Finding companies that could use a domain is easy. Finding companies that would actually buy it is much harder.

One thing I've been changing in how I research domains is what I consider a “potential buyer.”

It's surprisingly easy to take almost any decent domain and find 20 companies that could theoretically use it.

But that doesn't mean there are 20 buyers.

For example, imagine I own a domain that fits a software company.

I search Google and LinkedIn and find:

• 8 companies in that niche
• 4 startups using longer names
• 3 companies on alternative extensions
• 2 companies with hyphenated domains

At first glance that looks like 17 potential buyers. But then I started asking a different question:

Why would each company actually spend money to change its current domain?

That's where the list gets much smaller.

A company already established on a strong .com probably isn't much of a prospect.

A tiny startup with no funding might love the name but never pay enough to justify the outreach.

A company using a bad domain isn't automatically a buyer either. They may simply not care about domains.

The prospects I find more interesting now are the ones with some kind of reason to act.

Things like:

• recently funded
• actively rebranding
• launching a new product
• using an awkward or limiting domain
• operating on an extension while the matching .com would be a clear upgrade
• expanding into the exact market described by the domain

So I've started separating:

Possible users from Probable buyers

I think this also changes valuation.

A domain with 50 theoretical use cases but no obvious motivated buyer may be less attractive than a domain with only 5 companies where 2 have a very strong reason to own it.

I'm still figuring out the best way to judge this.

For people doing outbound: what signal has been the strongest indication that a company might actually buy rather than simply being a good “fit” for the domain?