Losing Money Or A Client

I’ve been working in the domain business for a decade. My first 5 years were with NoktaDomains.com where we were selling Nokta’s portfolio mostly. Then I started working for Uniregistry and that was the time I started experiencing domain brokerage.

Most people think that “domain brokerage” quite easy. I can tell you that it’s not, not even close. Because, knowing about the domains is simply not enough. You need a little bit more than that. You need to have an idea of:

• Domains
• Domain Market
• Human Relations
• Company Structures
• Empathy
• People from different countries and their way of doing business
• Cross negotiation
• Most importantly, ethics

I want to get into the ethics. I’ve been working for different buyers and the sellers (Mostly for buyers recently) for the last 5 years. The similarity is, you need to do your best for the buyer and/or the seller when you work for them. The difference is:

• A broker needs to fulfill sellers’ expectations. That usually means selling the domain for the highest price possible.
• A broker needs to fulfill buyers’ expectations. That usually means buying the desired domain for the lowest price possible.

When a broker sells a domain behalf of the owner, the commission amount is parallel to the domain’s price. The higher amount a broker sells the domain for, a higher commission a broker makes from that sale. However, when it comes to buying a domain behalf of the buyer, things change. The lower amount you get for your client, the lower amount you make in commission (Assuming lots of brokers work with percentage based commission structure).

In this case, buyers start asking the inevitable question. “How would I know that you work for the lowest price possible when your commission goes down?”. My answer has been always short and simple, and it will always be the same. I’m 100% okay with losing money over losing a client.

If you leave a happy and satisfied customer behind, he/she will most probably work with you again in the future and I believe that’s most valuable thing you can have in any business. If you break ethics once, then the magic will disappear.

Stay safe and healthy!