domains said:
Very nice sale, what can you say about the negotiation? Do you think the singular would be worth more?
Ok, sure, here's the blow by blow:
I was initially contacted by an independent domain broker late October, 2019, but I recognized the email as having worked surreptitiously on behalf of Mark Monitor. Its a good example of where just a little bit of research and the buyer was fairly obvious to me, despite using a broker. I felt pretty confidently in the driver's seat of this right from the start.
I started with "make your best offer". They started at @ 2500 USD. Since they clearly wanted to talk in USD, I continued to negotiate in USD. I said I was very interested in buying another domain myself, and that it was $20K USD, so if they would pay that, then I could get the domain I wanted, they could get the domain they wanted. So my price was $20K USD, otherwise I was happy to just keep the domain.
Next they said no way to $20K but they could do $5K. I said no thanks, but best of luck.
A couple weeks later, she responded with, I'm sure you have some flexibility on $20K, give me your price.
I said it was still $20K USD.
They increased to $7500 USD.
I responded with a no thanks, I understand its expensive, if its not worth it to you, no problem, I understand. Pick a two-word variation for $20. Best of luck!
Next they offered $10K. I ignored them. A few days later, they responded with, "you're really not interested at $10K?" I said no. By now its December.
Mid January they say $10K was really their best price. I said no, but best of luck! But I did say that I recently happened to notice that this domain was getting upwards of 500 unique visitors per day.
Then crickets for 6 months.
Exactly 6 months to the day from her last email, she follows up with a "where are you at with this price?" I said no change here. She said, maybe we have some more flexibility on our end. I said great because I'm not motivated to be flexible. Business is going great with everyone wanting to get their businesses online right now! I presume as a broker, you're seeing the same?
Late July they came back with $15K. I replied with:
"Clearly your client wants the domain, they keep coming back to it. As it stands they're just losing valuable time using the domain, when they're probably going to eventually buy it anyways. So if you can get to $20k, feel free to initiate an escrow.com transaction (my escrow email address is the same). We could potentially have the domain transferred this week."
Two days later, the escrow transaction was initiated and agreed to at $20K USD. It took them about a month to fund the transaction. Closed on Aug 26, escrow wire payment hit my account Aug 29.
So if there's any lessons to be taken from this, know when you're in the driver's seat and hold out and be patient, its worth it. A large corporation may not even plan to use the domain right away. It is common for them to just buy a domain and sit on it. The bigger the corporation, the more likely that is true. So time is not urgent for them. They'll sit and wait and hope you blink. In this case I think I just wore them out, they wanted to just get it over with, even though they didn't even need it right away - as evidenced by the fact that the domain is dead to this day. This whole exercise was probably done by Mark Monitor, convincing their client's lawyers they needed this, despite no IT or business people on the client side who even really wanted the domain. Otherwise they'd have had the sense to at least redirect the domain to the .com.