Here are three ways to get cash for domain names fast — and a fourth potential way.
Perhaps you are looking to trim your portfolio. Or maybe you need to raise some cash. Unfortunately, domain names aren’t very liquid assets. But here are three ways to sell your domain names quickly, as well as a potential fourth way to do so in the future.
1. SnapNames – SnapNames isn’t just an expired domain marketplace. You can also list domain names for sale. I tried this out by listing about 30 domains with reserve prices between $59 and $1000. 4 of them sold, including three for $99 that I had hand registered a couple years ago. The other one, a .biz, started at $99 and went to $114. I tried to sell the latter domain on forums several times with no luck, so the added exposure on SnapNames helped. SnapNames takes a 20% cut. Names must be at Moniker or a SnapNames registrar and must have 6 months of registration period left.
2. Forums – there’s a lot of noise on forums, but you can still liquidate domains if you are willing to cut your prices.
3. Sell to NameMedia – I saw a blog post from NameMedia recently that said it was “aggressively” buying domains. I told them to look at my Afternic portfolio. Without getting into specifics, the company offered me an average of $21 for the subset of domains it felt worthy. I had paid more for some of the individual domains in the lot than the company offered for the entire package! I’m not one of those people who thinks my domains are worth millions, and I understand the company’s model has low inventory turnover, but paying about 1 cent on the dollar of their sales prices doesn’t seem very “aggressive”. I wouldn’t waste my time with this option, but I would recommend listing your domains on Afternic with expanded promotion.
4. Domain Name Wire – A number of people have asked me about promoting domains on Domain Name Wire. I don’t want to get into the business of listing domains for sale, but I’m going to try a new system. In the top menu bar you’ll see a link to “Domain Sales“. Every week I’ll list a few domains for sale at “buy now” prices. These domains will also be promoted in the RSS feed. If this works I may consider listing other peoples’ domains in the future. You can see this week’s domains here. Bonus: I’m giving away two expiring domains free this week on the sales page.
Adam Strong says
You’ve left out a few other options, specifically the “Flippers” like Latona, Leto, Rice. All good at moving names if the names are good.
Andrew says
True…I think Rice will let you list them on commission too. Latona talked about doing that, but I don’t think he’s listed anyone else’s domains.
John says
I’m pretty sure Latona is. He talks about it in his February 12th post, which I just reread in Modern Domainer magazine.
After seeing his ad last month I contacted him about some of my names, but he wasn’t interested in the few I showed him. (And being on his phone I’m sure he didn’t look at the rest of my list.) That seemed to be a “no” to buying or listing them in his newsletter.
Rice lists them in his newsletter… and of course has some great cartoons too!
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
Very usefull info… I saw a mention of this article on DNF posted by DotComGod… that’s what brought me here…
Thanks for sharing this timely and useful information…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
what’s the contact info for Rice and Leto ??
Do they have websites ??
Thanks in advance…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
Rob Sequin says
Eric Rice’s email can be found at his site http://DNCartoons.com
Kevin Leto’s email can be found at his site http://BigTicketDomains.com
There is another possible option of liquidating your domains… try to sell them to end users. I have posted the process I use at http://SellingToEndUsers.com .
If you have the right domain at the right price, you might have some luck with that route.
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
thanks for the info Rob…
heading there now…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Thanks for the information Rob! your 3rd recommendation is particularly compelling:
http://sellingtoendusers.com .
I look forward to the day when most domainers realize selling directly to end users is the future of our industry and not typical auctions where we have to wait for weeks and months, only to sell one domain if lucky!
If more of us go out and contact end users, this will create more awareness overall and help raise prices to a more sustainable level. If we believe domains are online real estate, then we must treat them as such and offer them directly to end users.
I am yet to witness one auction house that offers domains directly to end users at auction, e.g lawyers, real estate agents, travel agents etc…..none! We must all take control of our own destinies or else this industry could be heading for serious trouble!
David Hauser says
Thanks for the post and glad to see NameMedia as part of it. NameMedia provides an opportunity for Domain Investors to monetize their objectives in multiple ways, with solutions designed for all objectives.
1. Maximize the full value of your domains. Sell your names through our award winning AfternicDLS Sales Platform. Week in and week out, no domains sales solution sells more domains at higher ASP’s than AfternicDLS (visit the Domain Name Journals’ weekly sale report for examples of what I am referring to). AfternicDLS “Expanded Promotion” option provides global exposure for your domains with more than 85% of the sales going to end-users.
2. Instant Cash. NameMedia acquires thousands of premium “end user” targeted names every month. If you are looking to sell quickly (and/or sell in bulk) and have a quality, business or traffic focused portfolio of domain names you may wish to consider this option. Bear in mind that NameMedia is a “wholesale” acquirer of names – meaning our offer of instant cash means you will likely receive an offer at a lower valuation than full retail price. If you are looking to maximize the value of your names through the retail channel, consider AfternicDLS (option 1 above).
3. Monetize your names through NameMedia’s innovative SmartName or Active Audience Parking Platforms.
If you have any questions about selling your names to NameMedia, please feel free to contact me at dhauser (at) namemedia.com or Ted Olson at tolson (at) namemedia.com. If you have any questions about the AfternicDLS network, please contact Jason Miner at jminer (at) namemedia.com or Adam Gross at agross (at) namemedia.com.
All the best,
David Hauser
Lda says
Domain selling houses reaching out to end users actually DID occur in the early days of this industry.
Those of us whose memories reach back to ‘pre-crash’ days will recall that the original Great Domains (quite different from the present one) would run published ads with lists of dot coms, under killer headlines like “Is your next billion dollar IPO in the list below” ?
Ah. those were the days …..
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Well, those days had better head right back Lda!
I noticed there are hardly any bids on a major auction going on right now, maybe it’s overkill selling to the same people within the domain industry instead of real business end users.
Frank says
@Robert Haastrup-Timmi
Selling to the “end-user” is where the true value is. Which is much lower than selling to another speculator.
Many so-called “premium” domains will never be touched by end users. Home.com is too similar to Homes.com. Developing it means a big lawsuit which the end-user buyer will lose. Large trademark owners do not “arbitrate” with ICANN (which is a joke anyway). A end-user will not only get shut down by a court ( see Dog.com Vs Dogs.com), but smart litigators usually take down the registrar itself ( see yahoo and Dell Vs. Belgiumdomains)
Suing registrars that harbor illegal trademarked typos is a great idea for any young lawyer who wants to make a ton of cash. This type of litigation is in the horizon as trademark owners begin to realize how much these trademark typos sites make. This is money they are losing every day.
Many of these “premium” domains will never be developed. Unless the owner wants to litigate for eternity with large established corporations owning the trademark.
@David Hauser
I’ll never do any business with namemedia. Simply because of the fact of who is behind the company.
Owning million plus domains is not enough for this fellow. Now he wants everyone to park on his sites so he can begin to analyze base .com traffic and then register the other TLDs.
When a handful of individuals control so many domains, it’s like the medieval ages when land barons owned all the land. It is extremely harmful for the long term health of the industry.
That’s why ICANN is a joke. Their “new” rules don’t stop domain tasters. Domain tasters are the single biggest deleterious effect in the industry. And I will not support one of them.
Andrew says
Frank, you say “I’ll never do any business with namemedia. Simply because of the fact of who is behind the company.”
Not sure what you mean. NameMedia is an investment-backed company. There’s not really one person behind it anymore.
Rob Sequin says
Maybe he is thinking about Demand Media which is Richard Rosenblatt.
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Frank, I sort of see where you are going, but your broad view seems rather parochial.
There are already great premium names developed such as diamonds.com, chocolate.com, newyork.com etc. with no legal issues as far as I can see.
Besides, if you negate the top premium names which only amount to a couple of 100 that are mostly meaningful, you then have millions of “keyword” names and “geo” or “geo plus keyword” related names that directly benefit the end business user. E.g, in our local london newspaper there are a handful of laser treatment advertisers and none of them own the relevant keywords. So I’m trying to sell LaserSkinTreatments.co.uk to an advertising client that consistently uses those keywords in their paper ads and website. FundInvestments.co.uk is another keyword example that i’m targeting to UK Fund managers.
Like Robert Sequin suggested, these small companies are not shy of paying £2,000 to £5,000 on average once they understand the intrinsic value. Now that is where the tremendous opportunity lies for most domainers quite frankly! Not essentially the premium domains that most domainers don’t have anyway.
What makes wall street tick is the thousands of listed companies and not just the dow 100, if you know what I mean. I urge every domainer to go out and start selling directly to businesses everyday in order to realize better value ultimately, rather than waiting for the next domain auction to come around.
Stephen Douglas says
Hmm, I’m curious about who Frank means about the person “behind Namemedia.” That could be an interesting story in itself. Will he care to elaborate further? (hope hope hope)
As someone who sells client domains and my own everyday, I find the following sources for domain sales the best:
1. Snapnames Private Auctions – Get your domains registered at Moniker.com, send your list to Jonathan Stanfill at Snapnames, and if you have halfway decent domains, you’re going to sell through at 10% or higher, which is better than any previous service I’ve used. I’d recommend Oversee to upgrade this hot domain selling service at Snap, build out a little larger sales team, with Stanfill at the lead. I sold 30 domains for $6,000 that I would have let go for $50 on the forums. Sweet!
2. Eric Rice has the simplest, most ridiculous but one of the widest read email “domains for sale” list. Sign up at DNcartoons.com. Lower your price, he has serious buyers subscribed, and gets one of the highest sell throughs. Easy to work with too. (Kind of like selling beaver pelts in a log cabin just outside of Lake Tahoe in 1876. Bring your own ale, keep your pistol handy.)
3. DnForum.com. Sometimes no response, sometimes beggers are answering, or there’s the “ah what the hell, I’ll offer a few bucks” kind of buyers, but once in a while, a good buyer (you can identify them quickly by their itrader rating) will give you a decent price. Never had a problem with ripoffs or idiots on Dnforum.
My thoughts on Namemedia? They used to pay somewhat decent wholesale prices for domains last year, then things changed, they smelled blood because a lot of domainers are selling for financial reasons. Then Buydomains just got either slumlordish, garage customer-like, or just greedy. They offered to buy a list of 20 of my above average domains, $15.00 a piece. No, I’m not kidding. That’s “Fifteen Dollars”. I turned around, and took the exact same domains, and sold some of them for an average of $250 – $500 each within 30 days. The first 5 domains I sold elsewhere eclipsed the TOTAL offer by Buydomains for all 20. Since I replied to their offer and asked if it was a mistake, and they said “no”, I thought of how idiotic that mentality was. I would have accepted $145 each for a bulk sale of those good domains, and BD could have easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled their profit by using their built in domain systems at Afternic and BD. If Afternic is that “great”, then why does Buydomains offer such ridiculous prices for picking up good domains? I don’t do anything with Afternic anymore. Maybe I should list some domains with them, but Snapnames blows them out of the water.
4. If I could get a domain on Bido, that would be nice to see. However, get in line. lol Keep an eye on Bido tho.
Good story, Andrew.
Andrew says
…or Michael Mann and doesn’t realize he sold out a long time ago.
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
anyone ever find out who the mystery man is ??
I get much better sales results just finding my own buyer… someone that will develop the name or reroute it to an existing (similar keyword) site they already have… takes alot of work to find the potential buyers – but well worth it… Generally my range is $1,500 – #35,000… For the most part I keep my sales private and keep to myself and press forward…
Best of luck to you all on your sales…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
Andrew says
nope, probably confused
Stephen Douglas says
Hey, who cares about the “mystery man”. Who is the “domainbell”? She never answered my request after she posted on my blog at http://www.successclick.com.
Come on, Patricia. What’s YOUR story??
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
To:
Stephen Douglas
July 30th, 2008 | 10:51 am
Hey, who cares about the “mystery man”. Who is the “domainbell”? She never answered my request after she posted on my blog at http://www.successclick.com.
Come on, Patricia. What’s YOUR story??
Response:
I don’t see it…
is there a direct URL ??
I don’t have a story… LOL
I’m a private person… moving quietly…
working hard… staying private for the most part…
~DOmainBELL (Patricia)
Patricia Kaehler (DomainBELL) says
oh stephen…
I found the post you were referring to on your site… and I responded there…
that one slipped my mimd…
sorry…
Have a great weekend…
~DomainBELL (Patricia)
Adam says
hi,
I agree with Tim, finding your own buyers is much better however is it really possible to hand register a domain yourself and expect a buyer to pay you £300 plus?
Tim just curious if you sold that site http://www.laserskintreatments.co.uk did it pay off? thanks
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Hi There Adam, I have’nt sold LaserSkinTreatments.co.uk just yet, but did come very close when I first mentioned it here. My asking price of about £2500 was not the issue, it was more about getting the UK business to understand that keyword domains convert better than brand names that most people will never type in.
It takes time to educate the UK market particularly, however it looks very promising
going forward. I released the following to the press just last week as part of the ongoing global education process:
Brand Narcissism, SEO by Stealth or Simply Purchase Domain Keywords
http://www.prlog.org/10105377-brand-narcissism-seo-by-stealth-or-simply-purchase-domain-keywords.html
Cheers!
Stephen Douglas says
Hi Robert,
About your domain laserskintreatments.co.uk, I might have a lead for you at your asking price. I was contacted by a company that makes the machines. They were interested in buying a similar domain I own.
Contact me and I’ll give you an update. This just happened two days ago, and my response is still probably circulating on a memo somewhere inside the company.
Robert Haastrup-Timmi says
Hi Stephen,
I sent you an email re: laserskintreatments.co.uk and supremecourt.com hope you received it.
Cheers Chum!