Have you ever purchased a domain using a payment arrangement? I have, and I am glad I did. I had looked at a domain for some time and it was not being used to the best of its potential based on the keywords in the domain. I would check in with the owner from time to time just to see how he was doing and we sort of developed a relationship over a 3 years period. Over this time, he dropped his price from $4,000 to $1,000 to $400. I made him an offer of $250 now or $600 over 24 monthly payments giving him a cash flow. He said we could go with either and I went with the payments for a few reasons:
- My cash flow. As a business owner when you are “nickeled and dimed” those nickels and dimes are often $50 and $100 bills. $250 would not have killed me, but I preferred to have a monthly payment and give this guy money because he was a really nice guy.
- Money to build the site. I build sites, but as you can see, unless I get a real designer involved, they don’t look so good. I wanted to make sure that I had the money for the other aspects of building the site.
- I knew I could pay him off at any time, and likely renegotiate. Heck, he was willing to take $250 upfront, so at any point, I could likely just make an offer with a lump sum and be done.
- The experience. I thought it would make an interesting domaining story, and here it is.
Of course, the tough part was him trusting me to make the payments. We had an agreement, but of course, collecting is a different story. I have made payments for the past several months, and of course, I have done nothing of significance with the site due to being so busy with other business.
I imagine for security sake, you could involve an escrow company and I have also heard of domain financing companies, and my suspicion is that they would play some sort of escrow role.
So don’t let a lack of funds hold you back from buying a domain that might seem out of your reach. The goal is to make it a win-win. My seller got cash flow and I got a domain that I like and it didn’t break the bank for me.
