Ask HN: Have you ever sold a domain-name? How was your experience selling it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you ever sold a domain-name? How was your experience selling it?

21 pointshammadn30 comments

Hi,

I'd like to know about your experience selling out your domain-name(s) if you have any.

Was it difficult? Was it time-taking? Did you face any difficulties?

Would really appreciate your responses.

Thanks!

I sold a domain years ago. I got a random email from someone asking me to buy it. Upon some research, it looked like that person was collecting domains names under the same topic. I did some initial negotiation but wondered if others would be interested. I was lucky and found someone else that was interested but the lucky part was that I had found a person that was the first persons nemesis. They had both tried to buy the same set of domains in the past so I think I stumbled upon two fierce competitors. I wasnt able to figure out how to negotiate between them over email so I just but it on eBay and let them bid on it through that. I ended up with at least 10x more than I was originally looking for.

I got a domain transferred to me for free (minus the 1-year extension I had to do when registering a domain with that registrar) because the registrar was holding an expired domain that happened to be my name.

They had a policy of doing a free transfer (with 1-year registration) if you could prove you had a reason for it to be yours.

My credit card info with the name matching the domain was a simple no-brainer

(oddly enough - for close to 5 years after I got the domain, I'd get 404 hits in my logs for sites about WWF (this was pre-WWE rebranding) wrestler pages ...apparently whoever'd had it before me was a huge pro wrestling fan)

Interesting. Was the domain equal to your full name, first name, some other combination? (e.g., johnsmith.example, smith.example, john.smith.example, smith.john.example)

If it's the first case (johnsmith.example), isn't it tricky to discern between "hey that domain is a concatenation of my name and surname!" VS "no, you're not right, the domain is a concatenation of the strings 'jo' and 'hnsmith'. 'jo' is my nickname, 'hnsmith' is the name of my company/club/whatever)

it was firstnamelastname.com, yes :)

As for the "tricky" aspect ... I suppose if my name were a little different, or, perhaps, if my middle initial or name was in there, too, it could have been "tricky": but when you can simply ram my first and last name together and get the domain ... it's fairly straightforward :)

That said, it was only a 'free' transfer because the registrar was holding the domain name, and I had a valid claim

Now say it was something like lomeintogo.com instead

Establishing whether it's "lo mein to go" or "Lomé in Togo" or "Lo! Me into Go!" (minus the punctuation, of course) might be more difficult. However, if you had a legitimate claim, they'd transfer it to you (if there was more than one "legitimate" claim, it was first-come, first-serve, so far as I can recall)

I recently sold a five letter single word .io domain for 5k, which was the median of the estimated value according to various (free) appraisal services.

The person I sold it to immediately relisted it for 79k. That was a bit irritating.

Well, did he sell it for 79k? :)

as someone with a 4 letter .io domain & twitter name I'm also very curious..

I got all excited thinking it was worth a ton but the transaction history shows it at exactly what you got for it. But it all depends on the word too I suppose.

I had to put the highest possible security for the twitter account and If I make a post I get 1-3 requests a day to login/reset and if I'm willing to sell, maybe even for 6 figures. (Which if you didn't know, responding "yes" is a violation of The Bird Apps terms, and they have repeatedly yanked peoples names for soliciting a sale"

No, not yet, but you can bet that I check on a regular basis, although I should know better :)

A little backstory: a friend of mine sold a five letter single word .com about a decade ago for a really low price, IIRC $500. The buyer turned out to be Electronic Arts (through a middleman, obviously) and they used the domain for one of their games.

Every time I was contemplating an offer for the domain, I was worried that I was getting EA'd :) When I saw the domain getting relisted, I felt like that's exactly what happened.

So, to answer the original question, my biggest gripe is probably that price finding is really difficult for non-professional players.

Perhaps the person that bought it from you also owns other domains with the same name, e.g., a .com domain.

That way, if they list one very high, perhaps they'll get an above average offer on the .com, then when they sell that, the same seller will buy the .Io for a cheaper price. Such as 10k.

I'm happy he was able to do well with his purchase - you obviously did well selling it for 5k :)

Bought a 4 letter .com 20 years ago for a business I started. It cost $5000. My wife did not love the idea but I assured her that even if I went out of business, I could resell the domain for a handsome profit. I have taken a lot of business risks but for me this one was a no brainer.

I promptly went out of business, losing about $80,000 more.

A few years later, someone pretending to be an entrepreneur with a general demographic profile like my own pretended they were starting a new company and wanted to buy the domain for $200,000. I did a cursory background check and figured out that they were fronting for a much bigger company. The truth is, $200,000 was just fine with me. But their appeal to my perceived vanity was insulting. I ended up getting $350,000 for the domain name. I’m unable to disclose the domain name because of an NDA.

The process has always been childishly simple because I used escrow.com. Before selling that domain name, I had purchased a business website using escrow.com so I knew it worked well.

I have sold a few other domain names for up to $15,000. I do have a stock of a few hundred other names I have not done a good job selling.

A few people have called me and asked me for domain names with a good sob story. I gave them away for free and nothing was ever done with the domains except to end up parked. I’ve changed tactics and when others tried to get domain names for free I told them to put up a website using WordPress and once I’d seen their initiative I would be happy to give it to them. No one has ever completed the task.

I received a cold call from a "broker" (at least I think that's what his title was) at Go Daddy about a year ago. As a liaison between a purchaser & I he facilitated the sale, and it went really well. I owned both the .com & .net variation, so I was a little surprised the purchaser didn't want both (for small increase). But based on the way that all worked out & how easy it was; I'd work with Go Daddy again.

I've sold a lot of domains over the past years, some via sites like Dan.com, others through forums and email.

Didn't take much time to finish a transaction but it can take some time to find a potential buyer.

It really depends on the domain and buyer, sometimes it takes a few months of back and forth to come to a final price. Other times, it takes 15 minutes...

What forums, if I may ask?

Yeah, I recently sold a five letter .io domain. Easiest money I ever made. I got an email from DomainAgents. I probably spent a little while verifying it's not a scam website. We negotiated the price over the website without speaking once. They low-balled, I countered and then we landed on a reasonable amount. It didn't take any effort at all. Once agreed on a price, the process got automatically moved to escrow.com. After entering some details and waiting a week or two, I got the money.

I just checked now and they finally started using it. Looks like a travel agency which is a really weird choice for the price they paid and the TLD.

I originally bought the domain for an idea I wanted to develop. I kept it around after an it fizzled out in case I ever want to get back to it. It was very exciting to have my "startup" "exit".

Person emailed the abuse@ on a domain I owned asking if I wouldn't mind selling it.

Negotiated a price in a non refundable medium.

Received funds and generated transfer code with the registrar.

They continued my legacy of aging this domain with a parking page veneer.

....domain appears available again, and it is reasonably catchy for a name.

Repurchase domain and repeat I guess now.

I sold one domain years ago on eBay

Ended up selling to a person whose last name was the name I'd registered for a group (the initials we'd chosen happened to also be a last name in another country)

Didn't make "much" on it - but it was pretty simple: post on eBay, have person win auction, receive payment, enable domain transfer, it's now theirs (I presume - it's at the very least no longer mine)

I sold two domain names. It was pretty straightforward. For one, I got paid via Escrow. It was time-consuming and somewhat stressful because it was my first domain name. And for another, I agreed to sell without any paperwork and Escrow. I wouldn't risk large transactions, but for 1-2k domain names, I keep it as simple as possible.

I sold brainery.com to a college student in like 2009 for $100. It was very straightforward. He called me up and I agreed. Then he sent the money and I transferred the domain.

I forget the details of how the exchange happened, though. I assume we used some third party escrow service, but I’m not sure which. Maybe we didn’t.

Many times because I get ideas for side projects, first register a domain and then a year later it has to renew. I probably forgot about the project already. Did that for over 20 years. I sell the ones that I don’t use. And it is simple to do; in Sedo or one of the many registrars, it is almost automatic.

Sold few. One for crypto, few via escrow.com

Last time escrow had a problem depositing money to my bank account because "the account number you provided had too many zeros in front of it and our system cut it down".

So change your stupid system so it won't corrupt essential customer banking information!

Otherwise it went well.

I sold a domain name a few years back riding the .xyz buzz. In my case, an individual reached out to me via a GoDaddy domain broker. Not a large sum, but they overpaid, at least 10x the actual value. It was an easy decision to sell and was a simple process to transfer the domain.

Honestly as simple a process as you want to make it, but I'd suggest doing some research as to why they might be interested, motives, who else you might be able to reach out to to counter offer. All you need is an hour or two to make your decision informed.

I m trying to sell some through godaddy now and i am awed at how bad and broken their system is. It takes 6+ tries to list anything. Sedo was kind of ok but i did not get any bids. In general i have no idea what i m doing and the services aren't helping

Godaddy has a monopoly. If you want to sell domain names faster, you have to be there. And because they have a monopoly, they can be clunky. People will use their services anyway.

I sold a .com back in 2008 via Sedo - it was very straightforward. The buyer initiated it, I think all I had to create an account and populate it with a few details and they (Sedo's service) took care of everything else.

Yep, super easy to sell, I've sold/bought at least 20 premium domains, just like anything with a short legal contract, one page, and then using escrow.com to facilitate the hand over.

Registered a domain name years ago intended for a chat app I never got around to writing.

Sold it for $10k.

A few months later I hit the url out of curiosity and found out they made it into a porn site, and had a good laugh.

BTW it was through one of those "we'll help you buy this domain" agencies the buyer hired and took forever as those guys are way too evasive when it comes to price.

I don't have time to waste on tons of back and forth emails these days and my policy now when one approaches me unsolicited is to tell them not to contact me again and have the buyer get in touch with me directly.

Thanks, this reminded me to put up a few domains I have on namecheap for sale where I know 99% that the idea behind the domain will never see light.

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