Hello there,
I have decided to do something useful for once and write a guide on how to buy and sell domains.
I have been doing business online for almost 12 years, and I have tried almost everything you could think of, domaining has been by far the most lucrative one.
I will go straight into the guide and skip the part where I explain what is domaining because it means you basically buy a domain and sell it to an end-user for a huge profit.
Buying Domains:
Before buying a domain I would recommend doing a lot of research, and I will give you the pointers in this article, which is way more than I had when I just started. believe me, it wasn’t easy to get where I’m at, it took a lot of trial and error.
At the start, I bought dozens of useless domains thinking they were good, and this is what most if not all beginners do, and hopefully, I’ll prevent that with this article.
Where to Buy Domains
If you asked me this question 2 years ago I would have told you - Godaddy expired auctions, but since then, and specifically since the pandemic began, it became a place for overpriced domains. And I can only assume it’s because it’s the most known registrar and has the most active aftermarket. Now I don’t even check Godaddy’s aftermarket anymore.
For me, and for many others - the best domains and the best deals can be found on SnapNames.com, a website that is owned by NetworkSolutions and has the best collection of expired domains online. they catch almost every valuable domain that’s dropped by their owner.
You will first need to find a domain that is about to be dropped, then go to SnapNames and backorder the domain, then, when the domains are dropped, they either not catch the domain, they catch the domain and you were the only one who backordered it ( which never happens if you backorder a decent name ) and in this case, you will be charged $69-$79 and receive the domain immediately, or they catch the domain and other people also backordered it, then you will be involved in a “private” auction among those who backordered the domain, and you’ll enter a bidding war.
Tools to Find High Valued Domains & Demand For Them in The Market
Before I start - register now. You won’t have the same options as I’m about to show you without registering. The cool thing about it is - it’s completely free.
After you register, go to “Marketplace domains” and click on “SnapNames” > “SnapNames Pre-Release Domains”
There you will find all the domains that are about to drop and registered by SnapNames partnered & owned registrars, that will 100% go to auction on SnapNames if they are dropped.
Now - sort by “WBY” ( Whois Birthday ) which is the date of domain registration. now it will show you the oldest domains first.
There, you will see a list of domains with some nice info - the number of backlinks, when the domain was first registered, Alexa rank, when the domain is dropping and the best one - in how many extensions the domain is registered in, which helps you understand if the domain has high demand
Example:
Here you can see the domain NovaSoft.com, the data ExpiredDomains gives us shows us that the domain was first registered in 1992, which is old old, and that “NovaSoft” is registered in 68 different extensions, which means that NovaSoft is a name with very high demand - and because COM is king, it will probably go for more than a few thousand dollars in the auction.
ExpiredDomains also has the best filtering tool in the business.
You can basically filter everything you want, when it comes to patterns, language, extensions, everything. It also has a very strong SEO filtering. I would recommend going through it.
If you find domains you are interested in purchasing, even if you think about keywords and just approach the owners and ask them if the domain is for sale ( which definitely works, by the way, I have found some nice gems that way ) you can use DotDB to see how many extensions the domain is registered in, which again, will help you gauge if the domain is in high demand.
NameBio is definitely the holy grail of domaining. On this website, you will find all the reported sales with price and date from SnapNames, Sedo, Godaddy, and more, you also have the option to filter and see only private sales, which domainers manually report to the website to be added.
The filters:
When you find a domain you like, you can look at NameBio and see if the same exact domain was previously sold, for how much and when you can browse based on keyword as well, and see if similar domains were sold and for how much, which will help you decide whether or not the domain is a good buy.
They also do market reports and domain discoveries, where they go through today’s sold domains, and expiring & dropping domains that were previously sold and reported on NameBio.
NamePros Reported Sales Thread:
Namepros is the biggest domaining forum where people share their experience, ask questions and post tips. It also has a thread where people share their sales, with their hold time and how much they purchased the domain for.
I recommend going through it to see what kind of domains are sold and for how much. It’s a gold mine for domainers and I recommend checking it daily. It’s also very very interesting and will give you motivation.
The thread:
Where to Sell Domains
Okay, you have done everything and you acquired some nice names, now, how do you sell them?
Dan.com, Afternic.com, and Sedo.com, You will use all three.
Dan:
Dan is a marketplace different from the other two I mentioned, You will use Dan as a landing page for your domains, so when people type in the domain, they will see a sales page. They have millions of dollars worth of sales a month, and the fee they take is 9% of the transaction.
Afternic:
Afternic is owned by Godaddy and is the biggest domains marketplace with the highest volume.
What’s so good about it?
Because it’s owned by Godaddy, when you list the domain on Afternic, it will also be visible on Godaddy, so if someone searches your domain thinking they can register it, they will find the domain with the price you set it for on Afternic.
Also, Afternic has “Fast-Transfer” which can only be activated if the domain is registered in one of Afternic’s partners, which can be seen on the front page of the site.
Activating it will show the domain with its price on all the partnered registrars exactly as it does on Godaddy. This will also make your life easier once the domain is sold, because the transfer will be automatic and occur in a few minutes. You will only be able to activate it once you have the domain more than 60 days in your account (ICANN rules)
Sedo:
Basically just a marketplace for domains that end-users visit frequently. It made me the lowest number of sales personally but there is no harm in listing there.
Outbound & Inbound:
Outbound is when you approach potential buyers and tell them you have the domain for sale and invite them to either make an offer if they are interested or straightly buy it if you quote a price.
Inbound is when the buyer approaches you and make an offer or straightly buying it for your buy-now price you set.
You can definitely get a lot of sales doing outbound, in fact. one of my biggest domain sales was from outbound.
I acquired the domain BulletTime/com and sold it a week later for 11x after doing outbound ($7,500)
Tip & Closing
I recommend setting all the domains with a buy-now price and not make offer. It took me a lot of time to understand and I probably lost some sales because I didn’t do it earlier.
Impulse buy is a thing even in domains, and a lot of end-users will see a buy-now price and purchase it immediately, whereas if you set it as make offer, they will make an offer and you will go into a negotiation where you will probably get less than what you could’ve gotten. Of course with buy-now price there is also an option to make an offer, so you won’t lose an offer either way.
Domaining is a lot of work but it is definitely worth it, It’s a lot of fun and there is no feeling as good as selling a domain for a 10,000% gain. It also takes a lot of patience.
LOL
