The follow is a domain inquiry story from start to finish. From what I found, my action and the action of other parties involved.
This morning when I was digging around domains that were moving and I ran into the following information:
Lundbeck
Hand registered a bunch of variations of “Progress In Mind” domain names. They do not currently own ProgressInMind.com, as that is a blog and owned by Richard Sykes. I would bet Lundbeck
is trying to purchase the .com from Richard (I sent him a little helpful email for a heads up). The logo on Lundbeck includes the term Progress In Mind! Lundbeck is a global pharmaceutical
company specializing in brain disease.
The domains registered included:
progress-in-mind.biz
progress-in-mind.com
progress-in-mind.net
progress-in-mind.us
progressinmind.biz
progressinmind.net
progressinmind.us
Soooo, my email was replied by Richard first with a lie (which I didn’t appreciate) but was then followed up with the truth!
“In all honesty I sold the domain yesterday and I am trying to reverse the sale. I wish that I had received your email a day earlier tbh. Not sure if I can cancel a sale..”
A couple things… Lundbeck very likely registered the several variations of the domain names I listed above, because they were able to secure the domain name ProgressInMind.com . This tells me they knew what they were doing. Many people / companies will register what domain names they can, then contact the domain owner of the domain they want. Did Lundbeck use a domain broker? They may have and if they did, they likely used Corporation Service Company.
How did the interested party contact the ProgressInMind.com domain owner?
They contacted Richard via email with the following email:
Dear Sir,
Best regards,
and the email address used was a generic one, [email protected]
This is very common and I have seen this a fair amount of times… They will choose a “common name” and use a free email service to contact a domain owner. Kate Spade was used a lot in the past…
If you pay close attention to every detail within the email, with the weird font and changing font and poor grammar, different colors etc… I would have taken this email as “spam” and I may have not even replied! Another take on the format of the email, would be an individual with a language barrier.
How did the transaction take place?
After several emails back and forth, a price was agreed upon. The buyer requested that Richard list the domain name at GoDaddy Auctions with a Buy It Now price they agreed on. They then purchased the domain using the buy it now.
Pretty sly! Doing the auction allowed them to buy the domain right away, using the buy now. I’m sure this locked them in “legally” as well, if sellers remorse set in! The domain name is registered at GoDaddy and may have played a roll in them suggesting the GoDaddy Auctions route.
How much did the domain sell for?
$355
This price… simply made me say OUCH (for the seller). I mean, the guy had a website on this domain that he has put some heart and soul into! The domain itself, has only been registered for about a year, but still. Clearly the seller had no clue who the buyer was (nor would I doing research with info he provided me).
If the seller was happy with the $355 offer, that is perfectly fine. He clearly seemed fine with the price, because he sold it for that price. Clearly by me contacting him and giving him the insight that I had today, would make him change his mind on the sales price, but Day Late, Dollar Short is sometimes how it goes and it becomes a learning process.
Always sell for what you would be happy with, no matter who the buyer is!!!!
If I had to guess, the likely budget to obtain the domain was in the four figure range! Likely the lower four figures ($1K-$4K) or I don’t think CSC would even attempt it.
I did a good dead and tried contacting the domain owner to give him a warning but unfortunately for him, I was a day late! (Yes I own DayLate.com, because I too am often a day late and have poor luck) In the end, the info provided to the seller yesterday was not likely enough to tip off who the interested party was. The only clue, would have been doing a Google search of the matching term, in quotes! This would have resulted in seeing Lundbeck and he would have to assume it was them!
Great story but I’d have suggested buying it yourself for the flip. No good deed goes unpunished.
Scott,
Yes that would have been an option for me to take but not one I even considered (maybe I should have, maybe not). I was just trying to help the guy out, but I was a day late! It allowed me to write the story and hopefully translates into me helping more people at some point down the road. I do take risks from time to time, but mainly with hand registrations using some data that I dig. None of it ever leads anywhere yet, so I don’t do it often.
True story, keeps happening more than once every week. Big companies hiding behind random identities. I learned this the hard way after letting two or three sales go for cheaper than they should. These tips are priceless as they help big time.
First domain I sold was a dot net. Agreed to sell it to the .com owner for $320 plus two domains I wanted from his list. A week or two later I was tipped by a fellow domainer stating that the buyer’s .com (who I knew was having a lot of traffic) was actually bigger than I thought by making about $3000 daily from ad banners, and that his .com was blocked in the country where his advertisers where mainly targeting. The buyer’s best option was to move to .net to keep it going and he could easily paid more! I didn’t have this information prior to the sale so I sold for cheap in two phone calls! Yes I was a daylate.com
Another story was that I got a $500 offer for a gaming domain from a gmail account using a common name. After few weeks of negotiations I thought the price we reached was ok and agreed to sell the domain for $5k. I was checking whois every now and then to know what’s the buyers plans to use the domain for. The domain was transferred to the gmail account and kept a low profile for about three months. Then, truth was revealed when the new website was launched to be the new main website for a holdings group of websites that specialized in video games. The holding group already had big websites on good domains and I’m sure they could have gone higher.
But hey, I don’t call these sales a loss as I have learned a lot from them to negotiate better sales. I have since been doing my homework before agreeing to any sale inquiry and things has been in the rise! I caught many companies starting with a low ball $250-500 and uncovering their masks while going up to low five digits in few days!
Lesson here again is: Always ask for the price you’d be happy with regardless of who the buyer is. It’s a little risky but you won’t regret it later when the buyer accepts your asking price and the true buyer identity is revealed.
And btw, many thanks to you Jamie! You’ve always been an inspiration to me personally since the old dotweekly.com days in digging and coming up with information that is available on the internet but I never thought existed in the public web. I’m happy that you’re back again, keep it up!
Thanks for the kind words Ash and stopping by and adding your stories! I will keep trying my best and providing useful and interesting reads for my visitors!
Always worth my time Jamie 🙂
I am sick and tired of people with gmail addresses asking about our domains. They never ever get back to me. I don’t know why they would even enquire about the domain unless eg they own the .net and wonder what the .com is worth, but I’ve tried all kinds of strategies to get a response. I now ask them to offer a price and tell them I have a bad experience of people with gmail addresses. I don’t know why gmail in particular. I’ve offered joint development, staged payments, rental ANYTHING and they never ever come back.
What I don’t get is, why would they enquire in the first place unless they had a plan or a potential flip lined up. I’d happily help us both make money
If CSC was involved, there was a lot more money left on the table.
We’ll never know for certain, but these guys don’t work on small acquisitions.