Domain Name Bartering

Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
99
Likes
102
Degree
0
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.
 
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.

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!
 
So, how it's going? :wonder:
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.
 
Back