Why I Put a Time Limit on Domain Prices


I’ve been more vigilant lately about putting a time limit on my sales offers, and it doesn’t have anything to do with domain sales strategy. The reason I have been doing it is to prevent someone else from frontrunning my domain names.

Here’s a scenario for you to illustrate my concerns:

I offer to sell a person a domain name for $5,000. He agrees to the price, and we have a deal. Over the next several days, the prospective buyer reaches out to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other people and tries to sell my domain name for $20,000. If he is successful, he goes into escrow with me and closes quickly. If he isn’t successful with this, he disappears without a trace and my deal is off.

There are obvious risks for the other party in doing this. If the owner of the domain name finds out because he receives an inadvertant email or someone contacts him to verify ownership, the deal could be off. In addition, if a third party buyer agrees to buy the domain name but doesn’t follow through, the person in the middle of the deal might not be able to quickly flip it as planned.

I don’t think this is a common practice, but it is something that can happen very easily. People do this on auctions and domain names in various stages of the expiry channel, and there is little that can be done to prevent that, especially if the auction venue has no incentive to curb the habit. I think limiting the time someone has to pay for a domain name can help prevent it. Aside from that, it can ensure that payment is made quickly, but that is usually a secondary need.


  1. I put a disclaimer stating I can change my mind on price @ at anytime for any reason at all.
    So if they want to pull that shi* I will just tell them deal is no good I changed my mind. Protects me forever.

    But I have never had to change price once agreed upon. But if I find out they are pulling that type of stuff then deal is off.

    If the person can’t fund an escrow account with in 48 hours then I,m just dealing with losers and ax the deal.

  2. This is unfortunately happening to me a lot lately too..
    someone inquiring about my domain, then asking me to wait for them to get the funds, even delaying it further the next week, saying they still don’t have “their boss’s approval yet” blah blah..

    really getting fed up with this, so i will put strict time limits on my prices for now as well.. if they can’t deliver in time, their loss and any previously agreed price gets instantly increased

  3. Time limit on domain names is not a bad idea since it will show the level of interest of the buyer. Thanks for sharing.

    • Update: Everything’s been removed today, all comments that is, so the “shocking” part is gone now. The blog post itself is quite useful, however, and I had been the first one to post there with merely “Thanks.” as my first post.

    • Wo, Elliot, you mean you didn’t see any of it?

      Although I do have very mixed feelings about Jamie Zoch removing the comments, especially since it showed a beautiful example of one particularly well known player in the industry imploding on his own well known behavior, attitude and treatment of some people, part of me also is inclined to feel that it may not have been a bad idea for Jamie Zoch to have removed it all nonetheless. The larger point of the big picture there was that someone else had come into the thread early with something that apparently I was the only one who caught, a particularly egregious bombshell charge against one of the most famous people in the industry, and by extension something that could be very bad for the industry and for all of us. As you might imagine, however, the thread quickly went “south” because of the involvement by the other person who “imploded” whom I’ve always considered the primary beneficiary by a mile of your removal some time ago of the “dislike” feature here no less.

      So for the sake of the industry, Elliot, I feel as if it would not be good if I went into the actual details of what happened there, as that would also kind of negate any possible benefit it may have for the industry as a whole despite any unfortunate “purge” it may also represent with respect to exposing yet another example of the behavior of the secondary party alluded to, who had nothing to do with the actual posting of the “bombshell” charge against someone famous. Although I do have access to a copy of all the material that was removed myself, what I would say right now is that I think it would be best if you were to contact Jamie Zoch and have him show you everything if he were to be willing to extend that courtesy to you as a peer. I feel that it might not be good for you or all of us if I were to personally go into more or post anything here now, and I’m very confident you would tend to understand and appreciate that perspective.

    • One thing I will say, however, is that on a side note which I felt was particularly appropriate there, I personally posted some things about Raider which I hope she saw, and suspect she would definitely have appreciated seeing. 🙂

    • Oh, and P.S. – If anyone does show you anything, it can also be checked for accuracy against the copy I have access to. I’m sorry that I feel constrained from saying more here, however, but I’m sure you would tend to understand and likely concur.

  4. P.P.S. For the record, Jamie Zoch also did take action to address the serious statement made about someone famous after I called it out, and it was subsequently “clarified” sufficiently.


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