I received an email this morning, out of the blue, offering me a fairly large sum of money to purchase my personal domain name. They don’t want my website, just the domain. The email was quite vague, came from a Yahoo account with no name associated with it (only initials) and was signed not with a name, but with a handle. They offered no other means of contact other than response back to the Yahoo account.
Now, I do have a domain name that is only 5 characters long, and it’s a .com, but I don’t know…this seems kinda odd to me.
If I were to negotiate with this person and come to an agreement on price, how could one be sure that you would get paid before you transfer the domain?
I hear about so many scams on the internet nowadays…stolen and phished internet accounts, PayPal accounts, credit card accounts, even cashier’s checks, and that you don’t find out that they are going to bounce until after the other party is long gone with your goods…
I’d just want to make sure I had myself completely covered in something like this.
My personal advice regarding any major internet transaction is to take it off the internet. Reply to the person’s yahoo account and say that you might consider selling your domain name but you’d want to talk about it person to person. Ask for their phone number. Talk to them on the phone. Everyone who’s legitimate would be willing to do that. It’s a good first step and gets you a whole lot more subtle clues you can use about whether something is on the level.
I got screwed once. I had a domain name, and someone made an offer. But first he asked that I get it “appraised” he even gave me a list of appraisers that he likes. I looked though them, found one that was free and did it, I was some huge amount of money (like $7000) so I told him he could have it for $3000. Then he said he’d much rather I use this other service (also on the original list, but it was a pay service). I ponied up the money, had it appraised, came out to about the same amount and I never heard from him again. Wanna guess who probably owns the appraisal site.
So my piece of advice is, if anyone asks you to have the site appraised, tell them that they are more then welcome it have it appraised, at their own cost.
Each party should pay for its own appraisal. If you don’t want one, don’t pay for one. The buyer should not expect you to pay for his appraisal. And domain name appraisals aren’t worth much anyway.
I considered getting into the domain name market myself, (buying new or expired names and selling them at a profit), but didn’t get too far.
Years back I had a bad experience with Network Solutions and they had a famous criminal case, (or ethics?), that almost made the company fold. They’ve had new management–several times–and the last I read, some months back, they are still going through changes.
I use http://www.godaddy.com for my domain services. I’ve been with them for years, good service, but I don’t know how ethical they are when it comes to appraisal or auction. I like their automatic renewal system. And they have a feature where you can watch a domain to see if it becomes available, but this is a longshot and at $20 a year, probably not worth the money.
The buyer may not want you to know from where he comes as this may affect the price. You are more likely to ask for a larger sum from GE, or Bectel, or some other giant. Those guys would probably have an attorney handle this on the QT.
The days of huge sums for domain names may be over. There are companies who have registered almost every conceivable domain in the hopes of finding a buyer.
There are aprasial sites, and there are auction sites. You might start here for background information. Maybe what you need is an agent, if such a thing exists.
Color me ignorant about cyber commerce, but why does either party need to get anything appraised? It is what it is right? Sounds like a gimmick. (all appraisals, not just the ones that are clearly rip-offs as mentioned earlier)
I can’t imagine an apprasal would be needed in this case unless I was unsure what I thought the domain was worth. The other party has made their offer, so clearly they have decided what they think the domain is worth. Of course, like any negotiation, I’m sure they have started low and expect to negotiate up.
I had no plans to sell the domain as I’ve had it for a number of years and it holds sentimental value to me as well as being somewhere that I know people will come looking for me even if they don’t know where I am on the net now. Giving that up would take a fair chunk of change.