By: RH

Getting the Country Code to bolster the .com

I had a potential buyer interested in a domain that was related to the city of Toronto. Let me say upfront that the name was not a premium domain. The buyer said, "Comment: I'm interested in this domain if under $100 to purchase from you." Now like I said this name was not a premium name but I thought it was worth more than $100. I sent him back a reply with a link to a sale of a comparable domain that had the same keyword string but with a different city. I told him I was not looking for that kind of money for the domain, but more than $100.

After I sent the email I said to a friend, "He is going to register the .ca version." I could have had a friend who lives in Canada register the domain as I am not Canadian and would not have met their registration requirement. The name was just not that important to me so I did not do that.

The prospective buyer came back with, "Thanks for getting back to me. Given I'm a Canadian firm, I just bought the .ca version of the exact same domain so that will work just fine. Good luck."

I replied back that I knew he was going to do that and wished him good luck. This is also a case that shows that end users are not always looking to pay big bucks. The guy used an email that was easy to research his company and see the company did a lot of business. Now he did not own the company and it seemed maybe he was going to work for himself.

Now maybe I should have regged the .ca but like I said the name was not that important. I do have an acquaintance that told me that he owned an Indian name in .com that the sales process had stalled. He regged the .in and told the buyer he would throw that in. The deal got done at the price he wanted and the buyer was happy to have the .in along with the .com.

So if you have a domain related to another country get the country code to go along with it. It may help you make more sales and at the very least it takes alternative options away from prospective buyers who without them, may be more willing to negotiate at your pricing expectation.