Over the years, I’ve been asked by a number of people how to sell a domain name. Most of the people who have asked are friends or friends of friends, and they are not involved in the business of domain investing. I also saw a tweet from someone this past week asking the same type of question, and I thought I would expand on this.
If I was not a domain investor but owned a domain name that has value and wanted to sell it, here are the steps I would take:
This morning, Monte Cahn responded to a comment on my blog about the status of the Right of the Dot auction results. As far as I am aware, finalized results have not yet been reported by Right of the Dot founder Monte Cahn. Apparently, that is because he is continuing to work on closing additional deals.
In the comment Monte posted, he revealed that he “resold Tattoo.com for over $800,000,” and Names.com was sold for $300,000. From what I recall, Tattoo.com had been sold during the live auction for $750,000. I do not believe Names.com was sold during the live or silent auction, so this is an additional sale.
GoDaddy has started reporting some of its top domain name sales on a trailing basis, with the approval of both the buyer and the seller. This morning, GoDaddy reported a handful of its top domain name sales from November of 2020. Nine of these domain name sales were in the six figure range.
The top publicly reported sale in GoDaddy’s report is Exclusive.com, which sold for $350,000. I believe the domain name had been owned by Merlin Kauffman’s company, True Magic, prior to the sale. The domain name now has a coming soon page, and it appears to be some sort of payments company that will be using the domain name.
It looks like George Kirikos may have uncovered another large domain name sale. In a tweet this morning, George reported that Recursion Pharmaceuticals acquired the one word Recursion.com domain name for $904,000:
Recursion(.)com domain name was acquired for $904,000 by Recursion Pharmaceuticals @RecursionPharma in December 2020, according to pp. F-6, F-15, and 118 of their SEC filing at:https://t.co/BVhIspr8Zo
Their IPO is imminent.@DNJournal @NameBio
— George Kirikos (@GeorgeKirikos) March 27, 2021
I have been going back and forth with a prospective buyer on DAN.com for several months. We exchanged offers multiple times, I made a counteroffer I was sure he would accept, and the offer timed out. I asked him a couple of questions, which were met with silence. A couple of weeks later, he made the same offer to me, and instead of playing games, I accepted the offer.
When I buy a domain name, I make my payment as soon as the agreement is signed or as soon as the platform and my bank will allow. If I agree to a deal during business hours, I make every effort possible to fund the deal immediately. Some buyers are like me and others drag their feet. When I have negotiated via email with someone over a period of time, we have usually established some sort of rapport. I can get status updates on payment and the counterparty is typically forthcoming. When negotiating via platform like DAN, the experience may be a bit less personal.
When buying domain names privately, I deal with many people and/or companies that do not regularly sell domain names. Some of these counter parties have never sold a domain name and they do not know the steps involved in completing a domain name purchase.
In order to make the process understandable for them, I provide a bit of a step by step guide to completing a domain name sale. Here are the steps I outline:
