Recently we have been thinking about selling some of our domain names. We probably have about 50 of them at the moment – of those about 30 of them are just parked with no website attached.

It kind of comes with the territory when you develop niche websites so you buy the domain with the full intention of building that website in the near future. Unfortunately there is never enough time so the domain names sit there year after year until one day you really you are never going to get around to building them.

So today we decided to put a few of those domain names on the market. Now we aren’t in a rush to sell so we probably overpriced them a bit but we are just going to test the waters and see if anyone bites.

So how do you go about selling your domain names?

There are really only 2 ways to sell a domain name:

1. Sell it yourself – The advantage of this method is that you don’t have to pay a commission on the sale. However the downside is that it can be a little risky if you don’t know what you are doing

2. Getting someone else to sell it for you – the advantage of this method is that you can rely on someone else to do the work for you. You simply list your domain name and then wait for the sale. The payment is made securely and there is less risk of something going wrong. The disadvantage is that you have to pay a commission on the sale.

How Much is My Domain Name Worth?

In order to sell your domain name, you need to know how much it is worth…or at least have a basic idea. Most domain name sellers like Godaddy provide appraisal services. However, oftentimes you will have to pay for the privilege. If you want to get a basic idea of what your domain is worth you can try this free service. But remember that it is only a computer spitting out an answer here so don’t take it too seriously.  Your domain name could be worth a lot more or a lot less – it all comes down to how much someone is willing to pay for it.

There are so many factors that come into play when valuing a domain name including:

  • the length of the url
  • how many words are in the url
  • the type of extension ie. .com, .net, .org etc
  • does it have hyphen

A good way of determing a price for your domain is to check out past sales for domain names similar to your own. One of the best places for this is Sedo. This is one of the biggest buyers and sellers of domain names so you are sure to find a domain name or two that relates to yours.

Where is the Best Place to Sell a Domain Name?

Good question. There are hundreds of different brokers on the net but one of the biggest and the one that I use is Sedo. They have over 11 million domains on their site so they must be doing something good.

It is easy to add a domain and the commission for a sale is 10%. You simply set your price and then sit back and wait for a sale. There are a few different methods of selling your site – you can auction it, set a fixed price, or choose the Make an Offer option. I like using the fixed price but I also combine it with the Make an Offer option.

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