Well, I heard back from the guy who wants to buy this domain. He said he’d meet my price, but wants to spread the payments over 5 or 6 years. Oh oh. A friend pointed out that this could very well mean that they’ll be out of business in 2 years, and I’ll have lost the domain and not gotten the full price for it.
So I’m sending him the following response.
Yeah, you see that to me is a big sticking point. As a former nordic racer, I’m all too aware that good ski shops go out of business at a horrendous rate, and the ones that don’t go out of business barely scrape by. I imagine it’s even worse now when you can order from a bazillion on-line shops instead of having to drive 30 kilometers to the next competitor who isn’t trying to sell you some plastic monstrosities with fish scales on the bottom.
So to me that says that if you don’t do better than your most optimistic predictions, I’ll get one or two years of payments, and then nothing. And that’s not worth it to me.
I’m not in the business of evaluating business plans, and while I know banks are often wrong, they *are* in the business of evaluating business plans, and if you can’t convince one of them that having “xcski.com” as your domain is worth what I’m asking and give you a small business loan on that basis, I’m not going to disagree with them.
I wish your business well, but I’m going to have to say no to giving up xcski.com. Like I said earlier, though, I have the domain xcski.net which I will part with for a much more reasonable price.
Oh well, that share in the Cessna 180 on straight floats was nice to dream about for a few hours.
I see no problems with his offer.
Accept the payments for 5-6 years, put the money straight into a savings account, then transfer the domain to him once the balance is paid in full.
What about holding the domain in trust for him, but pointed at his nameservers, while he pays? That way if he pays in full then you’ve got the money and he’s got the domain and everyone wins, and if he goes out of business then you’ve got some of the money and you still have the domain to sell later.
Rent-to-own, basically.
But Rich, if I did this, I would still have the hassle of changing all my stuff over to new domains whether I got paid or not. “rent-to-own” is a good solution if the goal is to sell the domain, but not a good solution if the goal is to be compensated for the loss of a stable location for your stuff.