I am starting a small cottage company and I thought of this interesting domain. This site is blank and domaintools.com shows that the Registrant owns another 1028 sites. Now this site expires in october. I really want the site name but I dont have much money. I am afraid if I make an offer, the guy will ask for money and renew the site. But I dont want to lose it to someone else waiting till november. What should I do?
Well let's look at this logically if the guy has 1028 other sites will he really want to renew this particular one? Is it that amazing of a name? Look at the site you want that he has site status on Alexa.com If the page rank is practically nothing make an offer that's reasonable. Maybe he has big plans for the site? This is what I think cause I reread it the guys site is blank so there can't be that much traffic AND his lease is expiring on October. I think you should go for it because this guy would probably be glad to make money off of at least 1 of the 1028 sites.
Alexa has "No Data" on this site. No info at Web Archive either. I suppose that is a good thing . What is a reasonable offer? $25? $50?
No one can realistically tell you what a decent offer is without knowing the domain. I have domains for sale, and I wouldn't take $50 for any of them, anything that is not worth a decent offer, I see no reason to keep if I'm not going to develop it. You have to assume that anyone with over a thousand domains, is not in it for peanuts, but then again, you never know. 1k domains is $10k in renewals every year. Personally, I don't think contacting someone and offering them $25 for something that is not "technically" for sale is a good offer. Almost an insult. It would be different if it was offered for sale in that price range, but you are approaching him.
As Hmansfield said, we cannot predict what would be a good offer for the domain unless we see it. You could approach him, and asking him his selling price, and then take it from there instead of making an initial offer from your end.
Why not just wait until November if he renews then make him an offer, if he does not renew purchase the domain
Thanks for all the advice. I will contact the the guy to see if he is interested in selling. Is escrow service really required for small amount? Is paypal good enough?
I am starting web based international mail order business. So waiting till Nov/Dec means losing lot of sales till then. Then if someone else buys via ENOM or Pool it I will waste more time looking for an alternative.
If you want to earn with web site you need to know how to do that and what you need for that. And if that requires first time investigations you need to have them made.