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How Do You Re-Sell a Domain Name?
dclayman wonders: " I've never sold a domain before. I just received a $400 offer for a domain I own (radicaltrust), but I don't know if I should sell it or auction it off. If I auction it, what site should I use? I could really use the extra cash, and I was hoping to get some ideas and advice from other readers. So, what's the best way to go about selling a domain?" Of course, selling your domain is only half of the issue. What's the best way to go about smoothly transferring the domain, once it is sold?
Sedo.com will conduct the auction for you, and ensure the payment is collected before the domain is transferred. Not an owner, just a satisfied customer.
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As a buyer I've had good experience with buying "resold" domains both from Afternic.com and Network Solution's Certified Offer Service.
/. article and an auction might be just the thing for your situation- if you're willing to pay the transaction fees of course :)
Each service has it's own features- Network Solutions, erm, solution is really just a way to make a safe transaction on a domain sale to an independent buyer, it offers an escrow service and other protections. Afternic has a similar service but they also have a nice domain name listing service where you can auction your domain like eBay. There may be others, but these are the only 2 I've had experience with, albeit from the buying side.
For your situation with this buyer I recommend to at least use Network Solutions' service to manage the transaction-- it offers protection to both you and the buyer, though there is a fee of course.
By the way, Network Solutions service also offers free domain name appraisals (Afternic has one too but charges). I don't know how much to trust it because for your domain I received values ranging over $10,000 when I first queried it on down to the $500 range later on. It seems to take into account the number of queries for a domain name? I'm not sure, but try it and see what it says now. Also, if RadicalTrust is also the name of a product or service then that price could be higher (or possible lower) then the estimated value according to Network Solutions.
If I were you I'd post it on Afternic.com for auction and tell your buyer about it. Your sure to incur some new offers from this
Good luck!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
http://www.afternic.com/
I bid $401!
It worked for me... I got over $1k for a domain I wasn't using. They were expedient and fair, offering a reliable escrow service and good marketing.
The sacred and the propane
I would advertise the domain on Slashdot. It has a far higher readership than other any site that might show up in something like a Google search for "How to sell a domain name", and its far more likely to get posted by the moderators compared to other sites like kuro5hin or digg.
A few years ago, there was a recent big-deal about HillaryClinton.com - read more here.
.COM ... amd then retire 'em! ;-)
P.S. My guess is the respective party would pay a lot for Ugly Democrats and Ugly Republicans
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I agree- $400 is made money. Though I think this topic is fine for /., it's "How Do You Re-Sell a Domain Name?" not "how do you squat a domain name for maximum $$$!" - this guy might have bought it to do something decent with it, but never did. Its wrong for him to sell it to the highest bidder now?
You need to get your domain appraised before you do anything (just like with jewelry), afternic is a good source. Shameless plug: I sell domains and hosting services and offer a appraisal service . I can even do the transfer, what ever else you need. For a hell of a lot cheaper then network solutions But first things first get the domain appraised, there are typically 2 options 1 computer appraised and cheaper (if your curious, and testing the water); or 2 human appraised with a certificate of appraisal (if you have a real offer this it the better option) and its not that much more $8.95 vs $19.95 Best of luck Bill
My company (OmegaSphere Inc.) and many others do this kind of thing on a regular basis, and will help you do so for you for a reasonable fee.
There are lots of tricks on either side to negotiating the best possible price, and having a third party involved can be helpful in many circumstances. In addition it can be helpful so that an escrow process can happen if the parties involved do not have an existing and trusting relationship.
Furthermore, you get to take advantage of your broker's real world experience. There are the official registry processes and then there is what actually happens. Some registrars are much easier to work with than others. If you get a broker that either is a registrar or has a solid relationship with one then they can work out all the fiddly details of the transfer itself on your behalf.
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So, let me get this right... You had an asset of no value. Someone else would appreciate it, and goes to the effort of finding you and making a reasonable offer. And now you decide that it's worth trying to sell!? They want to make a mutual cooperative offer, and you want to turn it into an competitive situation? Why? If you think it's a fair price, sell it to them for that. If you think it's worth more, tell them what you think it's worth and ask them for that.
The world would be a much nicer place if we weren't all trying to maximise profits all the time.
Thanks for asking this question, as I've always wondered what is the best way as well, and I'm curious what the Slashdot crowd will have to say.
Anyway, I would go with a free, commissions only service. The domain sale sites are already charging a commission on the sale, so it just seems like scumbaggery to also charge a "membership" fee on top of that. Not to mention that selling domain names is a total hit or miss thing - I've sold 2 out of maybe a dozen that I have put up for sale. For that reason I haven't tried afternic.com. I will try sedo.com now as mentioned above, since I checked and saw that it's free (commissions only). I have also heard of them before.
I have also used tdnam.com in the past. It is free (commissions only) if you have your domains registered through godaddy.com. I sold two domains there with no problems whatsoever. It has an automatic escrow service, so you wait until they receive the money from the buyer and tell you that it's ok to start the transfer of ownership. They were fairly low-priced domains, selling for $50 and $200, but I didn't haggle or wait for other offers - I just took the first offer that came along.
I've never sold a domain before. I just received a $400 offer for a domain I own (radicaltrust),
I'll give to $1300 for it, but could you deliver it to my brother in Arkansas, because right now I'm out of the country.
That I forgot to mention in my other post. If you click on "recent sales" on the left menu on tdnam.com, you will see a log of the top-priced sales in the last month (I believe). You will see that someone recently sold enjoydiary.com for $1805. Crazy - I've seen even crazier sales listed there, and I have a pretty good feeling that those are not bogus, because one of my domain sales was listed there (although way at the bottom at $200) after the sale completed. I've also seen current sales with offers of over $5000.
http://dnscoop.com/
i'm not sure how accurate it is, but it does appraising for free and tells you the factors involved.
Results for http://www.google.com/ (whois: google.com)
Indexed Pages for google.com
Google: 7,090,000
MSN Search: 2,497,919
Yahoo!: 27,439,177
AlltheWeb: 27,000,000
AltaVista: 27,400,000
The estimated value of http://google.com/ is: $1,390,000,000
Hey thanks for the link, interesting service. Strange results though my hosting domain came up about $380, nice but another site with a higher traffic volume came up $0, as did some of my other domains for some reason the urls I put in my original post did not show. SO heres the link www. myjaun com To answer the question I do not personally appraise but I resell GODADDY services and they appraise, would you like to buy a reseller account? click on the myjaun link to see. Bill
The last thing you want to do is sell the domain and then realize that your other three domains are still locked to an email address on the old domain.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
One of the three "tennants" of bad faith holding a domain is basically, using the domain itself as a source of profit (squatting) rather than using it for a productive purpose.
So, offers for domain can be a ruse to establish that your purpose of holding it is resale, and that's one step towards being yanked from you.
The issues are listed in the "domain name arbitration" area of the rules set out by ICANN.
I would certainly expect to get a cashed check in the bank before doing any steps in transfer. Folks that deal in domains are sometimes shady characters.
For an appraisal, you should go the human route. And get three of them if you think your name is worth $500 or more. Appraisals are VERY arbitrary. Any logs of traffic will be very beneficial to the appraisal process. Lots of hits means lots of cash for pure pay-per-click sites.
Some automated appraisers are:
http://leapfish.com/
http://dnscoop.com/
Ignore the dollar amounts as they are bogus. But, you can use the information given (search engine query results, various rankings, etc) to make a stronger case for a high asking price.
It might be a good idea to check if other TLDs of the same domain are registered -- that is an easy indicator that the domain is at least somewhat valuable.
1. Existing traffic - Domain parking services can convert visits into revenue.
2. Backlinks from other relevant sites in your niche. Google values these in their rankings.
3. Age of the Domain: Google's algorithm gives greater authority to established sites, so domains that have been on the web for a few years will generally fetch more in a sale than a newer site with equivalent traffic and backlinks.
4. PageRank, a Google scoring system developed by Larry Page. It's a 1 to 10 scale, the higher the better. This used to be more highly valued, but Google sometimes resets the PageRank when it figures out a domain has changed hands, diluting its value as a sales metric.
URL Trends is a service that provides a quick, free analysis of a domain's PageRank, backlinks and Alexa rank (which has some usefulness in assessing broader traffic trends). URL Trends shows that the submitter's domain, radicaltrust (we assume that means dot-com), has a PageRank of 0, and just one incoming link, but decent age (online since 2001, according to Archive.org). $400 seems like a pretty good offer. The buyer must be motivated by a specific need for that domain, and there's little in the stats to suggest you'd get more in an auction.
The problem here is that most of us don't know how to assess the value of things. There can be a big difference between "value to you" and "market value", and if you sell it based on "value to you" you'll either get no buyer (because your valuation is far over market value) OR you'll get a buyer instantly, who will most likely immediately resell at market value and pocket the cash.
Suppose he sells the domain name, and the guy he sells it to turns around and sells it in turn for 10x the price, because *he* knew of a company starting up that was interested in the name. Was that knowledge -- an overheard conversation -- really worth $3600? Is that fair?
I think he's doing the right thing. If he finds that the original offer was fairly close to market value (i.e., what other people offer), the first buyer should get the domain - no need for a bidding war, or fighting over a few bucks. But if he immediately gets offers far above $400, they need to renegotiate.
There's a third situation -- where he really likes what the buyer plans on doing with the domain, and DECIDES to sell it below market value. This one's complicated, because the buyer might lie about intentions... but it happens; I've done this before. Mind you, this is impossible to do without knowing the market value; otherwise you're giving away an unknown sum.
Go ahead and put it up on the auction block, and then contact the guy that gave you the offer as to where the auction is taking place and tell him that the starting price is $400. If there are no further bids he gets the domain, otherwise you sell to the highest bidder. Sounds pretty fair to me & a possible WIN/WIN although who gets the second WIN may not be the guy that contacted you ;-)
.xx domains that went nowhere (by xx I mean a country domain, i.e. .ru).
Keep in mind that business.com and several other domains have sold for MILLIONS. That said, yours may not be worth even a small fraction of that. It's all about finding somebody who values it & is willing to pay for it. Things are only worth what somebody is willing to pay for them.
FYI, I made $5,000 once with a "pharmacy.xx" type of domain but I also had 200 other
Overall, I lost something like $2,000 in my domain venture because I could not find buyers within 1 year, but back then there were no domain auctions.
Good luck!
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.