I alluded to this in my other thread...but I thought it would make a good topic on it's own. There is a little scam going around with people pretending to be interested in buying a name you have for sale. Most buyers of higher dollar domains are going to insist on doing a traffic test. (I never buy anything over $500 without testing the traffic). But you need to be careful to either only allow the potential buyer to place a stat tracker on your site or point the site to a parking service. Don't change the DNS to the potential buyers server or ridirect to a page he gives you. Fake buyers are requesting traffic tests and using the domains to spam. There is also the fake escrow service scam, but I think folks are pretty much up to speed on that one.
Sure. A potential buyer will contact you expressing interest in a domain. When you agree on a price they will tell you they have an account at some escrow service other escrow.com. The escrow service is a fake site, and your domain gets transferred and you never get the money. A similar scam is when the potential buyer expresses interest, you agree on a price and then they tell you their partner (or something similar) requires a certified appraisal for any domains they buy. Then the recommend some unknown appraisal service that they get a commission for.
How about 6,000 USD? Ok? Do you have an appraisal certificate? Domain name is an investment for me. In other words I'm going to sell your name later and make a profit. If I overpay I won't be able to make a profit in the future. It's very important for you and me to know the current market value of your domain. Of course, we must be sure that you are engaging a reputable appraisal company. I heard many appraisal companies often made inaccurate appraisals. I will only accept appraisals from independent sources I trust. To avoid mistakes I asked domain experts about reputable appraisal companies in a forum http://domaintalk.ourplace.com/Archive/68035.htm Juck check this posting. If the appraisal comes higher you can adjust your asking price accordingly. I also hope you can give me 10% - 15%discount of the appraised value because I need a room to make profit. After I get an appraisal from you we'll continue our negotiations. How do you prefer to get paid: www.PayPal.com, www.escrow.com, check or wire? Hope we can come to an agreement fast. Looking forward to your reply.
thought about Afternic, but found their service inaccurate and automated. Moreover, here is the link about complaints to Afternic at http://www.igoldrush.com/links3.htm "Capsule Review: After lots of complaints, Afternic is no longer a recommended service. We will re-review the service in the near future." So Afternic.com is NOT acceptable. Reading responses from experienced sellers I was impressed by one reply: "Many Internet users are not smart enough and popular domain brokers are using this fact to make money. They offer them cheap appraisal services. But if their customers would have something in their heads they'd understand experts could not make a professional research for $15-$20. These appraisals are made by machines. Easy money for such appraisers as http://www.Afternic.com and several other major brokers that offer cheap auto-generated appraisals. In my eyes, all services under $50-$55 are not manual and the results are generated by special scripts. I don't trust auto-generated appraisals." The same is true for GoDaddy and SEDO. Their services are not manual. They are just collecting money using their well-known names. I heard many appraisal companies often overpriced domains. So I cannot accept appraisal from each and every site. To avoid mistakes I asked about reputable appraisers in a forum. Several experts recommended me AllDomains' appraisal service http://www.allfordomains.com/appraise.asp as a fast, accurate and non-expensive manual service. I also trust the manual appraisal service from ]http://www.DomainMart.com but it's very expensive - $200/hour. This service was also recommended by many people but I thought it was too expensive. But if you can afford DomainMart.com's fee it's ok with me. ---- Scammer offer for one of my domain parked to sedo ....