How To Sell Your Low To Mid Value Domains

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How To Sell Your Low To Mid Value Domains

By John Motson

If you are Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Leland Hardy or someone else who was smart enough to invest in domains from the word go, stop reading this post right now. Those guys got in the domain game in the early days. Can you believe Leland Hardy bought NewYork.com at registration fee in 1994?

If on the other hand, you are a mere mortal like myself, then read on.

I know a lot of people that own lots and lots of domains. Scouring through the lists of expiring and available domains, I can’t help registering the ones I like. A quick look at my domain stats tells me I am the proud owner of 277 domain names. And no, I am not crazy. Quite a few of them would fetch me a sweet sum if I decided to sell. But I hold on to my nest eggs.

A lot of the other domains I own are valued in the upper low to mid value. Sometimes, in order to recycle my cash, or out of pure curiosity, I decide to sell. Other times, I flip a domain ( buy, then resell at a higher value ) in a short period of time.

In both cases I have found that the best places for a quick and easy sale are not sedo, afternic, tdnam or any of the other domain name after markets. The best places to sell are forums with sections purely dedicated to domains.

The forums I frequent to sell my domains are:

• dnforum.com ( upper class domainer forum with paid membership )
• domainstate.com ( one of the oldest domaining forums with strong sale potential )
• namepros.com ( a solid domainer community )
• forums.digitalpoint.com ( a forum with lots of low-ballers but with some solid sales in the pocket )
• v7n.com and webmaster-talk.com ( less frequented forums with lower probability of sale )

Now, before you rush to one of the above and attempt to make your sales, here are some important facts you should take into consideration:

1. Don’t jump head first into putting up a sales thread. Investigate, get your domains appraised by peers, and find out the ballpark value of your domain before you slap a price tag on it. You don’t want to regret selling a valuable domain name for peanuts. And you don’t want to overprice your domain name and never sell it.

2. These forums work on reputation. Because they are online and there is no real way of tracking who does what and when, the forums work on a rating system similar to Ebay. Make sure you have at least a few ratings points before you attempt to make a sale. People will take you more seriously if you have a trader rating of 10, then a trader rating of 0 – hence they will bid/offer more money. Also, in case you are buying, be very careful of a seller with 0 trader rating.

3. Always take the money before you transfer a domain to a buyer. Every buyer has protection from Paypal. If they end up being cheated by a seller, they can always file a complaint with Paypal and get their money back. The seller on the other hand will have a lot of trouble convincing their registrar to give them the domain back once it’s transferred to a new owner.

4. Bump your thread only once per day. Sales threads tend to go down screen as time wears off and they have no bids against them. Some sellers are tempted to bump their thread ( post a comment like “Still selling” ) in order to get their thread to the top of the pile. Don’t do this. It annoys everyone and ruins your reputation. In addition, if a forum moderator notices you doing this, he may give you a disciplinary warning or even ban you from the forums – and if you had previously compiled a solid trader rating, you will lose it.

5. And finally, make sure you are honest in all your forum dealings. I would rather sell names consistently at a solid price, then make one quick sale, annoy someone and ruin my reputation for ever. And if you think you can get away with cheating people and then changing your username, think again. There are ways of tracking people and making sure they never visit a forum again.

So, take a look at that domain portfolio of yours, or find some available or expired domains of value, and go earn some money by selling your domains with the methods I described above. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

To Your Domaining Success!

PS. Of course, no one can guarantee that you have the correct domains to sell. If you own sillydomainnameforselling.com, no amount of hints or tips about selling domains will help you.

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