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There are
large aftermarket sales sites like
Afternic.com and
Sedo.com that list hundreds of
thousands of domains for sale. You can visit their site and
enter a keyword you are interested in in their search box. That
will return a list showing every domain they have for sale that
includes your keyword. If you find any you like, you can then
place a bid and begin negotiations with the current owner.
A lot of
domain owners have their names parked on pay per click
advertising pages that will often display a clear notice whether
or not the domain is for sale. You can enter names you are
interested in in your browser to see what the domain is
currently being used for. If you land on one of those For Sale/PPC
pages you can click on the For Sale link and make an offer for
the domain. The owner will usually make a counter offer and the
negotiations will continue from there
Another option you
have when you have a specific domain name in mind that you would
like to have is to look up who owns the domain in the public
WhoIs record. This record will show
the current owner's name and email address (unless they are
using a WhoIs privacy service).
You can then drop
the owner an email inquiring whether or not they would be
interested in selling the domain. This may not have a high
success rate because many of these names will not be available
for sale. Still, it never hurts to ask and once in awhile you
might land a bargain.
Before you make an offer on any domain name you
should spend some time studying the market so you will have an
idea of how much to bid. You don't want to overpay but you will
also be wasting your time (and the seller's time) by making
unrealisticly low offers that are far below current market
values. In most cases, you won't even get a reply when you make
such offers.
How do you
learn about current market prices? The weekly domain sales
report that comes out every Tuesday night at
DNJournal.com lists dozens of sales in all
extensions that have been completed in the previous seven days.
From studying those sales reports (which also inlcude all of the
year's top sales) it won't be long before you become familiar
with the kind of domains that command premium prices. For
example, since you will see 3-letter .coms typically selling for
thousands of dollars, no need to write someone and offer them
$50 for theirs.
On the other
side of the coin, other types of names or particular
extensions may be conspicuous by their absence. If the kind of
name you have in mind rarely shows up with a high price tag
attached, a motivated seller might consider a couple of hundred
dollars for it. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting a real
handle on domain values there is no substitute for study and
experience.
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