I wrote the article and I initially offered 100 GBP (160 U.S), the domain owner counter offered with 4,977 GBP! (8,000 U.S) I think with that range difference it's an end to all negotiations.
The reality now though is top level domains are pretty much irrelevant for anything other than brick and mortar advertising. Google gives credit for the words in the domain name no matter the top level. and all the social media is linked so users are not entering a URL anyways. personally if I was not going to be doing real world advertising I would have picked up a two letter country code name with the best keywords. Then if I ever grew it to the point that I was going to do a real world advertising campaign I would consider picking up a good .com and bite the bullet on the cost, and just forward the .com to the established domain.
Another way you can do it, is to ask the reseller to lease it to you with a contract on the amount to convert it to a purchase. So say you lease it for $75 a year and have a contract in place that at any time you can convert it to a purchase for say $2000. This gives you the ability to build revenue with the name before you commit to buying it, the speculator will usually bite because he is getting the domain fees paid until the potential sale goes through. So it is a win win, for him he is not incurring the yearly renewal fees and you don't put out a chunk of change until the name actually has value.