How to Sell Your Domain Name

If you've got an old website and registered domain name you're preparing to take offline, you may have a chance to make a little money in the process. Don't just let the lease on your domain name expire and fall back into the pool of available domain names. Believe it or not, domain names for websites can be valuable. There are companies, organizations, and individuals who are willing to pay to get the perfect domain name. just by selling or auctioning off your website's old domain name, there is a good chance you can make some money—possibly even a lot of money.

You may have a lot of questions about this. How do you know how much your domain name is worth—if it's worth anything at all? How do you go about advertising your old domain name's availability? How do you handle the transfer to the new owner? This article will try to answer all these questions.

How Much Is Your Domain Name Worth?

Essentially, how much you can charge for your domain name depends on how highly demanded it is. If lots of people want it, one may be willing to pay more to get it. On the other hand, if you have an obscure domain name that almost no one wants, you won't be able to charge much for it—if you can sell it at all.

Personal Names

If your domain name is based on your personal name, you may have a limited number of people willing to pay for it. If you have a rather common name, such as www.JohnSmith.com or www.BobJones.com, there may be a lot of people interested in it. If you have a rather obscure name, such as www.OliverMokrzycki.com, you may have trouble finding even one buyer.

Company Names

Company names have similar problems, mainly because a company name can generally only be registered to one company. If you have an unusual name for your online store, such as www.HotDiggity.com or www.KramphAndSons.com, you may not find many people interested in buying your domain name. On the other hand, if your company domino name contains rather non-specific words or slogans, such as www.TheComicShop.com or www.CornerStore.com, you might find several businesses who might want to buy such descriptive, easy-to-remember domain name for their online store.

General Names

The domain names that will attract the most interested customer and sell for the highest prices are ones that have very general or common words, such as www.FreeSamples.com, www.CheapClothes.com, or www.ComputerHelp.com. There are tons of companies, organizations, or individuals who might want to buy a domain name like that.

There are two tests you can do to tell just how valuable your domain name might be. The first is to measure your domain name's search engine ranking. Go to a search engine like Goggle or Yahoo! and enter a common, general search term that might apply to your domain name. For the example domain names listed above, for example, do a search on "samples," "clothes," or "computer help." If your domain name appears fairly high on the search engine's results—say, on the first page or two—then your domain name may be in high demand by a company that wants to increase their website's search engine ranking in order to reach more customers and attract more business.

The second test is see if your domain name contains high ranking keywords. There are certain keywords that people search on more often than others. For example, millions of desperate, sleep-deprived new mothers may enter the keyword "newborn" into a search engine much more often than a handful of hobbyist would enter "models". If your domain names contains words that are popular, high-ranking keywords, that makes your domain name much more attractive to potential customers.

How Do I Advertise My Domain Name?

First, once you take down your old website, put up a notice in its place saying that the domain name is for sale. Be sure to include your contact information and any other data relevant to the sale.

Second, there are several websites available where you can advertise your domain name. You may have to a pay a fee for this service, but you are guaranteed to reach more potential customers this way. This is the difference, for example, between hanging a "for sale" sign in your car windows, and listing your car for auction on eBay Auto.

How Do I Transfer My Domain Name to the Buyer?

This is easier than you might think. Contact the company that registered your domain name to you, and let them know you are transferring ownership of the domain name to a different person. Let the buyer know the name of your domain name registrar as well, and have the buyer contact the same company that is handling the transfer. Once this is done, the domain name registrar should handle all the technical details for you.