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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Wanda & Paula - 2 friends who successfully operate a number of online internet businesses. In fact we have over 20 blogs and websites making money. We have learnt a lot over the years particularly in the area of natural search, SEO
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help. 
I came to your blog from a WarriorForum post about Amazon thirty minutes later I was still reading your blog posts. I’ll be building a few Amazon stores on some of our product domains and I was searching for the best WP plugin that could help me save some time.
Anyway, here are some quick tips for selling your domains since “Selling Domains” is almost my main business.
- If you have no problem selling your domains for reseller prices and looking for a quick sale try Domain Forums. NamePros & DNForum are the biggest Domain Forums.
- If you have a premium domain, short domain, domain that you so sure that many people will be interested in and you are looking for a quick sale try listing it on GoDaddy Auctions (TDNAM) .. PS: you can set a reserve price for additional fee ($4,95 I think).
- If you have domains that you sure that someday a company will be interested in buying it and you have no problem holding it then list it with Sedo, Afternic. I would suggest adding “Asking Price” .. BTW, If you added “Asking Price” to your domains on Afternic, they will feed your domain to several other places which will increase the exposure to your domain. Sedo also recommend adding Asking Price.
- Last but not least I would also try to reach out some companies if I think that they might be interested in buying my domain.
Paula, I defiantly going to bookmark your blog for further reading.
I think you might wanna hyperlink your header to the homepage since 95% of people would try to go back to your homepage by clicking on it. I know there is a “Home” link above the header but linkable header would be great. IMO
I also noticed in your “WP Zon Builder” review you didn’t use Categories such as WordPress Plugins & WordPress which is already exist. I’m not sure why.
Best of luck, thanks for sharing and I wish you find my comment useful.
Sameh
GenericDomainMarket.com
Thanks for your domain name tips. It’s good to have real advice from someone in the business of selling domain names.
And also thanks for your suggestions on the format of this website. They’ve come at just the right time because I am going to be spending some time on this website fixing up a few things in the next couple of days. I’ll add them to the list.