Selling a Domain You No Longer Need

Set the expectation first

The overwhelming majority of domains registered by small businesses are worth exactly the renewal fee to anybody else.

A domain matching your former trading name, your campaign, or a misspelling of your business has no value to a stranger.

What has value is a short common word, a strong two-word phrase, or something matching an existing business name.

So the first question is honest: is this a domain anybody but you would want.

What makes one worth something

• Short, and easy to say.
• A real phrase people use.
• A .com, which is where the market is.
• No hyphens or numbers.
• Matching an existing business somewhere.

The last is where most actual sales come from. A domain matching a real business name that somebody is currently operating without has a buyer, and that buyer is findable.

Where to list it

Which is the practical step.

The established marketplaces let you list a domain for sale at no upfront cost, taking a commission if it sells.

Several of them also let you point the domain at a for-sale page, so that anybody typing it sees immediately that it is available.

That second arrangement produces more enquiries than a listing alone, since the people who want a domain are frequently the people who typed it.

Some registrars have this built in and it takes minutes to switch on.

Listing costs nothing at all except the domain continuing to renew while it sits there waiting.

Pricing it

Which is where people go wrong in both directions.

Automated valuation tools produce confident figures that bear little relation to what anybody will pay.

A more useful method is looking at completed sales of genuinely comparable domains, which the marketplaces publish.

For a small business spare, something in the low hundreds is a realistic asking figure and anything above that is speculation.

An asking price nobody will pay produces no enquiries, and a modest one produces occasional offers.

Decide your floor before listing anything, since a negotiation entered from an unprepared position tends to end badly.

A worked example

A business held four spare domains and listed all of them.

Three attracted nothing over two years, which was the expected outcome.

The fourth, a two-word phrase matching a trade, sold for about six hundred dollars to a business in another province.

The buyer had typed it, seen the for-sale page, and made contact.

The whole process took a fortnight through the marketplace's escrow.

They kept renewing the other three because the annual cost was trivial and one of them might eventually find a buyer.

Approaching a buyer directly

Which occasionally works and needs care.

Where a domain matches a business that is clearly operating without it, a short message noting that you hold it and would consider selling is legitimate.

Keep it brief and unpressured, and do not suggest they need it or imply anything at all about their current arrangement.

An approach that reads as pressure is unwelcome and occasionally raises questions about why you hold it at all.

Where you registered a domain matching somebody else's existing business name deliberately, selling it to them is a situation with legal dimensions and is not what this describes.

This is about a domain you happen to hold for your own reasons that turns out to suit somebody else.

Use escrow on the way out too

Since the risk runs both ways.

An escrow service holds the buyer's money until the domain has transferred, then releases it to you.

That protects you from transferring a domain and not being paid, which is the seller's version of the problem.

Marketplaces build this into their process, which is one reason to sell through one rather than privately.

For a private sale, use an escrow service rather than trusting the sequence.

The fee is a small percentage and it is not optional at any meaningful amount.

Both sides expect it, so proposing it reads as competence rather than suspicion.

Check what you are giving up

Before agreeing anything.

A domain currently redirecting to your site is sending visitors, and selling it stops that.

A domain that has ever carried email addresses may still receive messages years later.

And a domain appearing on old printed material continues to be typed by people holding that material.

Check each of those before selling, since the sale is irreversible and a few hundred dollars is a poor trade for a route customers still use.

Expect the enquiries you get to be low

Worth knowing so the first offer does not feel insulting.

A domain listed at three hundred dollars will attract offers of fifty, since opening low costs the buyer nothing and occasionally works.

That is ordinary practice rather than a comment on your domain, and the correct reply is a brief restatement of your figure rather than an argument.

A buyer who wants it will come back, and one who was speculating will not, which is exactly the filter you want.

Where the offer is above your floor, take it, since a domain sitting unsold for another two years costs you renewals and produces nothing.

The counter-case

Most of this is not worth the time.

Listing four domains that never sell has cost an hour and produced nothing, which is the common outcome.

Holding a domain has an annual cost that eventually exceeds any realistic sale price, so letting one lapse is frequently the better decision.

And a domain that is genuinely valuable is worth taking proper advice on rather than listing casually at whatever a tool suggested.

Those are rare and they do exist, and the difference is usually obvious.

List them on a marketplace with a for-sale page, price modestly, use escrow, and expect most of them not to sell.

The hour

1. Ask who else would want it.
2. Look at comparable sales.
3. Set a modest price and a floor.
4. List it on a marketplace.
5. Point it at the for-sale page.
6. Check nothing still uses it.
7. Use escrow for any sale.

Step five produces most of the enquiries, since the person who wants a domain is frequently the person who typed it and found nothing there.

Where these domains come from is covered in a domain you bought for a campaign.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.