I’ve wanted to buy AffordAnything.com for more than a year. The dash in “Afford-Anything.com” bugs me. It weighs down the domain; it makes this site’s name tough to say.
I’ve had this conversation a zillion times:
“My blog is afford -dash- anything dot com.”
“What?”
“Afford -dash- anything. It’s afford anything, but with a hyphen.”
(Blank stare).
Arg. There was no getting around it. I needed affordanything.com, without the dash.
But I faced one problem: the domain costs $1,100. Yikes!
I tried to avoid this four-figure price tag by spending $10 on affordanything.org, but that produced equally frustrating conversations.
“It’s afford anything dot org.”
“Okay, afford anything dot com. Got it.”
“No, no, dot org.”
“Okay.”
(Ten minutes later) “So you’re at afford anything dot com, right?”
The more I went through this, the more it became clear that I’d need to own the straight-up rights to Afford Anything. No dash. Dot com.
But I didn’t want to pay sticker price. I wanted to negotiate. For advice, I turned to the great example of Kevin McKee, who writes the blog Thousandaire.com.
Thousandaire.com began life as Thousand-aire.com, with a hyphen. Kevin was as frustrated with the dash in his domain name as I was, and he faced a similar problem: the owner of Thousandaire (with no dash) wanted $1,000 for it.
“My soul died,” Kevin said in his blog post, I Wanna Be a Thousandaire (With No Dash). “Sure I want the URL, but there’s no way I’m paying that much for it.”
So Kevin executed the Smoothest. Negotiation. Ever.
“I’m just looking to make a blog,” he wrote to the seller. “The most I could offer is $200 …”
The seller countered at $350. A 65 percent discount right off the top!
Kevin countered back: “Would you be willing to let it go for $250? That’s really the best I can do.”
The seller agreed to settle for $300. Boom, just like that, Kevin became the owner of Thousandaire.com with no dash.
“I can do that!,” I thought.
I emailed the Major Corporation that owns the rights to affordanything.com. I used a generic email address that doesn’t feature my name. (After all, a quick Google search for my name will show that I run the Afford Anything blog, my Twitter handle is @affordanything, and my Facebook page is Facebook.com/AffordAnything. Revealing my identity would weaken my bargaining power.)
I mimicked Kevin’s email, opening with an offer of $250. A sales rep emailed back: “Thank you for your offer but unfortunately your offer and our asking price are just too far apart.”
Darn. I regrouped and sent another email:
“I can offer 50 percent of your asking price, or $550. Would you accept that?”
The sales rep replied: “The best I can do is $1,050.” A $50 discount?
Well, at least I got him talking, I thought. I countered back at $850. The seller stuck to his guns: $1,050.
Fine, I’m sticking to my guns too, I thought. I emailed back with a firm $850.
No response. A week passed by. I started to sweat. I wanted this domain.
I sent another email reiterating my $850 offer. Two weeks passed. No reply. Arrggh.
I emailed again with my $850 offer. The seller replied with a short-and-sweet “Sorry, but I can’t.”
I replied that $850 seemed reasonable. Another week passed by. No response. This seller obviously wasn’t going to budge.
I started panicking. I wanted AffordAnything.com. Irrationally, I start worrying that someone else will snatch the domain before I can buy it. I tried to calm myself down, reminding myself that in any negotiation, the person who cares least has the upper hand. Deep down, I knew that meant that I was screwed. I want to buy more than the seller wants to sell.
I tried one more time, offering $850 and emphasizing that he’d be paid immediately in any payment method of his choice – check, credit card, PayPal, whatever he preferred. This time he sent a reply! Unfortunately, it said, “I wish you best in finding another domain name.”
Wow. This is one tough cookie. I wrote back, asking if he would relinquish the domain for $950. A week passed. No reply. I wrote again, asking if he had received my earlier email. Another week passed. No reply.
Finally, I sent him a note –
“You win. Let’s go ahead with the purchase at the price that you quoted, $1,050.” This time, the seller wrote back immediately.
Moral of the story? I totally failed at negotiating. Kevin managed a $700 discount. I only landed a $50 discount. For those of you keeping score, that’s Kevin – 1, Me – 0.
But the good news? Now I have affordanything.com … without the dash! Glance up at your browser and you’ll see the new domain name in place.
I’m a thousand bucks poorer, and I’ve lost all my site metrics thanks to the redirect (I plummeted from PageRank 4 to PageRank 2 and my Alexa Rank presently stands at a humiliating 11 million), but I don’t care. Because now I have affordanything.com with no dash!
Which means now I can finally have this conversation:
“I’m at afford anything dot com.” Whew!
Can you believe that moneylicious.com was bought! I settled for moneylicious.org, it used to be moneyliciousblog.com, but I thought that was too long and didn’t like the word blog in the domain.
Moneylicious.com was like $7,000!
I like the .org.
I think what you could have done is ask them what there goals were the domain…it could help you to learn more about their reasoning with charging the price that they did.
You are not a bad negotiator. You allowed your emotions to get in the way. Similar to buying rental property–research, ask questions, etc before you provide your offer. Same thing with the domain.
Don’t beat yourself up over it
@Ornella — It seems like everything has been purchased already! Hindsight is 20/20 … I should have bought a bunch of domain names back in 2000!
He may have gotten a bigger discount, but it sounds like you were dealing with someone that was either less reasonable or was making more money off the domain name!
@femmefrugality — Yeah, I was dealing with a professional
The domain squatting thing really sucks. I’l glad I was able to get the non-hyphen .com for mine, but I rejected several names because of this issue.
Congrats on getting your domain name! Negotiating is hard especially since it never really comes up in normal life unless you’re in a different country bartering.
I think you did an amazing job negotiating. You tried everything. You wrote several times. You can’t control other people. The only other thing you could have done was barter something to save money but I think you did well! Some things are worth the money.
Unfortunately, for negotiations to work, both parties have to be willing to negotiate.
Back in the 1980′s when people were still shell-shocked by the 1973 and 1977 oil crisis-es (plural of crisis?), Honda could sell every car on the lot for greater than MSRP. We were shopping for a small hatchback or wagon, and stopped in a Honda dealer. The dealer had exactly one Civic wagon available, it had been used as a demonstrator, it already had about 1,000 on the odometer, and was dirty to boot. They would not accept even 1 dollar less than MSRP, and it would be sold as-is – not even cleaned up. Take or leave it.
We walked out, bought a Nissan Stanza wagon instead, and for the next 20 or so years refused to even consider Honda as an option.
@DemosCat – Wow, sounds like they had the temporary upperhand and ran with it. Of course, they lost customers in the long run … 20 years of people not even considering their brand!
The most important part of negotiation is the ability to walk away. You were hooked on the name and couldn’t walk away. You made achoice, so don’t beat yourself over it.
@Krantcents — Yep, exactly. They had the upper hand because, well, there was no way I was going to walk away.
Why is that not a win? So what, someone got a bigger discount, but you negotiated and learned from it. Plus you got the blog, so I call that a big fat WIN! It’s what you wanted and it’s what you got… with discount. Isn’t that what afford-anything.com is all about. That you can afford anything, not you can get the biggest and best discount?
(I’m new to your blog, but have been loving your blog for the last few days. I even mentioned you on another money blog because I thought some of your ideas were so awesome!)
@LB — Aww, thanks! That’s a great way of looking at it!
As the seller, I would have definitely checked your blog, your PageRank and how badly you wanted the name.
I probably wouldn’t have even given you that token $50 off to be honest.
You didn’t really negotiate because you didn’t have the ability to walk away (as krantcents said), and you didn’t have an upper hand in anything that they wanted, such as not knowing if they were desperate to make a car payment etc.
Plus.. they probably do this all the time. I wouldn’t fret about it, it’s just not something you could have negotiated on…. which is why starting a blog means you absolutely MUST pick the name and domain name first before writing and building up any credibility.
Hard lessons to learn.
Congrats! Stinks that you had to pay so much for the domain. To be honest I never noticed because I always came to your site through your feed
@Lance – Thanks
Lots of people come through the feed, but if I hope to grow in the coming years, I figured I should be dash-free. (Is it ironic that the term “dash-free” has a dash?)
At least you got rid of that pesky dash! I think that the person who had Kevin’s site could learn a thing or two from the guy you dealt with! Sheesh.
@Kathleen — Hmm, you’re right … maybe the guy who sold Kevin’s site name is the worst negotiator ever!
4.5% off ain’t bad in a vacuum, and $1,050 I’m sure you’ll make back in no time. At least you have a web site to aim for – I have dqydj.net and yourdayjob.net but I’m not really even interested in the .coms since my acronym is confusing enough anyway. It’s almost like the acronym is the first test for reading us… or whatever.
I guess I’m most mad about my Twitter handle, ha. Congrats on the slight move!
@PK — What’s your Twitter handle? (And what did you want it to be?)
My pinky always had a hard time reaching up to the top row to hit that “dash” – so my hands thank you for forking over the $1050. LOL. You’re experiences sounds pretty much like every car buying experience I’ve had. The seller always seems to be able to sense that he doesn’t have to budge much!
That’s fantastic… I mean, it sucks that you weren’t able to score huge savings, but it’s great that you’re now the solid owner of everything you’ve branded!
PS: YAY, for the first time in weeks I can comment!
Congratulations Paula.
One day ( in the near future) you’ll look back and say … “$1050 was peanuts compared to the value of the “affordanything” brand now!”
Cheers!
I’m horrible at negotiating prices. Everything else I can negotiate pretty well, but price, I’m just rotten at. It sounds like you weren’t going to get a better deal, AND you now own the best version of your site name! Congrats!
Congratulations, chica! I know it was a long time coming. You hit the nail on the head when you said, “the person who cares least has the upper hand.” Your only plays were care less and wait longer, or make some sort of value for him to care for like negotiated advertising on your site or recommending his services. But that might not have been possible with this guy. Sounds like he was just being a hardnose.
Congrats on getting your domain name! Yep, $1050 is a pretty good chunk of change but I’ll consider it the cost of doing business. You’ll make it back in no time.
As I see it, you were successful in your mission. Congrats!
Interesting tale! I agree with the others…the domain was worth $1050 to you and it wasn’t worth less than that to the seller so all’s well that ends well.
I haven’t experienced the same frustrations as you, but I just checked and thefamilyceo.com is available for $280. It’s owned by GoDaddy, however. Probably no negotiating with them. It has me thinking, though…
$1050 sounds steep, but atleast you own the name that you wanted. Congrats!
What a day for negotiating your price expecting that the owner accepts your deal. Whew! what a tough owner. Not a bad negotiation at all.
Yippee for landing your domain name! It sounds like it was worth the price because the seller didn’t want to sell for less. Too bad you got a stickler of a seller but great that you got the name!
@Christa — Buying the domain name re-news my commitment to this site. I’m in it for the long haul!
Congrats! I know it sucks now, but it’ll be worth it in the long run!
It’s really hard to negotiate with someone who does not want to negotiate. It sounds like you did the best that you could, but I can tell you this. You aren’t the worst negotiator in the world. The worst negotiator in the world would have just paid the asking price right away. You at least tried, and with the valuable content that this blog provides, I have no doubt that you will make it back.
If you ever have to negotiate again, one of the things that you can do that may help (though even this will be limited if the seller does not want to sell) is to point out reasons why your cost is more reasonable and theirs is too high or low, reasons why it might be harder to sell, etc. But in this situation, unless you could have convinced the seller that “affordsanything.com” was about to turn into a useless web property that no one would ever want (which is unlikely given the catchiness of the name)that seller wasn’t going to dance.
Thank you, Jessica. I know I’m not the worst negotiator on earth, and I’m flattered that you like the content on this blog. I believe the affordanything.com domain was worth every penny.
Sounds like it was $1000 very well spent, though. I just wish I had $200k lying around so I could have bought up etf.com a few months ago…
great blog. very similar experiences you have had.
you’re beautiful btw.