Domain Sales

Ken Taylor is the CEO of Marksmen, a company that bills itself as “a world leader in trademark investigation services, including domain acquisition and online brand protection.” Many domain investors have done business with this company that generally acts on behalf of trademark owners in domain negotiations, but also represents domain investors in sales to its clients.

Mr. Taylor was a speaker at DomainFest last month, and I thought his discussion on domain valuation would be interesting to watch if you weren’t at DomainFest (or missed this panel).

I receive quite a few emails asking something along the lines of, “can you help me find a buyer for my domain name?” I don’t broker domain names, so I generally try to get people to think about how they can find a buyer on their own. This is one of those things that if you can do it successfully once, you can replicate it. I want to share some advice on how you can try and find a buyer for domain names you want to sell.

My first piece of advice is to take the keywords from your domain name and plug them in to Google. See what companies advertise for those keywords and see what companies rank organically. Try to find a contact on the website to pitch the domain name or use the contact form. If there is no contact form or if finding the “right” person to contact is difficult, do a Whois search for the company domain name and contact the Whois contact. Many times, that person is either the contact or will forward your email to the appropriate person.

My next piece of advice is to evaluate how the  domain name can be used and by what type of company. Think about what type of companies may be interested in buying the domain name, and visit the websites of the obvious buyers (or do a Google search to find companies in those industries).  One tip with respect to this is that if you have to come up with some convoluted or tangential reason a company would want to use a domain name, you’ll probably have a tough time selling the domain name. In my experience, some companies are open to buying domain names but don’t want to hear an idea for a marketing strategy that is possible with certain domain names.

My third piece of advice is to use a domain name lead generation website like Lead Refs or Estibot to contact buyers. Be 100% sure you haven’t contacted the same person/company already. I am sure it’s annoying to receive multiple emails from the same person about a domain name, especially if the name is not of interest. I would likely remove obvious domain investors from those leads since your hit rate will likely be lower and it will annoy people who may label you as a spammer.

If your domain name is superior, you may want to have a domain broker at a company like Afternic,  Sedo,  Aftermarket.com, or Domain Holdings do outbound lead generation on your behalf. Mind you, they will likely only do this if the domain name is valuable and the price is reasonable since they only get paid for this if they close a deal.

If the domain name doesn’t have obvious commercial appeal, selling it via outbound sales channels may not be possible or will be very difficult. For brandable names, it’s more likely that you’ll close a more favorable deal when a buyer comes to you. I recommend listing them on various aftermarket websites and making sure there’s a “for sale” notice on the landing page.