One of the joys of being a moderator at one of the most popular domaining forum — DNForum — is that you get swamped with private messages from people. One of the question which I get asked the most is How to Sell a Domain Name.

In this post I am going to talk about the strategies I use to sell a domain name or website. Let’s get started, shall we?

There are a few things that I must tell you before we get started.

1. DO NOT buy any eBook — I have read most of the eBooks currently available in the market and they are mostly useless and provide obsolete information.

2. Subscribe to DomainingTips.com Newsletter — As the moderator of one of the biggest and most influential domaining forum (DNForum), I have access to some of the biggest players in the industry.

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There are two kind of people who buy domain names — 1. Resellers and 2. End Users.

Resellers are the people who buy domains and sites with the sole purpose of reselling them. They are not interested in keeping their inventory forever and are, usually, not interested in developing the domain name.

End Users are the people who are interested in developing and running the domain. Unlike resellers, they plan to use the domain for development or promotion purposes and don’t plan to sell it as soon as they find a buyer. An end user can be an individual or a company.

A lot of times people will list a domain for sale and get discouraged when no one makes an offer or buys what they are selling. Most of the times it turns out that they were trying to sell to wrong people.

Let’s see what actually sells and who buys it.

1. Generic Domains. These are domains like hotels.com, cars.com, search.com, poker.com, loan.com, coupons.com etc.

The reason why these domains are valuable is because a lot of people will never use a search engine to find things but instead just type [keyword].com — which translates into highly targeted traffic.

End-Users pay big bucks for these type of names. Resellers are also willing to offer big bucks for them in hope of selling them for even bigger bucks.

2. Revenue Domains. These are the names which make revenue from parking traffic. If you have this kind of domain then resellers would totally jump at it and offer you 12-15 months of revenue for it.

3. Brandable Domains. These are the brandable names like NewYorkHotels.com or MiamiRealtors.com. The target for these types of domains is usually end users. Resellers don’t shell much money for them usually.

4. Developed Sites - There is yet another category which is domains with websites. They are much easier to sell as they usually have traffic and revenue attached to them by the virtue of their search engine rankings.

Resellers buy sites which don’t take much effort to run or promote. End users look for sites with long-term potential — which may even mean putting effort into running the site or promoting it.

Now you know the kind of domains which sell and who buys them, however, the bigger question is where to sell them. Let’s talk about various ways –

1. Domain Forums. Domain forums are the most popular way to sell domains. Places like DNForum (one of the biggest and most influential), SitePoint, WickedFire and NamePros (mostly newbies hangout here) are popular to sell domains. However, the people who hangout on these sites are mostly resellers and only a small proportion are end-users.

2. Online Auctions. There are lot of online auction sites like sedo.com where you can sell domains and you can even auction domains on forums like DNForum.com.

eBay also has a domain auction section, however, it is usually the newbies which make up the bulk of audience there and it is turnkey sites and cheap domains which sell best there. There have been a lot of reports of scams on eBay — therefore, I don’t recommend selling on eBay.

3. Domain Brokers. These are the people and companies who take a percentage cut — usually 15-20% of the final value — for selling your domain.

If you have a good domain which you hope to sell for bigger bucks and are ready to pay to brokerage, it is usually a good idea to involve brokers. They usually have lot of contacts and experience in selling domains. Think of them like real-estate agents except they focus on virtual real-estate.

4. Live Auctions. This is a newer trend where companies like Moniker.com are conducting live auctions for domains at various industry events. This is where a lot of end users and big guys hang out and where the big-buck deals take place.

Obviously, these companies are choosy about the domains that they include in the auction. However, you should never hesitate to submit your names for auction — you never know it may sell. Newsletter Subscribers will get regular updates about upcoming auctions and submission deadlines.

5. Everyone You Know. Tell everyone you already know — including your old customers and your friends — that you have a domain for sale. There is a chance that they themselves or someone they know may be interested in your domain. I have sold a whole lot of domains this way.

This was something which I never used to tell earlier, however, when I told it to some of my friends who had the same clients as me, I found that it didn’t make much of difference to my success rate. I found that success rate with this tactic depended on lot of factors which I regularly talk in the newsletter.

I hope you found this guide useful. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me by email (lord [at] lordbrar.com), AIM (lordbrar) or MSN (lord [at] lordbrar.com).