Selling domain names - anyone done it?

goldtop

Have signed up with sedo and godaddy to offload some domains (not wesites) that I no longer use or need. These days it seems that there's no money in domain parking, and I don't have time or inclination to develop content for them myself.

No idea what they might fetch, but with the shift of many Net users to social media activity, I'm under no illusions that the days of big figures being paid for catchy domain names are over.

Just wondering if anyone here has sold a domain and had some advice?

revsorg

I've gradually whittled my domain collection down from about 1500 to just a couple of hundred.  I've sold very many domains but I can't say there is any rhyme or reason to it, just a matter of buying excellent names that don't infringe copyright, making it easy for people to know how to contact you - which is generally in the WHOIS info.  And then agreeing a price - I'm sure everyone has their own ideas about how this is best achieved.

The issue you have now in the .uk namespace is that the June 2019 cutoff point has been breached.  If you have a .co.uk that you really value you now have to buy the .uk version.  You might want to double-check this information, a few years ago I'd be 100% confident in what I'm talking about but domains have kind of lost their interest to me.

For the record, I own flanger.co.uk which is a domain I've often thought would have some value, but nobody has ever shown any interest.

goldtop

Thanks.

For selling, it appears you either wait for people to find the domain (after adding a 'for sale' notice as home page), or use a service like sedo, etc. I have just done the first for all of the domains and am now testing sedo with a Buy-it-now type of sale for one of them.

I don't have any .co.uk addresses - all are .com and typically two-word pairs. Many were named around services I was interested in developing at the time (and that never happened). The one I think has most potential is the one I registered in '96, but it only makes sense to someone who wants to develop the service implied in the name.

TimmyO

Anyone who might be prepared to pay more than a token sum over and above registration costs (ie is likely to want/need the domain to be part of something money-making) is going to need to be able to ascertain whether the domain has any history - for example if it was used and has legacy SEO weight for something irrelevant to them like a trainspotting site, or for content that was flagged as adult, or spammy or whatever, then that might be perceived as being a drag on future organic SEO health for that domain. 

If you've had a domain from new you could indicate any pertinent info like this on the for sale page. They'll still want to verify, but it shows you've thought about it.

goldtop

Thanks - that's something that I will look into. Do you know any independent way I can verify that?

The most valuable (I think) one has never had anything on it other than some image and MP3 hosting of my own. It does get quite some traffic even with nothing there. It was always hosted at Network Solutions and there was never any spam/etc related stuff associated with it. The others were parked.

TimmyO

goldtop said:

Thanks - that's something that I will look into. Do you know any independent way I can verify that?

The most valuable (I think) one has never had anything on it other than some image and MP3 hosting of my own. It does get quite some traffic even with nothing there. It was always hosted at Network Solutions and there was never any spam/etc related stuff associated with it. The others were parked.

it's an imprecise 'science' - but the fact that a domain has only ever been parked is worth stating, as it can't then have negative issues (spam/dodgy content) or domain authority (old positive SEO attributes) for the 'wrong' keywords compared to what a new owner would want to use it for. Both can have a negative impact on organic SEO performance so someone buying for that use might care. 

I'd just have that info to hand and let a buyer verify if they wish (eg internet wayback machine/google cache will come up blank when they check, which is good) 

there's a members-only community I'm aware of where people build out sites to make passive income from organic SEO - if you wanted to ping me a list of your domains I could share and see if any interest 

spark240

revsorg said:

I've gradually whittled my domain collection down from about 1500 to just a couple of hundred.  I've sold very many domains but I can't say there is any rhyme or reason to it, just a matter of buying excellent names that don't infringe copyright, making it easy for people to know how to contact you - which is generally in the WHOIS info.  And then agreeing a price - I'm sure everyone has their own ideas about how this is best achieved.

The issue you have now in the .uk namespace is that the June 2019 cutoff point has been breached.  If you have a .co.uk that you really value you now have to buy the .uk version.  You might want to double-check this information, a few years ago I'd be 100% confident in what I'm talking about but domains have kind of lost their interest to me.

For the record, I own flanger.co.uk which is a domain I've often thought would have some value, but nobody has ever shown any interest.

Flange.co.uk may have gotten some interest...