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What is the best way to sell a high quality (dictionary word) domain name?

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Everybody's curious... whatcha selling? – jorgem Apr 15 '10 at 22:35
2  
"fogcreek.com" Just kidding. That's not a dictionary word, anyway. We own "manuscript.com" – Joel Spolsky Apr 16 '10 at 1:09
Should be easy to sell. Good luck. – jorgem Apr 16 '10 at 18:46
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Why don't you put a "for sale" sign on it instead of going nowhere? You might be able to sell it directly without paying a commission to a third party. – Tony_Henrich Apr 20 '10 at 7:23

4 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

Getting your domain name in front of buyers is obviously critical.

Two main approaches:

1. Someone else sells it for you

Afternic.com and Sedo.com are the two biggest "domain listing" sites. These are great places to get your name in front of many domain investors. For very good domains, Afternic has sales people that will help find buyers.

If it's a very valuable domain, you may also want to contact a domain broker, like Rick Latona, who will help find the best buyer (for a cut, of course). They have experience selling the very best domains PLUS an extensive customer of bigtime investors to draw upon. If the domain isn't quite premium, the broker services will still work, but you may have to wait a little longer.

2. Sell It Yourself

The second approach is selling it yourself -- this requires a lot more work on your part, but generally can lead to much better results. Selling directly to an end user will most often get you a better price than selling to a domain investor or an auction.

Think real hard about what kind of business would want your keyword domain and contact them directly. Many online businesses are very savvy about the value of a great domain, and will be open to your contact.

If you can't think of a company to sell to, try Googling for keyword in your domain name. See which companies are advertising for your keyword (look at the ads on the right after you search). These companies are already PAYING to advertise for the search term, and so they will see the value of your domain.

Another tip is to search Google for "INURL:keyword". This will give you a list of companies that may be using a longer version of your domain like "MyKeyword.com", when you own "Keyword.com". These companies may be very interested in the "better" domain that you have.

I'll also plug my iPhone app -- search the app store for "Domains For Sale", and you can sign up for a free domain listing and sell it yourself.

META: Maybe the right place for this question would be an SE site like AskAboutDomains.COM. It's too hard to build traffic when the questions go to the wrong site :) [good natured jab]

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+1 for INURL Google operator! – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun May 14 '12 at 11:30

There is also Flippa.com

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Visit RickLatona.com he will either buy it from you, or announce it on his daily newsletter to many a people in the domain selling/purchasing industry easily 5 figures for that domain

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There are several online services where you can list your domain for sale. Some charge you a fee but some don't. Sedo is just one, for example.

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