how to successfully negotiate parked domain?

June 29, 2010 5:19 PM

What's the most successful strategy to bid on a domain name that's already been registered?

Visiting the domain leads to a generic placeholder. There's a link to sedo to "make an offer" and another page with a contact form. The registrant's identity is masked by a proxy service.

I don't have a large budget ($1,200) and want to maximize my chances of obtaining it at this price. I am concerned about screwing up the negotiation and pushing the price out of my range, as I am not a great negotiator.

Should I use the contact form or just bid directly from the sedo page? If I use the contact form, how should I present my interest, and should I make the first offer? If I were to bid at sedo, what I should enter as my initial offer? Any other tips or strategies that could help me?

There was another question about this here but it's more about potential squatting than just outright buying.

posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

I've bought a handful of domains via sedo parking pages. For the first one, there was already a named price, so I just paid it without negotiation. (I needed it in a hurry.) For the second one, I knew what my budget was (roughly the same as your $1200, actually), so I started bidding low. I offered $750. The owner came back with $1500. We ended up at $1200.

So, I'd say make a low offer, but not something stupidly low (like twenty bucks). Get ready for some back and forth.

(Sidenote: Why not let the other party name a price first? That works in some negotiations when you have a fairly good idea of where prices will end up. But in something like this, my belief is that the first person to make an offer "frames" the discussion. If you let them go first and they say $5000, well you're not going to get the domain for $1200.)
posted by jdroth at 5:32 PM on June 29, 2010

I also suggest not visiting the site too many times. If the owner sees a lot of hits she will judge it as interest and may think the price should be higher.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:25 PM on June 29, 2010 [1 favorite]