Tip to People Seeking a Domain Broker

Just about every domain forum has a section for people to post threads seeking domain broker representation. In addition to this, people email brokers privately to discuss brokerage deals. Even though I am not a domain broker and have never been a domain broker, I receive emails daily from people asking me to broker their domain names.

Based on what I’ve seen on forums and what I’ve read in private emails, I want to give a tip to people looking to find a domain broker.

Just because you are willing to offer a broker a very high commission percentage, the chances of finding someone to broker your domain name does not increase if the domain name isn’t excellent, sellable, or somewhat reasonably priced.

If you are trying to sell a crappy domain name, a broker will not care whether you are willing to give him 10% commission or 90% commission. A good broker is not going to waste his or her time trying to see a bad domain name that nobody is going to buy. There are many great domain names out there, and it makes sense to focus on those because they have a better chance of selling.

Similarly, if you are looking to sell a good domain name for a ridiculous price, chances are good that you won’t find a broker no matter how much commission % you are offering. I think MassachusettsRealEstate.com is a good name, but if I won’t sell it for less than $500,000, a broker won’t touch it even if I offer a whopping 50% commission. The reason for that is because the domain name will never sell at that price, so the commission possibility is zero.

There are many people out there who broker domain names. There are relatively few exceptional domain brokers out there. A great domain broker isn’t going to take on a bad or significantly overpriced domain name, no matter how much commission you offer.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

13 COMMENTS

  1. Name me one broker who does more then list your domain name and/or broadcast such information to his/her contact list. I doubt there is one broker who would go beyond that point, looking for Fortune 500 or Global 500 companies and attempt to contact them. Zilch!

    • Plenty of brokers do that.

      Dave Evanson of Sedo, for instance, doesn’t have an email list to my knowledge. You can search his name on my blog and see some of his recent public sales.

    • As Elliot said, plenty of brokers engage with corporations.
      I’ve worked with these 3 people and I know they’re out there dealing with major companies :
      Mike Robertson
      Andrew Rosener
      Cyntia King

      Plenty of “brokers” probably don’t do any work other than list domains to their contacts. In the end, if they sell your domain for the price you want, does it matter who they marketed it to ?

  2. I won’t name any names, but lets just say there are a few people who stumbled into ‘domains’ without having the skills or knowledge base to differentiate a good domain from a bad one yet still call themselves ‘brokers’ and even have ‘recognizable’ names in the industry.

    There are some comically incompetent and unqualified ‘domain brokers’ out there.
    Then, there are the ones who actually are good at it.

    I’ve always said this, but this industry needs some sort of ‘competition’ to put a lot of the blowhard assholes on the spot to see how much money they can bank, instead of how many words they can type or how many ‘lists’ they can send out.

  3. The reason I’m not going to name names is precisely because I’m anon and I don’t trash peoples reputations without putting my name to it. That is a cowardly thing to do. I’ve never had a problem using my name to confront people and when necessary, I do.

    Deal with enough ‘domain brokers’ and in a very short period of time, you realize which ones are skilled and which ones wouldn’t be able to perform selling used Hyundais to people with bad credit.

  4. Domain brokers acquired their negotiating experience the SAME way we as domainers have, by SELLING domains.

    The only difference between a broker and US is that we DON’T proclaim ourselves as “Experts”, only the arrogant do that.

    And only a domainer with low confidence in their selling and negotiating abilities would acquire a broker IMO… How are domainers going to learn how to negotiate if they have someone doing it for them? And to give them a cut of YOUR hard work?

    A large part of domaining is Buying and Selling, so if your only buying wouldn’t that make you 1/2 a domainer?

  5. “Dave Evanson of Sedo”

    I haven’t worked with Dave but I have worked with other Sedo brokers, not by my choosing but by the buyers… I wished I saved all the emails where they asked me to “Justify my price”. LOL

  6. If a domain keyword has a number of advertisers would this be the kind of domain that a broker could be interested in? just for example i own Cloud/Server/Services it has a high CPC and high competition for advertisers, however it doesn’t have larger search volumes. Would a broker be interested in this kind of name to take on?

  7. Elliot, Great post (shared). Some sellers just don’t get it. I had a guy contact me from LinkedIn to help him broker a domain and he didn’t get the fact that I was not excited about his offer if “massive” commissions because his valuation made no sense and was not attractive to a buyer. I offered to spend some time educating him (for a consulting fee) and he declined.

    Cheers!

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