Austn360.com: “The Ethics Of Domain Name Selling”
A few days ago, I got an e-mail from someone who wanted to buy the domain. The man said he and his wife were starting a baby-related business and wanted to use babycation.com. . . .
I asked a friend of mine who works in the Internet business what he’d do. He’s sold several domains over the years, some of them for established sites that had lots of traffic. He suggested I offer it for sale for $1,000, a pretty crazy profit margin, but not unusual for a domain that somebody wants to buy.
I wrote the guy back and told him I would sell him babycation.com for $1,000. I told him in the e-mail that I was open to negotiation and would very likely accept a lower offer. (Check out my hardball tactics.)
He wrote back and he and his wife just had an idea for a small business and that there was no way they could pay that kind of money. He didn’t make a counter-offer. He gave up.
And now I feel terrible. I feel greedy. I feel like I should write the guy back and offer to give him the domain on the cheap and help him and his wife out.”
This is an illustration of how the domain name system sometimes function as a tax on small business.