Deal or no deal? eNom leaves money on the table.
Back in February I made an offer on a domain at AcquireThisName.com, an eNom affiliate. It wasn’t a great name, just a brandable that a friend was interested in. eNom wanted $6,000; my friend’s final offer was $400 since we were so far off.
Flash forward to November and eNom is letting the domain drop, likely to earn little or nothing for the domain it could have had $400 or more for. Here’s an email I received from the company:
Hello Andrew,
You were previously in contact with Acquire This Name about purchasing the domain name [redacted.com]. While we were not able to reach a sale agreement for the domain at that time, we want to let you know that the domain will soon be available in auction thru (sic) NameJet.com. If you are interested in bidding on the name in auction, please visit the domain redacted.com for more information. In general, the bid minimum bid price for the domains at NameJet start between $29-69 USD.
Feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions.
Regards,
Your AcquireThisName Team
I know $400 isn’t much. But it goes to show that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Had eNom made a reasonable counter offer, they probably could have sold the domain for $1,000. When you have a brandable name with few potentially interested parties who have other options, it’s worth trying to close a deal rather than lose it.
jorge says
Does eNom have real sales people, or is it just an automated platform?
similar_experience says
I won’t say the name that I now own but it is a fairly strong retail product name with 1,300 exact searches on google. I offered the owner $850 and he wanted like $10,000 and I laughed. Out of curiosity I looked 9 months later and the dipshit let it drop without contacting me. I now own it for $8. This is a true story and I couldn’t believe it.
Conclusion: During the metioric increase of the fiat money supply from 1971 to present day enabled a lot of morons to just show up and acquire assets that appreciated, not because they were smart. Now these same morons are going broke and have no business sense during this collapse.
todaro says
me too… offered the owner $2000… was turned down… six months later it had a new owner who probably picked it up on a drop and wanted $500 for it… offered him $250 and he took it. people are funny.
everything.tv says
Great point Andrew, seems to be the enom way. $400 was fair for that name. I just picked up a name for $7 hand reg that I see the name got bought for $700 Afternic in 2007.
A friend of mine offered a guy $2000 for a name, he came back with much higher counter offer. Months later he puts on Bido and my friend gets it for $400. Crazy industry.
Unasi says
Larger guys simply do not have time to waste on small sale, the time it takes has more value then the domain. Larger the guy, higher the threshhold
C says
I encounter this on a semi-regular basis.
I’ve gotten emails two years after initial contact offering to sell the domain at my original offer…
There are two types of people in this business. Those who make money and those who ‘hope’ for some delusional payday that will never come.
I’d guess a full 90% of ‘domainers’ don’t have the slightest clue about why certain domains sell for what they do or how to assess quality… All they know is that if business.com sold for millions, than surely ebusiness653.vc must be worth a portion of that… Or, on a broader level, if “any given domain” sold for any given price, then their flaming bag of crap domain should sell in that price range, too.
Part of the reason this space is just so easy for otherwise intelligent people is that most of the participants are complete morons. Hate to say it, but it’s the way it is.