Trying to buy a domain? Call, don't email!

[Fribble]

I know, many people call right off the bat, and I've seen the other threads with this advice and just didn't follow it. Bad Fribble.

About five years ago I registered a .net that I liked because the .com was taken. I built a site up on it and now that site earns me a good six figures a year, but I've always regretted going with the .net because I would see the .com sitting there, covered with ads, no content, occasionally a virus, doing nothing but skimming the traffic I built and hurting my brand. I had sent no less than a dozen emails to the registrant's email address, and never had a response.

For some reason, two days ago I just picked up the phone and called the number listed in the whois (duh), actually got the guy on the phone, and it turns out that he had no idea that I had established the .net and was assuming the type-in's were just dumb luck. Suffice it to say I paid quite a bit less than I expected to for the domain and am stoked to get rid of the garbage on the .com and just forward it to the .net

The moral of the story? Just call!

[jmccormac]

Phone calls often get treated more seriously than random e-mails. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But the catch is that you don't know until you try.

Regards...jmcc

[minnapple]

In my experience, a conversation by voice always converts far better than text in any situation.

[piatkow]

Most people who aren't in the business of domain squatting will most likely regard an offer to "buy" the domain as some sort of phishing scam and zap the email.

[quesera]

I get emails about buying domains all the time. I always ignore them. If I get a second one from the same person, I always reply "the domain is not for sale at this time".

I think this is mostly because I don't have the energy to engage in email negotiations when I don't know whether to take the other person seriously. No one ever opens with an offer, perhaps if they did and it was interesting, I'd follow up. But since I'm not actively selling anything, they'd need to draw me into the process somehow.

No one ever calls. It feels wrong to say it, but in a case like this you can probably get a lot more mutual understanding in two minutes on the phone than 10 times that much time thinking about and writing email.

On the other hand, I really don't like unsolicited phone calls either, and there's no way in heck I'll ever return a voice mail inquiring about a domain...

[Webwork]

Nicely done. Thanks for revisiting the idea/solution to suggest its continued vitality.

Bad Fribble

Nah. More like:

"Good Fribble! Good developer! Here, you get a . . . domain!"

Who says you can't teach an old . . internet marketer new tricks? :)

[maximillianos]

I would most likely not answer th phone unless I knew who was calling. So email would work best.