A person who has long owned a 3 letter .com domain name reached out to me to try and sell it. It’s a nice domain name and has a great history, but I told her I wouldn’t insult her with what would likely be perceived as a lowball offer. Instead, I shared some advice to help her sell the domain name.
I don’t offer any domain consulting or domain broker services, so I figured I would share this advice in the event someone else is looking for advice on what to do with an unused domain name.
There are three different routes a person can take to sell a domain name. These are not individually distinct, so a person can use a combination of these three options – or even all three options.
Option one – Put up a “for sale” landing page with either an inquiry form or link to email offers. People who visit the domain name to see if they can buy it will be able to fill out the form to inquire or make an offer. If you don’t list a price, you will end up with many tire kickers offering $100, $1,000, $10,000…etc. You can either create your own lander from scratch, customize a domain for sale template landing page, or use a platform like Efty to craft a landing page.
The advantage of using your own landing page is that you can control the negotiation. You can set the price based on current conditions and even based on who may want to buy the domain name. The market for domain names is dynamic, and at certain times I will ask for more or less based on internal and external conditions. Importantly, there is no commission fee beyond the transaction fees for going it alone.
Option two – Use a domain name sales platform like Sedo, Afternic, or Dan.com. With these platforms, you can use one of their landing pages and not have to create your own lander. Most beneficially, the domain name will appear across these platform’s networks when someone searches for the domain name or for something similar. The platform will also manage a transaction if someone agrees to buy it.
There are some downsides to this. For one thing, the platforms charge 15% +/- commission. In addition, these platforms may not tell you who is inquiring about the domain name, so you won’t know who is on the other end of the negotiation.
Option three – Hire a domain broker to sell the domain name. The broker can proactively or reactively sell the asset. By being proactive, the broker can reach out to companies or entities that may benefit by upgrading to your domain name and can negotiate a deal on your behalf.
Being proactive may not yield the best deal, particularly if the first round of outreach doesn’t get a deal done. Being reactive means the broker is responsible for responding to inquiries and offers. They will be responsible for creating a landing page and responding to offers that are submitted. You’ll just have to change the nameservers to point the domain name to their landing page.
Having a domain broker who is an expert at closing domain name deals may help push a deal over the finish line. However, someone willing to pay a substantial amount of money to buy a domain name may not need that extra convincing. Brokers generally charge anywhere from 10-20% to help close a deal, depending on the sale price. This is costly, but a broker can help secure a sale.
Option 1 going alone means you will need a hosting account, static IP address and ssl certificate for each domain. If you URL forward your domains to one host account then Google serves you a screen with unsafe warnings. Paying hosting per domain monthly adds up.
That is a very good point.
I believe there may be some registrars who offer inexpensive or free hosting for one page landers though.
John, if you use DynaDot, you can get free SSL forwarding. VPS hosting to host a simple lander-based page will cost $5-6 a month. You can also use CloudFare to get free SSL forwarding for a domain name–the connection between the user and Cloudfare is SSL. Then forward that seamlessly to your non-SSL hosting.
The largest cost to me if friction at each step: Trust, escrow, back and forth negotiation, suspicion from buyer. Personally Afternic and Dan remove most of that friction. Back when Efty was cheap, i put all my domains on it and had inquiries but minimal sell through. As soon as i moved them to Dan, my sales noticeably picked up (2x-3x). Anecdotal, but as a marketing person, i know friction kills deals. Hence, for me its all about minimizing friction now. Most of my names are priced now, if they want it, they should buy it. If name over mid five figures figures, then contact form is warranted.
Thank you, Elliot, John, and Dan K. Three good enough comments to me.
Knowledge does not take place.