misc domains selling domains

Selling Domains

So you've got a domain portfolio with a bunch of names or maybe if your starting out a handful of names. You've got a couple parked, not ready to develop any yet or don't have the time so you've starting thinking about selling some of your domain names. Selling can be as easy as offering a domain name at an auction for a quick sale or as hard as researching the correct pricing based on past and current sells and contacting end users directly to sell it. This depends on two things how you view time and money.

1. Do you need the money right away? - Then post it in auction, on forums, ofer for sale while parking, and even contact end users to sell the domain.

2. Do you want top dollar for your domain? - If you can wait then do some research find out what similar domains are going for and post it on the auctions, forums and if you want an e-mail campaign to potential end users. Of course end users will pay you more, but be prepared to wait awhile to get your top dollar.

Check out the links on the left for more information on each of these areas.

Auctions

Direct from owner

Domain forums

gfdsgfsIt's hard to sell something people are not looking for, but some domainers still like "brandable" domains that show poor results in all of these tools. They believe a company might buy their name and then do a lot of marketing to build recognition for the name. Those sales do occur occasionally but they are much more of a long shot than names that have solid search interest built in and that perfectly describe an entire class of goods or services. Again, it is all about stacking the odds in your favor

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There is a much more in-depth discussion of these tools and many others that you will want to use in a Cover Story I wrote for DNJournal.com called Tools of the Trade: Free Resources That Will Help You Identify Domains That $ell. I strongly urge you to read the complete article because I am convinced you will earn dividends from the information for many years to come.

Keep in mind that these tools do not gaurantee sales but they will greatly enhance your odds of buying domains that have a better chance to sell or earn money from advertisers. Sometimes buyers do not surface for even the best names, but the domain business is all about the odds. If you build a portfolio of carefully selected domains a certain percentage will sell and the proceeds should be enough to recoup your costs for the entire portfolio with a nice profit left over.

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http://www.enom.com/statistics.asp - stats on resellers at enom

If former carpet salesman Roy Edward Messer would have sold his domain name Vodka.com to another domain name investor, how much would it have sold for? Surely it wouldn’t have been as much as Cameras.com, which sold at auction last year for $1.5M. Any domain name buyer would hedge his bets on a domain related to an expensive electronics item with high pay-per-click prices than on an alcholic drink with low pay-per-click prices.

In fact, Messer would have been lucky to score close to seven figures for his premium domain.

But Messer didn’t sell his domain to other domain name investors. Instead, he went straight to an end user: Russian Standard Vodka. Russian Standard didn’t care about click prices for the term “vodka”. It cared about establishing itself as a major player in North America. The company paid dearly — $3M — but it was worth it.

Therein lies the holy grail of domain name sales — selling a domain to an end user. You can define an end user in the domain name market as a company that will use a domain to brand its company or advertise its existing services (as compared to someone who will just use it as a parked page or micro site). Most end users value a domain much higher than domain investors who hope to flip the domain within a short period of time.

But getting to end users is difficult and often requires snagging the attention of someone at a Fortune 500 company. Sometimes the best way to approach end users is through a broker who has contacts in the industry. (Moniker had success going after end-users in the adult market with its recent Internext auction in Las Vegas. However, there are few methods this easy for selling to end users.)

If you want to try end user sales yourself, here’s my recommend approach:

1. Determine the end users for your domain. It may be silly to list this as the first step, but it’s critical. Let’s say your domain is related to office supplies. End users will be large companies like Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS) and Office Depot (NYSE: ODP), as well as smaller office supply companies, manufacturers, and wholesalers.

2. Compile a list of the best contacts at each of these companies. You’re usually looking for a senior person in the e-commerce, strategy, or intellectual property departments. If you have trouble finding contact information try a search at Jigsaw.

3. Place phone calls/send e-mails/send snail mail to each contact explaining the value proposition of buying your domain.

I know it seems like a laborious process, which is why few people attempt end user sales. Some day these end users will warm up to the value of generic domains and the market will become more efficient. Until then domain owners will have to take the initiative. The good news is the payoff for your initiative might be very grand.

http://domainsmagazine.com/Domains_3/Domain_6130.shtml

1. The largest one is www.sedo.com
At this moment this website is the most popular one for selling domains , to list your domain for sale is free , but if you were successfull to sell your name they will charge you at least 50$ ( +10% ) , if you're selling for Euro they will charge you min 50 euro . This is very good place if you are new domain seller because you're risking nothing for selling your names. The best strategy is not to mention any price it's better to set them as " make offer " , for example I've sold www.idownload.us for 110 Euro few month ago , but actually that domain name value cannot be more then 30 $ ( undeveloped ) . Sometimes generally new buyers have no clue about the price for domains , sometimes they are making lowball offers for very valued domains and sometimes they are offering really good prices for bulk names.

2. Afternic.com

Is really good place to sell your domains , but I must mention that this site is paid (9.95$ to start selling + some % after sales but not big ). To register as buyer you have to pay 1$ , think that this 1$ is very important , because using this 1$ will increase the chances that the buyer is really want to buy something ( in Sedo you'll see many buyers making offers but actually they do not pay when you agree to sell ) . They are one of the bigest players in this industry . This site is recommended if you have valued names to sell

3. Dnforum.com
This is the biggest forum of domainers

You'll be able to sell your names here , but I must mention that in this place allmost all are professional sellers with very very deep pockets and they are very experieced ones so almost you have no chances to sell domains names if they are bulk ( if domain cost 100$ when expect to receive 50$ in Dnforum ) or to cheat someone ( like false PR , automated visits , ). Most of them are reselling names , thats why you can't receive much for your name . Even Sedo , Afternic , NameDrive , Snapnames have profiles there.

But It's PAID 9$ for gold membership , 39$ for Platinum and 400$ for exclusive
But if you're going to be pro in domain selling you'll surely will register here soon or late

4. Namepros.com
Very popular domain forum , just like Dnforum but it's free

5. If you want to check recent domain sales just visit www.dnjournal.com/sales/ all big sales are listed here

I'll will not list other as they are less popular , but take time and visit tdnam.com enom.com , moniker.com , pool.com , GreatDomains.com

Hope this will help you

http://www.webmasters.am/forum/index.php

http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2007/06/28/educating-selling-to-end-users/

Getting paid after agreeing a price

This is the method we use and it works well.

Have a sales procedure that you can mail to the buyer once a price is negotiated - and send this across to them within minutes of agreeing the price. This gives the impression that you're used to doing this and that its the normal way to do this kind of transaction as it may be the first time the buyer has bought a domain name.

Heres our procedure in summary:

Their billing details are requested so that an electronic invoice for the domain name can be issued by email

This email contains details of our bank so they can effect a wire transfer

They are then contact by the "technical department" who request the details for the whois so that the transfer can be performed smoothly.

Once the funds are wired and confirmed received, the whois is updated immediately and they are emailed by both the tech department and sales to confirm the transaction is completed.

It helps if you use a registrar where you can make online ownership changes so this can be done as fast and smoothly as possible.

If they ask for escrow on a sale, if its a low sale we will normally tell them that we would not do it due to the extra administration involved. this is a form of confidence in that it *could* be a dealbreaker - but rarely actually is.

An alternative to escrow is to offer to change the nameservers so that they can use the domain name while the wire is being made.

Another alternative, if your domain account allows it, is to change ownership details for the whois prior to the wire but don't give them the password to the domain - this allows you to reverse the details in the event of a problem.

If they absolutely insist on escrow, escrow.com are a good company in general but its worthwhile making sure the email address they set the account up in matches the email account of the admin contact they've requested for the whois - this way if the buyer doesn't progress the transaction you can telephone escrow.com and have them do it.