this does not trigger a lecture, but I am going in a bit blind on how to best do this.)

When I show interest through the site, I get asked to make a minimum offer of $3,000 but it is not worth that (at least not to my client).

Any ideas how to best approach them without all the domainnamesales.com nonsense or is this the only way? I am not sure if the $3,000 is a "this is the minimum we will take" or a way to block certain offers.

Any ideas what I might offer for this domain?

Any tips welcome.
Thanks
Charles.

bensd

playlister.co.uk is free to register

viceroy

Good luck with that one.
A bit old but still relevant: http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/domain...ation-inc.html.

Edwin

Bad luck, you're flat out not going to be able to buy it - time to find a Plan B. It's owned by one of the largest domain portfolio holders in the world, and his organisation doesn't sell cheap. The $3,000 is almost certainly not the asking price (which will be higher or MUCH higher) it's a simple filter that lets them only look at enquiries from companies with at least "some" budget...

Until recently, they were posting their enquiries on their blog - they get hundreds every single day so you can see why they're in no hurry to let any particular domain go...
http://domainnamesales.com/blog/

__________________
Memorable Domains Ltd - Over 7,000 descriptive, generic .co.uk domains for sale
Please note: All sale prices over a week old are automatically invalid. No exceptions. Thanks!

wb

I think it depends how far away your offer is going to be, as it may not be out of the question for them to accept less.

The same registrant sold BreakdownCover.com recently for $25,000. Even though it's not a global term, it seems very cheap to me.

Where does it mention about the $3,000 minimum? As far as I can see on the page below it only has a message field, which wouldn't be possible to block offers automatically.

http://domainnamesales.com/domain/playlister.com

MrFrisbee

Once you register initial interest for the domain you get emailed a link to the page asking for offers of $3K or more.

I have registered the .co.uk for them anyway (did it today so may not show for a few hours) - just need to asses what the value of the .com is to the client. It is not high at the moment but the price being asked will no doubt go up as soon as they launch something.

Anyway, lets see what happens. I was trying to get a feel for how the land lies - seems it may be hard to get unless they are happy to offer at least $5k perhaps.

I seem to remember that you may have rights to a domain if you have a company registered with that name and a trademark too.

Any other tips welcomed.

Charles.

wb

That won't be the case in this instance, it would be an attempt at reverse domain-hijacking.

MrFrisbee

I just managed to post an email request to them and within 30 seconds I had the reply below...


Hello Charles,
I spoke to the registrant and the lowest he will go at this point is $16,000.00 USD based on a quick completion. Prices honoured for 7 days.
Best
Dan

I wrote back to say that they must have been sitting with the client to get a reply that quick (also suggested they put a delay on their auto responder).

Told them that they were out by more than a factor of 10 but if they were willing to make a sensible suggestion I would go back the client to consider it.

MrFrisbee

What would make you say this?

In a previous role I once (about 12 years ago) started a UDRP and actually got the registrant to not only return the domain, but they paid us to take it back (covering some costs).

Charles.

Edwin

There is no 3rd party "client" behind Name Administration Inc.'s names - they own what they're selling, so it's super-easy for their sales team to bounce a price back to you (e.g. using a pre-prepared semi-automated email based on their private price list) as they don't have to get anyone else involved in the decision-making process.

It's hardly rocket science. We used to do the same thing (on a much smaller scale) before we started posting all our prices publicly: I had an offline Excel file with the prices for everything and I just pasted the relevant price into my form email reply, which meant we got back to an enquirer inside a couple of minutes if I happened to have been refreshing my email.

I suspect they've got things a lot more automated than "an Excel file" but you get the idea...

__________________
Memorable Domains Ltd - Over 7,000 descriptive, generic .co.uk domains for sale
Please note: All sale prices over a week old are automatically invalid. No exceptions. Thanks!