Help Needed: Client wants to buy their brand's .com - how to contact the owner?

[Paul Harvey]

Hi guys.

James Norquay told me you guys could help me with a client's brand domain acquisition problem. We're both regular speakers at the Sydney SEO Meetup and other places, so I highly value his recommendation.

This client wants to buy their brand's .com that is currently lying dormant. I've had no luck in emailing or calling the whois owner (they're using WHOISGUARD privacy). I've googled for the domain, and scoured the wayback machine, with no luck. What other avenues can I try, apart from just hammering on with repeated emails?

I run Corporate SEO, that my father founded in 2001. Last year we created 20,000 first page rankings for over 50 clients. When I started 4 years ago, our PBN was around 450 sites with 2 million uniques/month, but since then I've been steadily bleaching our hat colour, with much yet to learn.

Paul

 

[snoopy]

Look at the whois history with domaintools.com (you'll have to pay to get access to this). You should be able to get old data from before the days of whois privacy, may or may not be the same owner of course.

When you say "lying dormant" what is on the domain? With the mails did they bounce? If not what did you say? Domain owners will be far more responsive to an offer that they perceive as having potential than anything else that is said.

 

[Paul Harvey]

The website just shows a blank page and HTML just says <!-- b5 --> with nothing else. Emails haven't bounced.

DomainTools sounds like a plan though! Might try info@ and webmaster@ as well.

All I asked was "are you open to discussing a sale?"

Thanks Snoopy!

 

[snoopy]

The website just shows a blank page and HTML just says <!-- b5 --> with nothing else. Emails haven't bounced.

DomainTools sounds like a plan though! Might try info@ and webmaster@ as well.

All I asked was "are you open to discussing a sale?"

Thanks Snoopy!

From that it is a probably a fair bet that the person is not a domainer given it is not parked, maybe someone with a handful of domains/some other business etc. The emails might be getting though it is probably 50/50 that the underlying email address is out out date given what is on the page. I'd say you need to improve your email content and then if you still don't get a reply look into the whois.

Btw: here is an example (below) of an email with a fairly high chance of getting a reply. "Are you open to discussing a sale" is very passive, it has a fair chance of being ignored if the domain is of good quality or the owner is time poor.

From: Paul (don't use a free email account to send it)
Subject: Domain.com $X,000 Offer
Hi,

I’m interested in acquiring your domain name Domain.com and can offer $X,000 for it,

Let me know your thoughts,

Best regards,

Paul
Company Name
Phone number

 

[Paul Harvey]

Thanks for the template. Just got whois history from Reg.com with full details for less than $3. Beats domaintools.com's $50!
Also getting a max dollar figure from my client before I contact seller again.