I made an offer of $100 to someone who has a three letter dot com domain name. The dot com has two letters and a number. He came back to me with a $1000 figure.

What should I counter offer? What do you think a three char domain name (with one number) is worth? I don't want to spend more than $300.

Honestly, a 3-letter/number .com has not value for me. I really don't see anything appealing about them unless they happen to somehow represent your business. Buying a 3-letter/number .com for the hell of just having one is not a very good idea.

People tend to sell them for a lot more, since they are very scarce to come by, but I think you can still find some ..

If the domain represents your business somehow I would say go for it .. but max you should bid is around $200-250.

Thanks .. just my 2 cents.

Originally posted by mantra
If the domain represents your business somehow I would say go for it

BTW, yes, the domain name in question is representative of my business name. I am not thinking of reselling the domain name. It would be like the TV show "60 Minutes" also registering the domain name 60m.com (sorry, that's the best example I can think of right now). I am mostly looking for a domain name that is easier to type and remember.

The fact that it has a number in it makes me think that his price of $1000 is too high. I don't think the domain name is in high demand.

I have many two letter, one number domains and have never paid even the $100 you offered.

Well, if it represents your business and you are positive that it will help your business, I think you should go for it, but I wouldn’t go overboard, just set a limit and negotiate, if possible... Earlier this week I saw someone selling a 2 character domain name here on these forums and asking for $700. I wouldn’t go that far for a domain.

Originally posted by Incognito
I have many two letter, one number domains and have never paid even the $100 you offered.

How did you get them? Were they available or did you buy them from someone? Did you have a web site in mind for them or did you buy them with the intent of selling them?

Your offer of $100.00 for a two letter one number domain is very fair.

But ofcourse once someone has precisely the name that you want/need, a different story develops.

Whoever is selling it, is really trying to go for a "big drink" out of the deal as it is extremely unlikely that they would have purchased a two letter and one number .com for more than the original registration fee.

Due to the fact that there is so many 3char combinations available, the person selling the name really does not have much bargaining power as he will not be getting killed in the rush of bids for the name.

Option 1,
As always, "cash talks" so just make up your mind how much you are willing to go to and make a once only offer. Mean it when you make it and make sure that they understand that it is a once only offer and they will have to make a decision as to whether to keep the name or pocket the cash.

Option 2,
Even though a $1000 is a lot for a 3char domain, if it is going to enhance your business and genereate additional income, then maybe you should go for it!

Not neccessarily a difficult decision to make, just depends on your negotiation strengths and tactics :)

Have fun!

Phil

I suggest holding back for a while and dont contact him at all.

After that he will start thinking..

"hmm.. maybe I should have taken that $100... "

after that, send him an email and offer him $200. Include something along the lines of "by the way its fine if you won't let me have the domain because I have an alternative one in mind and its still available.."


chances are, you will get it because he will remember kicking himself for not accepting the money so he will not want to make the same mistake again.

why exactly do you want a three letter .com?

you may want to visit 3la.org where you may find a .net or .org with three letters that you like. and it will only cost you as much as you normally pay at whichever registrar you use.

I thik the difference is that this particular 3 character .com has some significance to you, as opposed to just any 3 character .com. As was said, this tends to up the price (hopefully you didn't express that you wanted this particular one, but if you did, you'll probably end up paying more for this one).

If you don't want to spend more than $300, then I'd make an offer of $200 and beg about how you're poor (hey anything to get the price down right?). Work up to your $300 max if you like or do what you feel is right. As the buyer, you are the one setting the maximum you'll spend.

If he refuses to sell for your $200/$250/$300 offers, tell him that he has a buyer set to go for $250 should he ever want to sell the domain. Not much else you can do.

Originally posted by bababooey
I made an offer of $100 to someone who has a three letter dot com domain name. The dot com has two letters and a number. He came back to me with a $1000 figure.

What should I counter offer? What do you think a three char domain name (with one number) is worth? I don't want to spend more than $300.
Go to http://www.domainloft.com/ - $99 for 3 letter extensions.

A .com domain with two letters and a number is worth $8.95 to me. ;) Plenty of them are still available. For example, b9k.com, b9k.net, and b9k.org are all available. You could go register the entire set right now. A .com domain with three letters is different though. I haven't been able to find many of those.

A few clarifications for this interesting ongoing discussion :D

3-letter dot com domains, as in ABC.com are rare and valuable. Whoever asked an owner of a 3-letter domain to sell it to them for $100 was probably laughed at. $1,000 is a conservative evaluation of a 3-letter .COM as it depends on the kind of vowels and consonants in the name. 3-letter .COM domains can reach several thousand dollars in the resale market.

About the 3-char .COM domains - and notice I am always referring to .COM domains - their reselling value varies even more. Personally, I register and resell such 3-char (alphanumeric) .COM domains that satisfy the following criteria:

1. Do not start or end with a zero e.g. AB0.com

2. Preferably start with a letter e.g. A2K.com

3. Preferably start with 2 letters or two numbers e.g. AZ7.com or 68X.com

4. Have some phonetic or visual qualities: e.g. G8K.com can be "gatekeeper" and M4U.com can be "me for you". I have also sold FL6.com, which in lower case looks like fl6.com - you can be a real fighter pilot with this one.

5. Lots of such domains mean something in other languages, such as Korean, Chinese or Japanese. I have several instances where the buyers were Chinese and they snagged my domains that contained X or 8. Xing is one of the most common names in China, and 8 is the Chinese lucky number.

The people that don't realize the value of these short domains - they are easy to remember, easy to type and can be meaningful - can be assured that I have sold 100+ domains of this kind in the past 6 months.

Concerning other extensions - TLDs - I only register .NET 3-char domains that contain 1 letter and 2 consecutive identical numbers, or 2 identical consecutive letters and 1 number, such as: F99.net, SS3.net etc. Again, these are valuable for the same reasons as above.

Incognito can vouch for me on this as he has been a highly valued purchaser of my domains :D

As a final addition, after re-reading the original posting, I can say that if the domain means that much to you then the $100 was decent (for a 3-char .COM) but the bottom line is that your interest in a name automatically raises the ante for the current owner. He can either play hard to get or he can be smart and try to negotiate the price with you at a lower level. Good luck, or look for alternatives.

Question was how I get the three character and what I do with them. I purchase them many places including quite a few from Timechange. Also, monitor deleteddomains.com.

Sometimes I know what I am going to do with them, sometimes not. However, eventually I come up with a use for most of them and sell the others sometimes with an active business site. I have never sold a name by itself.

Many of them I use as shortened addresses for businesses with longer names/domains. A good example of someone else doing that would be EV1.net for Everyone's Internet. Some I find I can make into something interesting by themselves. Others, I am still waiting for inspiration on.

I just issue the following warning. There is not nearly the shortage of good names some would like to make you think. However, there are very few absolutely great names. However, most domains are made great only through lots and lots of promotion.

The best names would still be one word, easy to remember, hard to misspell names. That is why Yahoo, Amazon, and Ebay worked so well. However, second to that, two word easy to remember, hard to misspell is not bad either. And, the one advantage with slightly longer names is they can clearly identify the nature of the domain-example, WebHostingTalk.com...three words, but easy to remember and very descriptive.

Some great points, Incognito.

The only power we are not in danger of running out, is brain power :D With that in mind, coming up with a creative name however challenging or easy that might be, there is always a chance that our effort will be obstructed by the fact that the domain is already taken.

Since this is a web hosting forum, I would like to recommend for these people that offer nameservers for their customers, a short and easy to remember .COM/.NET name e.g. what is better:

ns1.fantasticdomainhosting.com or ns1.i22.net ? :D

I counter offered the guy today. I basically said $125 take it or leave it. Again, the [letter][letter][number].com domain name does have significance to my business, so I really think it is worth it.

I mostly want an easier to remember domain name to put on my business cards, etc -- just like Network Solutions owns (and uses) nsi.com and netsol.com, and CompuServe uses cs.com.

Thanks, everyone, for your help! I'll repost if he says yay or nay.

That's understandable, however if the current owner is a domain broker/reseller he might not budge. If you really must have the domain, I suggest looking into the .NET, .BIZ and .US variants.

I wouldn't consider a bid of $100 for any of my two letter and one number .com. Its just not a good business, better sell one for $1000 than 10 for $100, since you have nine domains left to sell in the future. But maybe this guy will think differently, good luck!

By the way $1000 is small potatoes for most companies.

GoTop, I can sell you mine for $50 then and you can resell them for $100+ what do you think? :D

sure what have you got? (I know youre trying to be smart but seriously, what do you have?)

I was trying to be funny, not a smart-a$$ :D
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