Never quite understood this.
Their domain is listed as for sale at one venue at the very least, so it’s clear they want to sell and not develop, yet they use private whois.
Imagine that you’re trying to sell a house.
And, instead of using a large/visible For Sale sign, you build a huge wall around it instead.
Why would you do that?
I just don’t get it.
If you want to develop a domain and don’t want your competitors to know what you’re up to then sure, the private whois approach makes sense.
But when I come across domains that are obviously for sale and see that the owner uses private whois, I can’t help but cringe.
If you’re reading this, do yourself a favor: go through all of your domains and if any of the ones you want to sell have private whois enabled, disable it asap.
Otherwise, you’ll discourage lots of potential buyers and it just doesn’t make sense.
Sure, most of the ones who will be discouraged are probably lowballers.
Fair enough.
But not all of them.
Some would have been genuinely interested but since they perceive the private whois as a “Do Not Disturb” sign, they simply move on.
By using private whois on the domains you want to sell, you’re basically paying for the privilege of discouraging buyers.
Maybe it’s just me but that sure doesn’t seem like a good business model 🙂
October 14th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Also, cybersquatters and those in the industry that give it a bad name use privacy thinking it will protect them from a lawsuit or UDRP. It won’t.
October 14th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
May be such domain sellers are hiding their WHOIS because they are scared to show who really owns the trademark domains… This possibly makes them think they are on safe side.
October 14th, 2013 at 3:21 pm
If you go to the Whois on a name, normally there is a link to the marketplace where it can be purchased. I price most of my names so why do I get Whois inquiries – because the potential buyer wants a better price. Generally I am not interested in negotiating. So privacy protection could be used to ward odd people looking to acquire solid keyword domains with lowball offers.
October 14th, 2013 at 3:23 pm
@Ian and AbdulBasit Makrani: the ones I’m referring to weren’t trademark domains or anything like that, just regular domains that were obviously for sale (since they were listed at one venue at the very least), yet the owner chose to use private whois.
October 14th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
@Leonard Britt: why not simply reply with a firm fixed price if you don’t want to negotiate? Seems like a better approach than paying a 10% – 15% commission that you could either keep as extra profits or use to lower the price and increase the likelihood of a sale.
October 14th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Ohk. I see… I am not sure what’s wrong than with those domain owners. May be trying to avoid spam mails and don’t want to show their email address directly.
October 15th, 2013 at 3:11 am
I don’t understand how come some of you domainers even survive in this industry with the little knowledge that you all seem to have about domain sales.
Anyway, domains for sale are listed under a private WHOis so that when the domains sell you don’t actually know unless the DND changes as well.
This is a common tactic skilled domainers use to hike up the prices on the same domains in the future by pretending that it was sold in the past for a high price when actually it wasn’t sold but they just pretended that it sold by changing the DNS and announcing the sale somewhere.
Most websites that sell this way on FLIPPA have used this cheap and cunning tactic to pretend there was a sale. That’s why you will see those same domains on sale once again just after a month or so.
Don’t understand what I’m saying then you are probably too innocent to make it big in this industry. Good luck!
One last thing, if you actually believe that someone would pay over 1 Million dollars in cash for a domain name then you guys still have loads to learn about domaining or sales.
October 16th, 2013 at 4:06 am
Two simple reasons out ouf many:
– to prevent spammers from collecting their e-mails
– to prevent harvesters such as domaintools from putting together and making public the whole list of domains owned by them
Listing a domain on a marketplace is usually enough to tell the world that the domain is for sale and you can make offer on it. You don’t need owner’s details to do that.