Of course, if you are not in need of cash you can just wait a bit more, maybe, JUST MAYBE, there will be someone else with a better offer.

I have rejected an offer of 1000 euros a few years ago. No other offer came in since. Maybe I had the impression that my site worth more than 1000 but.. the marketplace said “NO”..

I wanted write $ 690 not 670.
690, 700, also 685 but not 688 ….

I hope you will remember this for the future…

$ 688 is an offer coming clearly from a “mad” person, someone who lives only for his personal self-esteem”, making wars that are not a work but only something that only some lucky persons can do.

You lost in this case (I repeat, you lost because he made the best things: he, like you, is not a mind reader).
688 can be only an offer coming from a player, certainly not from an end user.
670 if you want, but not 688.

688 means: ATTENTION: A “MAD” IS WAITING YOU TO AN AMBUSH

If you receive an offer from a “mad” person, a player and nothing more – certainly not an end user – you will try “to securize” the situation…

What Sedo has done is essentially turn their “Buy it Now” price into an “Opening Bid Price” which is absolutely not what “Buy it Now” is supposed to be.

I once needed a domain in a hurry for a project and reluctantly paid the Buy-it-Now price, only to find out that the domain had been pushed to auction.

What did I do? I told Sedo to f**k off, and they could sue me. (Yeah, sue me for $250. LOL) And I canceled my Sedo account. I will never buy from them again.

You can tell me I broke the rules. But that’s business. There are contracts and there are penalties in business, and there are times when it pays to tell someone to F off despite everything else.

Yes, there are dangers to Push-To-Auction. And the primary one IMHO is that the buyer takes off and leaves the seller whining into his beer about “deadbeat buyers”.

Tough shite. My advice is set a selling price and stick to it — or auction it off. But don’t force your buyer to wait around for competing bids. That’s just plain annoying.

Seems like the rules of sedo, doesn’t allow him to send you a courteousy notice to say you either pay him $1 k or he will send it to auction with your offer as the starting price.

By the way, when he send it to auction, your offer is no longer biding right? The only leverage he has was people know your offer for the name right? Once he send it to auction, do you have the option to walk away?

If those were the rules, I think the man did the right thing.
The only other question I have is, if he said $1 k and you said no, does sedo still let him send to auction with your previous offer as the starting bidding price?

push-to-auction is only for domains listed with the negotiable format.

“Buy Now” means “Buy Now”. Period.

If I’m on a website and something has a price and a button next to it that says “Buy Now”, I’m interested because I believe this is available to me at this price, now.

If suddenly the seller changes the terms under my feet and pushes to auction, I don’t care if it’s binding or not — I don’t pay. And I register a new account under an employees name. (I’m on my third now).

Fuck anyone who tries this shit with me. It’s dishonest. Period.

Sedo should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this sketchy shit.

Another sold for 50 times its value. Both times the seller wrote a lazy one liner regarding future value. I want something that already has value, instead of waiting 10 years to see any real growth.

Because of closing the deal early, I managed to receive the funds the next day. If I had the time to wait, I would have pushed the domain into the auction. Out of respect for the buyer, I avoided pushing the domain into the auction. I could have pushed the domain, but then the company may have risk losing the domain. I
was fair, and it all worked out.

It really depends on the seller’s situation. Not every domain investor makes a good living. What if they needed the extra money to pay their rent or car payment. When you’re playing around with small amounts, there is a need for extra money.

If you were bidding on a $20,000 domain, then both parties most likely have money to throw around. If you really wanted the domain, you would have made the sacrifice to go after it. Some people don’t have the time to play around with back and forth negotiations that may not result in a sale.

The strategy is to make an immediate counteroffer. Give it a few days. If you don’t hear from the buyer, then reduce your offer. 15% of the asking price. Wait a day. If you don’t back from the buyer, or they never contacted you beyond the first offer, send one more counter at 10% less than the second amount.

Most likely, the buyer knows that you’re interested in selling the domain, and not asking some outrageous price. As you’re looking to make you first sell, I wouldn’t get stuck in a offer/counteroffer war.

You can’t expect to make a fortune on your first sale. On my first domain sale, the process involved a Go Daddy offer/counteroffer. I received an offer through e-mail. I replied back with a counteroffer. The buyer upped their offer. I replied back with the same price. The buyer sent one last offer. I sent another counteroffer with the reason why I was staying firm on the price. They accepted the offer. I sold the domain.

It really depends on the domain and the price difference. There are some domains where I may not rush a sale because of their commercial value, but the rest have flexibility.

You can usually determine the value of the product or service through looking in the search engine. When you countered with 4 times the amount, the buyer is not going to respond, especially when the two amounts are so far apart.

It’s up to you to make it worthwhile. I’m sure that you know the value of the domain. If I want to sell a domain for $800, I know that I’ll take $500 as the lowest offer. If a buyer sends me an offer of $400, and I counter with $1600, that deal will be dead unless I take the initiative to send another offer closer to the amount I’m looking to make, and without reason of the buyer.

If you need the money, then I would try to work out the deal quickly. If you have time to wait, then work on finding a common ground in the price. Unless you paid a fortune for the domain, you have plenty of profit room.

As a seller, I don’t mind whether I or the buyer has an upper hand. It really depends on the domain. If I’m trying to sell a nice domain I originally wanted to keep, I will probably invest more time into trying to get the best price – taking the leadership role in selling the domain.

I believe that when you receive an offer at Why Park, the buyer will e-mail you. They give you an opportunity to link your sales page to Sedo or Go Daddy. I think it’s more of a private negotiation. Don’t quote me on that. All my domains are hosted at Why Park.

Recap: Receive offer, counteroffer, don’t hear back in a few days, counteroffer at 15% less than the original, wait a day, no response, send one last offer for 10% less than your last offer. Most likely you’ll receive a response.

Sometime you have to part with your domains. I see many people pricing them at 20 times or more than their value. These domains sit around with no action. I find these domains on the drop, and then sell them. It takes work to make a sale. It’s rare that I receive a random offer. I value the offers I do receive.

I won’t pay $2000 for a domain that is only worth $50. If I really want a domain that is only worth $200, but I know will be valuable in the future, then I may pay 4 times the value. It really depends on the domain. Domain age plays a role, as well.

This is all from experience. While I’m no pro, my strategy is working for me. Good luck.

Poor Uncle,

Every Sedo transaction is an island unto itself. There’s no way of knowing before hand if any action you take is a bad move.

You received an offer.

You countered.

The Seller could have countered with a higher offer but never did.

How can you know what would happen before hand?

The Buyer could have countered and the sale stays alive or the Buyer could have canceled the negotiations and the sale would be dead.

When you didn’t hear from the Buyer again, you as the Seller could have counter-offered as Jason suggested but realize every counter-offer you make has to be for a lesser amount than your previously Selling offer.

Therefore you are really putting the Buyer in the driver’s seat.

I’m not saying this is what you should have done but had you sent the domain to auction your Selling price would either have gone up or would have stayed at the initial offer (as long as the Buyer pays).

–
“The name I got an offer was thru Whypark.com. Do they have auction where I can send the name to auction instead of playing the counter offer game?”

You have nothing to lose by contacting WhyPark as Elliot suggested but realize that WhyPark is not a Domain Marketplace.

If you received an offer for your domain, where exactly would it be pushed to auction?

1) When I make an offer for a domain name, it’s generally an educated offer in my opinion. If someone replies to my offer with a price of 4x+ my offer, I may cancel negotiations knowing we aren’t that close, although it really depends on the amount of money involved. Usually I will counter offer as long as the person doesn’t reply 10x or more.

2) Yes – had nobody else bid on it, I would have paid $688 and probably would have paid for privacy too.

I am not sure if WhyPark has that type of system, but you can email craig@whypark.com to ask.

And just to make a point, has anybody some example of a big art auction house (Christies, Sotheby’s, etc…) working with the offer/counter offer mechanism ?

Auctions with start, reserve and BIN prices would be much clearer and better for both buyers and sellers. The only good thing to keep in SEDO is the principle of the permanent listing with the first bid starting a time limited auction (“auction in progress” listing offers the right visibility to “hot” domains).

Another interesting new feature could be a decreasing auction (price periodically reduced until sold). This would help some domainers to clear out their portfolio, while giving others some bargain opportunities.

Just some thoughts.

Your mistake was not sending another counteroffer. If the buyer never responded, they elected to wear you down. When the seller has to wait, they may contemplate whether the counteroffer is too high or if the buyer is no longer interested in the domain.

Which domain were you trying to sell? You usually know exactly what you want for a specific domain. I received an offer, and sent a counteroffer. I did receive an offer againuntil after I fired out 2 more counteroffers – 3 in total. When the buyer sent a second offer, I accepted the offer.

Answer to the outrageous counteroffer – NO. They won’t respond until you send a counteroffer that is within their price range. Four times an offer is extreme. Silence is the method to negotiate.

But recently I got my very first offer for one of my domain names. I counter his offer and asked for 4 times as much simply to see how he would react. Needless to say, I never heard from him again! Bad move on my part or is it?

I have the following questions:

1. If someone is serious enough to make an offer, won’t he usually at least respond even if the counter is outrageous?

2. Was Elliot required to buy the name when it got sent to Auction with his counter offer price if there weren’t anyone else interested in the name?

The name I got an offer was thru Whypark.com. Do they have auction where I can send the name to auction instead of playing the counter offer game?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Why wouldn’t I try to get my full asking price rather than settling at a price I’m not particularly happy with?

Unfortunately, my efforts have only generated another offer once, but it doubled the push price that time. I would feel like I was cheating myself if I didn’t make every effort to get as much as possible for a name. Particularly, if I had countered with what I felt was a fair price for the name.

If a bidder makes an offer, and the owner counters, you have to realize that Sedo offers this push-to-auction option. There’s nothing underhanded or unfair about it. I’ve seen a fair number of complaints like this in the forums where the bidder acts like the domain owner has done something egregious by sending the name to auction. That’s nonsense, IMHO.

I think you took it way too personally. If you didn’t want to pay the asking price immediately, you could’ve put in a proxy bid for your limit after it went to auction, and then you’d either have the domain, or you’d have the satisfaction that someone had paid more than you were willing to.

You said it yourself… you cut off your nose to spite your face.

The owner has a huge disadvantage at Sedo because there is no way to assess the buyer. That leads me, and probably a lot of other people, to assume that the bidder is an end-user and try to get top dollar for any name that gets bid on.

I think anyone who gets a bid at Sedo should use every possible tool available to them to get top dollar. If that offends the initial bidder… cést la vie.

I don’t think the seller did anything wrong, he didn’t know what you were thinking, and he just used the Sedo platform options available to him.

From the buyers perspective, the most he’d get from you was $1000, he already had the $688 offer, so perhaps the chance of pushing it to auction and getting more than $1,000 was worth more to him than the extra few hundred he’d possibly get from you.

It’s funny that it’s not just price that affects these negotiations, but also emotions.