My first Dan transaction (1.Viewing)

The morons were out in force yesterday, but here's the one that stood out:

I received an offer on a domain at dan. It started with a $1K offer, negotiated back and forth, we finally agreed to a price in upper 4 figs, and the domain was marked "sold". Since I've never had a dan transaction, I was looking at the various options and saw the invoice options. I looked at the buyer invoice that showed their billing name, which was:

No Ni@@ers Ltd.
<address in toronto>

And yeah, you read that right, and no, those weren't really @ symbols.

As soon as I saw that, I messaged Dan and told them to investigate this buyer and that I seriously doubted he would pay anyways. Dan said they immediately cancelled the transaction and banned the user. So that was good on Dan to be decisive. So they earned some respect for that.

The buyer's name was also given in the transaction negotiations. I didn't expect it to be legit name and address, but I googled the rather unique name and it had just a couple hits related to gaming. I then googled the given address, and it corroborated the lastname, but with a different first name. But the house is a piece of crap, not something anyone with an average income would live in. Then to make it weirder, the name and address appears to be related to a very successful founder/ceo, also from Toronto. He lists himself as current ceo/cofounder/boardmember on 5 companies, one of which I remember being on Dragon's Den a ways back. And there are only two people in all of Canada with that name on LinkedIn.

I was really considering trying to make contact, but have decided to just let it drop rather than wasting my own time anymore...

In any case, not uncommon for the usual bogus offers, but this one was especially egregious. I guess my first Dan transaction will have to wait after all...

Hehe, had a few bad ones on Dan too, the one that stands out was a 25k offer and the guy gave me his PayPal account to pay to.

I politely asked him why he expected me to be pay for my domain?

Oh boy.. this is hilarious!

likely the person was using a made up name, so this celebrity isn't the actual person you were dealing with?

No, it appears that it was someone related. When I googled the buyer's name and billing address, it came up as owned by this CEO guy - who has the same last name. So one possibility is that this guy may own some homes that relatives live in.

With a billing name like that, I can't imagine any of the info they put down would have been real. Surely the billing name doesn't exist anywhere?

no, obviously that company name doesn't exist. Its just weird that the address even existed (meaning they took the time to put an actual address and matching postal code) and also that the lastname associated to that address was the last name associated to the dan account (but that the first name didn't match). Seems a bit too coincidental to just be randomly chosen.

I have never had a transaction at dan yet but I have to assume the buyer didn’t realize that info can be seen by you. So I find it hard to believe that the address info is incorrect.

Sporadic morons aside, I have had multiple good experiences as buyer and seller (depending on the transaction) using DAN.com. They don't work weekends, so like Sedo, transactions can get bogged down over the weekend. Their payment plan setup is slick, allows buyers to get their credit cards auto-dinged for purchases. Escrow.com does not offer that feature.

MaiTaiMan said:

Their payment plan setup is slick, allows buyers to get their credit cards auto-dinged for purchases. Escrow.com does not offer that feature.

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I agree that is a nice feature, in theory. I've been offering payment plans for many years and I find it is very rarely taken. Not never, just very rare.

My observation is that when it comes to payment plans or leases, either they will buy it, or they don't. Those that don't are simply hung up on the overall price. Even if they can easily afford it, they just stubbornly refuse to pay. So the idea of spreading the purchase out over payments doesn't overcome the rejection of the overall price.

Domain inquiries have been super quiet for me in 2022, usually there is a flurry to start a year but I'm wondering if the economy/inflation/uncertainty is having an effect? Seems domains are selling every week regardless though when I look at the Sedo reports and DNJournal.

Despite that I've been slowly putting almost all of my domains on Dan, probably over half so far. I find it easy to use as a seller compared to others, and I think the look and layout of the landing pages are good for buyers. Looking forward to the first few inquiries or sales so I can get an idea of how that part works too.

If there is a troubled economy ahead it will be interesting to see if domains hold up as they did in previous downturns through the 2000's. Thank goodness for the ongoing wave of new crypto, blockchain, defi, nft projects that all need a good domain.

[notify]domains[/notify], that's the fun thing about domains, a big sale can come out of nowhere, any time, any day. A slow year can turn into a good year at any moment. Every time you refresh your email inbox, it's like pulling the one-armed bandit, every sale notification is like hitting another jackpot.

I find that just about the time you're thinking its been very slow, that's when a decent sale comes through.

rlm said:

a big sale can come out of nowhere, any time, any day. A slow year can turn into a good year at any moment.

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That's what we all hope and wish, everyday.

The economy is starting to worry me, with interest rates increasing, gas prices skyrocketing, urban house prices and rents increasing daily, and inflation poised to get out of control.

When this starts filtering down I start listening, and from my kids, apparently this week all every kid can talk about is how expensive everything is and they're worried their parents won't be able to pay for it. Scary times.

That's why I've focused some investing on gold, silver, uranium, copper, nickel explorers/miners in recent years. Even without the invasion in Ukraine commodities were all slowly moving up with supply/demand imbalance, and government debt and money printing going out of control. We could be heading into prolonged serious times for the economy, not the short dips we've experienced since before 2000. I hope not but governments have almost no chance of ever paying back their debt, they keep having to run deficits because govt revenues don't cover their expenses, they can't raise interest rates to a meaningful amount that would fight inflation because it would crush everyone in higher interest payments. All the energy and grain prices you see going up now still haven't filtered through the economy and really been felt yet.

back on topic, I did get my first inquiry on Dan in the evening after my March 2 post, which might lead to a small $1500 US sale. If it does I'll post in the .ca sales thread here.

domains said:

back on topic, I did get my first inquiry on Dan in the evening after my March 2 post, which might lead to a small $1500 US sale. If it does I'll post in the .ca sales thread here.

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Awesome. Best of luck!

Hope everything works out well for you [notify]domains[/notify] and there will be many more during the year.

first sale on Dan looks like it's closing, for $1550 US

now a second Dan sale came in today, negotiated to $1875 US

I'd set my default min offer to $1500 for all my names, which is where both of these started, so now moved my min offer up to $1995 for everything.

I probably wouldn't have sold these two last year at these prices, but they are 'regular inventory' type domains, not my premiums, so right now I'm going for more sales/cashflow and not being hard on price (as hard as that is on me!). Taking the angle to try to make more sales for now, and maybe change back to harder negotiating when the time is right. If I leave some cash on the table for one or two names, hopefully that's made up somewhat in more sales volume. Funny no sales for months and now two in a week's time. Don't these happen in three's?

domains said:

Don't these happen in three's?

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It does.. but don't stop there..