Two weeks ago I received an email from a guy, who wanted to buy a domain that I bought just one week earlier:

Hello,

I saw your domain was listed for sale. Are you still interested in
selling?.

Please email me your desired price. Don’t ask to make an offer. Just
email the desired price.

By the way, did you receive offers from other buyers?

I run a software development company. We develop ERP systems and
databases in Delphi and MS SQL for several local companies. Buying and
selling domain names is not my main business. Just another way to invest
money and make additional income.

Best regards,

Stephen Shapiro, Ph.D.
President
BON (Back Office Network) Solutions
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That looked very nice, and I had only given 2.99 dollars for the domain linka.info, which he was interested in. I mailed him back that he could have it for 700 dollars. That was a bit more than I expected to be able to get for the name, but then I thought I could lower the price in a negotiation. The day after my email to him, I received this email from him:

700 USD. Ok.

Do you sell a developed site or domain only? I prefer domain names.

Do you have an independent valuation from industry experts (appraisal)?
I
need an appraisal certificate for domain priced in your range. I
consider
your name as an investment. In other words I’m going to sell your name
later
and make a profit. If I overpay I won’t be able to make a profit in the
future. It’s very important for you and me to know the current market
value
of your domain.

Of course, we must be sure that you are engaging a reputable appraisal
company. I heard many appraisal companies often made inaccurate
appraisals.
So appraisal from each and every site is not acceptable.To avoid
mistakes I

asked domain experts about reputable appraisal companies in a forum

http://domaintalk.ourplace.com/Archive/42065.htm
Juck check this posting.

If the appraisal comes higher you can adjust your asking price
accordingly.

After I verify an appraisal from you we’ll continue our negotiations.

How do you prefer to get paid: www.PayPal.com, www.escrow.com, check or
wire?

Hope we can come to an agreement fast.

Looking forward to your reply

When you follow the link he send me, you see a discussion thread where people recommend certain appraisal companys and advice against others. At the same time you vitness a conversation where a domain seller confirms Shapiros transfer of 4.100 dollars for a specific domain acquisition.

Luckily I have always been a bit sceptic toward these so called “domain name appraisals”, so I start becoming skeptical toward my new business partner. You must be naive, if you think you can trade domains like a measurable good and earn money on them. Especially if you can’t judge them by your self. Domain business is characterized by a syndrome of golddigger mentality, where there are much more hopeful sellers than buyers.

But at this point I still hadn’t looked through was going on, so I googled “cheap and good appraisal” to see how cheap this appraisal stuff could be. I found that the 59 dollars that Shapiros recommended company charged was a bit more than I ever would give. But by this search I coincidentally find this forum thread: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=9596
, and suddenly I recognize Shapiros mail send to somebody else. By looking through this thread I find out, that Shapiro also has called him self George Bergman quiet a while ago. So Shapiro was not that beginner into domain business, as he claimed to be. Now I took a piece of his mail and googled it and found this complete mail exchange with Shapiro (here David Pulman) in may this year: http://www.freshstation.org/games/index.php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=12&Itemid=37

So apparently he makes a living in creating hope to domain owners and trying to sell a expensive appraisal in return.

I just found out, that you can also get free belgian domain names at my favorite registrar RegisterFly. And it seems that there are the same conditions as described in this previous post: You can do with the domain what you want, just like with normal purchases and everybody can register these domains.

Also I just discovered that it is possible to make good frases with the .be domain. Like
letit.be, tobeornotto.be, could.be etc. Unfortunately I am not so rutined in english that I discovered this fact immidiately. I think that I uncounscious thought, that the word “be ” was spelled “bee”. And now unfortunenately most of the catchy frases are gone. Maybe you can find some, that are no taken.

In the period from november 1th to january 31th it is completely free to register a belgian .be domain name at euroDNS. Every domain name registered in this period can be used as a regular registration for the next year, with all the normal DNS features. And also there are no restriction in who can register a belgian domain.

I don’t hope there are any catches, because I just registered some belgian domains and parked them at Sedo. But I didn’t have to insert a creditcard number to make the registration.

The reason for this offer should be, that there are to few registered belgian domain names. So in the same way as there was an offer to register .info names some time ago, the hope is that this event will boost the marked for this TLD. And maybe some of the names will be renewed after a year.

So can’t you wait for a european domain name until the .eu domain is launched, this a quite cheap way to get one.

Source of this news: domainweblog.de