I bought a domain name recently, and I did a bit of research to see the prices of similar domain names. This should help me determine my asking price if someone inquires in the future. If you see names that are for sale but aren’t priced, don’t be afraid to ask the owner for their prices and whether or not they have received offers.

There are a couple of reasons for finding out the prices of similar domain names.

The first reason is that prospective buyers will likely find those other names and inquire about them. If a similar domain name is for sale for $2,000 and you are asking $25,000, you may have a difficult time selling.

The second reason is

Domain blogs would seem like a good place to sell domain names. There is a captive audience of people within the domain business, and many people who read blogs buy domain names on a regular basis. Unfortunately, the comment section is not a good place to sell domain names.

I have to deal with comment spam on a regular basis. Usually, the spam is caught by the Akismet spam filter, but occasionally it gets through. Akismet is not as good at catching people trying to sell domain names as it is at catching spammy links to porn, pharmacies, and other blog comment spam. This means that I (and other blog publishers) have to manually mark these comments as spam.

The vast majority of comments that have domain names for sale contain

A few days ago, I listed SSSN.com and PRRR.com for sale via Embrace.com. Unfortunately, the domain names were not sold, and I am happy to continue holding them until a buyer is willing to pay my asking prices. One important thing I did this morning was delete the sale post on Embrace.com. I think people should remember this step when conducting a sale.

I set up the sale page with buy it now links from Escrow.com. I think they make buy it now listings easier for buyers to execute quickly. The one downside is that I don’t think you can set up an expiry period for these links. For instance, if I list a domain name for sale for $5,000 today, someone could theoretically use the link to set up a transaction in 10 years from now. With the crazy market values of some domain names, it would be problematic if I give someone the ability to buy a name in the future at today’s prices.

When you use buy it now pricing on domain names,

A couple of years ago, I reached out to a business colleague when I was looking to sell a domain name. He gave me the contact information of  a friend of his who is CEO of a medium-sized company (LinkedIn says 51-200 employees) that we both  thought might be interested in the domain name.

When I reached out to the CEO, I assumed he wouldn’t be the best person to ask about the domain name. Instead, I asked him if I could contact the person who manages  the company marketing to discuss the domain name opportunity. He said that would be a good idea, and he provided the employee’s email address and phone number. I then emailed the Director of Marketing at the company, making sure to mention that the CEO referred  me to him to discuss the domain name. The company ended up buying the domain name from my company.

I am not sure how much