CHEAP DOMAIN NAMES

Tips for Selling Your Domain

• Display a “for sale” message on your domain’s home page

Believe it or not, the number one source of secondary market domain name sales is buyers typing the domain name into their Web browser and navigating to the domain to see if it is available.

To boost your domain name sales, you first need to make sure that your domains resolve to a page that, one way or another, clearly indicates that the domain is for sale and provides a choice of ways for the prospective buyer to contact you or purchase the domain right away, whether that be via email, phone, chat, or whatever.

The goal here is convenience. There’s a bunch of easy ways you can accomplish this.

• Embrace fixed pricing if you really want to move your domains

Regarding fixed pricing, this is always a hotly-debated topic in the domain investor community because some people feel that putting a fixed-price on a domain means that you risk leaving money on the table.

Most buyers are intimidated by the whole “make offer” thing and just want to be able to browse by price and buy instantly if they see something they like and can afford.

One thing to keep in mind: if someone contacts you directly about buying one of your fixed-price domain names, you can always ask them to make an offer and/or you can always quote them a higher amount than your fixed-price. It is very unlikely that they have seen the list price elsewhere. Most buyers are not that sophisticated.

• Optimize the WHOIS record for sales

Add a “for sale” message to your WHOIS (domain ownership record) information. Once again, the goal here is to make it blatantly clear to Joe Public that your domain name is for sale.

You can include this messaging in one of several ways. You can append the owner’s (a.k.a. registrant’s) name or company name with “This Domain is For Sale”, e.g., instead of listing the company as “Acme Inc.” you would list it as “Acme Inc. – This Domain is For Sale”.

Alternatively, you could use a custom email address for your domain registrations that suggests the domain name is for sale, e.g., domainsales@[yourcompanyname].com.

• Respond promptly to any purchase inquiries you get

Everyone seems to be in a rush these days to get stuff done, and purchasing domain names is no different. If someone makes the effort to contact you about buying one of your domain names, try to respond to them within 24 hours. If you don’t, they may find another domain name and you will have lost a sale.

There is nothing more frustrating to a buyer than a non-responsive seller. I have seen domain speculators miss out on potential six-figure deals because they took too long to reply to the buyer, or didn’t reply at all.

How to Buy a Cheap Domain Name

Buying a domain name can be a great way to set up your own website and/or personalized email address. Here are some important factors to keep in mind as well as step-by-step directions for both buying an available domain name and haggling for an occupied one.

1. Weigh factors that affect price and value when choosing a domain name. A great domain name is simple, unique, and easy to remember. That being said, the price (not to mention the intrinsic value) of a domain name depends on many factors including overall length, number of words, ease of spelling, and how much traffic goes there without prompting.

• A short, one-word name (ex. cat.com), and especially .com domains, will be pricy because simple titles have a lot of potential uses, meaning people probably already check them out on their own. If you are going after a registered .com domain, you will have to contact the current owner, and even then, prices could be high for misspellings and multiple word domains. In the past years, companies and individuals have settled for bizarre names, misspellings, and old tricks like adding “the” or “my” to the front; note, however, that this will also reduce domain performance.

• Since 2014, new domain extensions (top-level domains, or TLDs) have been released as alternatives to .com, .org, etc. There are hundreds of such extensions that continue to be released, which include .club, .guru, .design, and many others, and they have effectively relieved the issue of scarcity in .com domains.

• Before you allow yourself to completely fall in love with a domain name, create a few variants and backups.

• If your desired name contains an intentional misspelling, be prepared to lose traffic to the properly spelled version. Alternatively, if your name contains a commonly misspelled word, consider buying one variation (or more) on your domain name and redirecting it to your main site. Of course, this will cause additional expenses.

• Avoid including characters (ex. _, *, #) in your name, as these aren’t intuitive and will divert traffic.

2. Consider going through an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar. An ICANN-accredited company has to go through all the ICANN accreditation checks, which is an expensive, in-depth process. This lets you know the company is committed.

3. Make sure you can control every aspect of your domain name. Many domain name registration companies don’t let you make changes to your domains yourself. You have to enter a request via their support systems and then wait days for assistance. Simple things like changing IPS tags and changing name servers should be possible via your control panel. Make sure you get a control panel and check out what the control panel lets you do.