** Continued From: Domain Rush: Dead or Alive? - Part #1
A while back I wrote an article about domain names. It told how domains might not be the hot property they once were but there was still some fire in the embers of a once blazing Internet fortune trail.
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"You may have pulled that cool domain out of your ass but there's no reason you have to get shit for selling it." |
Long gone are the times when one could buy a domain like drugs.com and make millions of dollars by selling it to a huge multi-national corporation. Even with the advent of new top level domain extensions, that brilliant URL simply doesn’t exist anymore. Yes, a domain name is important. Yes an easy-to-remember URL still matters. A URL just matters in a different way than it used to.
Nowadays most URLs you see for sale are already registered. They have histories and someone’s marketing labors for sale as well. You can still occasionally think up a new alphabetical permutation for a domain and build a site around. But if you plan to sell that domain you better have more than just a name to offer your buyers. Domain buyers today want existing traffic and search engine placement, especially the domain buyers of the adult Internet.
A serious domain sales and purchasing market means serious attention must be paid by it’s participants. You may have pulled that cool domain out of your ass but there’s no reason you have to get shit for selling it. By that same token, you don’t have to buy a URL from some flimflam fly by night. Buying and selling domains can be done safely and smartly. When either selling or purchasing a domain name, you need to fully research who are what you’re dealing with.
If you want to simply register and pay the fee for a domain you imagined, go to an official registrar recommended by ICANN. If you want to buy or sell an already existing domain, you have a mind-boggling number of places to do so. You can sell your domain outright for a specified price or you can auction your domain and you have only to pick from the hundred or so online sites that handle such transactions. After research you’ll even find quite a few adult specific auctions and sellers of domain names. Wherever you sell or buy, make sure you know what kind of protections you are offered by web site that brokers your deal.
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Some -primarily auction sites- just verify a sale. They don’t necessarily handle the actual financial transactions. When you sell a domain, you have to transfer ownership and contact information to the new owner. This has to be done through or with the cooperation of the domain’s registrar of record. Many domain owners sell their URLs directly through the services of their registrars. For instance, GreatDomains.com is a registrar and a domain brokerage service. Selling or buying through them is easier because they are the registrar of the URL and have direct contact with the owners of the domains for sale.
An auction site is a very popular place to post domains for sale. Buying or selling, research an auction fully before you act. If you’re buying from someone, look for the user recommendations in the profile of the seller. A seller with a lot of good ratings from previous buyers is most desirable. Read that seller’s profile and the exact details of the transaction and if these things are vague, don’t buy. If you’re trying to auction a domain (especially for the first time) make sure to include all the good points of your site such as page rating of search engines and traffic statistics.
Auctions are desirable for sellers because they can possibly make more than they would by direct sale. Buyers like auctions because of the possibility of low, winning bids. Domain auction’s main drawback is they aren’t as protected as other venues.
My recommendation for buying or selling a domain is to look for those brokers that sell or buy using an escrow service. Escrow services protect both seller and purchaser by putting any monies into a protected account and will only release the funds when conditions of sale are met. In other words, a seller doesn’t give up rights to a domain until they are actually paid and the buyer can be absolutely sure their investment renders them full ownership of said domain. Escrow services are also great for transactions between parties from different countries and financial regulations.
My last suggestion is to be realistic when either pricing a domain for sale or purchase. If you’ve put work into your domain such as search engine submission, marketing traffic trading, then you have an actual valued asset. Just the same, nobody is going to pay you one million dollars for your site no matter how clever the domain name. As a buyer, don’t be mislead by glowing sales text. Research the viability of your potential purchase by looking the up link popularity of a domain for sale. Dig deep and find out as much about the seller as you possibly can. Use safe brokers who incorporate escrow services into their sites.
There is still some gold out there to sell and to buy. Domains are worth more than they ever were and in a more substantial way than when they first hit the scene. You can stake a claim and with a little caution, you can make it pay.