Where and How Are You Selling Your Domain Names?

After posting yesterday’s article discussing what names have sold recently, which was a follow up post to the post about recent domain purchases, Steve Morsa and a couple of others suggested a follow-up post. Although it’s very interesting to see what names are selling, it might be even more important to learn about where domain sellers are having luck making their sales.

For the most part, I have been selling my domain names in private to other domain investors looking. For me, the key is knowing what type of names my buyers are looking to buy and to present them with a very reasonable price. The people I sell to are contacts I’ve made over the years through my blog, at conferences, on forums, and in private. Maybe I could make more on individual domain names by targeting and finding end users, but I am comfortable with the sales I make.

I recently sold one domain name at the DomainFest Live auction run by Moniker (GunCollection.com). The sale didn’t yield as much as I had hoped, but it is what it is. I opted to not set a reserve price on the domain name, and it sold for the minimum.

Although I haven’t sold many names on domain forums, I did sell one recently on Namepros (iCookbook.com). The buyer made his first post on that forum by saying he wanted the name, which leads me to believe he had wanted this name specifically, and he signed up to buy it. His company is in that industry, so that would make sense. Maybe I priced it too low, but I sold it for a profit.

Finally, I sold a couple of names recently on my blog, although I haven’t listed many for sale here in a while. I generally try to limit my sales posts on the blog, but it’s been a good vehicle to sell domain names in the past.

I (and others) are interested in learning where you have sold some of your domain names recently, and how those sales materialized.

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

15 COMMENTS

  1. I have been selling mainly on the forums

    Namepros & DNF my own names

    I have also sold several to endusers through my brokerage pitching to endusers.

    What I find the hardest is getting the “End Users” to see the value in owning a strong .com or keyword domain – Some Still dont get it. The price isnt always the issue most just dont see why they would need it….

    I have Ayr.net @ Great Domains This month with No Reserve, Its a Geo and 12 year old LLL.net so hopefully it goes anyone interested feel free to look at it –

    http://www.sedo.co.uk/auction/auction_detail.php?language=e&auction_id=96971&tracked=&partnerid=14460&language=e

    Thanks for sharing all this info in the past few posts Elliot its great seeing what you and others have been buying and selling recently

  2. After reading on Namepros that several domainers were selling via Godaddy’s Premium Listing Service & noticing Godaddy had lowered the commission to 30% (still high but one can adjust sales price to compensate), I decided to give it a try. In 2010 I have sold six domains for a little under $5K total via this service and none of them had the sort of search stats that domainers would typically require before bidding on a domain.

  3. Mostly through Bido. Once in a while I get an offer through Sedo which I accept and sometimes through email inquiries. Have yet to strike gold with an end user 🙁

  4. I’m pretty new to the game, but my most recent sale was through a direct industry contact that I reached out to via email.

  5. How often do you guys get offers post someone seeing the parked page or looking up whois information? I’ve sold 2 domains that way this year, but it seems this “passive” selling method doesn’t usually yield results. What are other’s experiences?

  6. Mostly selling on the forums, occasionally move one at Sedo or (less frequently) Afternic. A couple through Rick Latona’s daily emails; no success there recently. While I’ve made some decent sales at Bido, there just aren’t enough buyers there to make it steadily worthwhile. However, I’ve made some bulk sales to a buyer I met through Bido.

    End user attempts haven’t paid off yet, but I’m about to try a new bunch of them.

    @ Leonard – I did make one nice sale through GoDaddy’s Premium Listings. Takes months to get paid, though!

  7. Venues (amount of names sold):

    eBay (sold hundreds)
    GoDaddy’s Premium Listings (only one)
    EndUsers (several)
    Forums (only one)
    LuxuryNames (a few)
    My newsletter (a little over a hundred)
    Rick Latona’s (a few)
    SnapNames (over a thousand)

  8. Ciao
    I can tell you that enduser “nation” is stranger than domainers . I regged PeopleOfNature.com, just in a moment of enthusiasm (WTF of name is that, I hear you)
    and the EU hunted me (or “stalked” me, ha, ha), more than one year to get it. She get it,at least, of course, xxxxhigh, wow. After that, the Big Silence.
    But Im still “hardworking” and full of hope (thanks God I have another job too)
    A moment of luck…
    Long and happy life to all domainers!
    Xqs my English

  9. passive … mainly via sedo .. person sees domain listed and sends offer through sedo. i’m interested though in getting some direct emails to buyers to put some of my domains directly in front of them

  10. Emails to end users. Some success. Maybe 1 for every 20 domains attempted.
    Ebay.com – Sold hundreds, usually at small profit or loss. Best success is one I bought on ebay for ten bucks and sold on ebay for 500 bucks. Bought one for 900 dollars on ebay and sold it for 8,200 on ebay.
    My own website chosendomains.com
    Sedo – Best luck with buy it now in 60-250 dollar price range.
    DNForum.com – Plan on using it more this year. Sold only one so far for a loss on auction format.
    Whypark.com
    Nice to see all the places where one can try selling.

  11. I send emails to companies that I know will express interest in the domain. I also advertised my domains on a free site. I only received and negotitated one sale at GoDaddy.

    I find that sending a direct email is the most effective approach to make a sale. The least effective is cold calling companies.

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