Advice on selling a domain name...
9I’ve been approached about selling a domain name that I own and unsure of what to do. The name was established in 1997 by the guy I lived with. He ran an astronomy for kids website on it plus photos of the family, etc. He passed away 10 years ago and I’ve kept the site up, but haven’t really done anything with it.
It’s [redacted] if you want to take a peek, (the astronomy site has a page 1 ranking on google if you search for ‘astronomy for kids’…)
I’m not emotionally attached to it, but I’m unsure how to value it. I’ve asked the person to give me a price they want to buy it for, but they replied with “don’t want to throw a number out and have it be insulting” reply. As a seller I know if you say a selling price, you can’t negotiate up up.
Any thoughts on how I can figure out a value and start the negotiation? Give them a ridiculous price and let them come back? (I don’t mind insulting them…)
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I’ve heard good things about https://www.estibot.com/ but have never used it myself.
@Cythwulf Meh.com is worth about 168k.
@narfcake
Mediocritee will quickly surpass that provided they sell catshirts.
Then again, first they need to start selling things.
@PlacidPenguin
@Cythwulf @narfcake “Generic 3-letter”, an appropriately mediocre assessment.
@transplant I’d first remove the URL from your post such that any advice you receive isn’t immediately transparent to the prospective buyer who will continue to check that URL as a search term. I think it’s yet to be spidered by Google at this point.
Maybe @thumperchick could obfuscate it for them
@medz @Thumperchick @snapster It’s taken care of.
@snapster @Thumperchick Thank you.
Having bought a dozen domain names ranging from hundreds to a hundred-thousand dollars, here are my thoughts:
This is like valuing art. there is absolutely no valuation help beyond “if you want this specific thing I own, you have to pay for it what I ask.” The moment that some alternative option becomes better, you won’t have an interested party. There is no other valuation method, only weakly held positions to make in back and forth discussion.
The best-argument exception to that is that internet URLs are generally far, far less meaningful to a business than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Why? Apps. Apps can take on a non-URL name using trademark law and app store guidelines alone. Nothing to outright buy and own. Map any URL you want over as a site for your cutely named app and people will probably still find it. There’s also extended TLD encroachment but those probably haven’t done as much as apps.
The negotiation is a testing of boundaries while not causing other side to stop listening. This can be like playing poker with a random person. You have no idea if the other side is an expert, carefully playing their exact hand, or a novice, willing to bet/say anything without regard for their actual chances to win. You can think of this as emotion but reality is no one will ever be truly offended, they will just assess the utility of continuing the conversation.
I would guess that >99% of domains change hands under $5k. Selling a “good” name like yours for 5k should never haunt you with questions of how much money you left on the table. Even if you subsequently saw big things happen on the domain. There are definitely some no-brainer names worth more than that but those would be speculatively bought at 5k in an instant. Having seen a peek at it, I would not speculatively buy yours for 5k.
There is some chance that a major corporation has an agenda or pun-use / slang-use of your URL makes it worth more than that. There’s also some chance someone has fallen in love with it and might pay more than that. You’re removing those from possible outcomes which is your call to make. It’s equally likely that some kid hopes you’ll sell it for 50 bucks.
TL;DR: I would start with an offer firmly at 5k, without a queasy request to counter.
I know nothing about domain name sales. I am just a source of shitty advice on the internet.
I wonder if anyone ever creates a contract for domain name sales that keeps a contingency interest in the revenue generated through the URL. For instance, what if you said you’d let it go for $1000 (or $50), but you get 1% of all revenue generated through the website for a period of 5 years. This would control for unknowns on both sides.
What if this is some teacher who has been teaching astronomy for 20 years and now they want to put their lesson plans up on an awesome website? You’d probably have a different price for the teacher than if Warner Brothers is releasing “Harry Potter X: Kids Astronomy” in 2 years, and they want to get a jump on the URL. By setting a contingency price you might be able to either 1) Make a ton of money or 2) help out someone who is working in the original interest of the URL.
@cpav renting out domains at a reasonable price is similar concept to this and has been offered to me a few times.
@cpav @snapster I did some basic search on person who emailed me out of the blue. Owns a domain reseller biz. But they’re presenting their desire for the domain as “have an idea for a new product, and we’d love to use the name” and “the plan for the name is a 503c organization (non-profit) that distributes funds to other non-profits. Since we’re going to be operating within our means, there aren’t any future plans for funding/venture capital or a big exit or turnaround.”
My BS radar is pinging loudly…
@transplant yeah, it’s just a hard-stop after “owns a domain reseller biz”
With that in mind, I would actually “not reply” this myself and simply ignore the matter until I wanted to make an effort to sell the domain.
In the mid-90s I sold pencilneck.com to an artist in Canada for about $3000.
Obviously no relevance to your challenge, but I thought I’d weigh in with my limited experience on the matter. Clearly the market for URLs has changed in the last 20 years.
As @snapster wisely comments, apps have changed the playing field. OTOH, the challenge of figuring out a not-yet-registered .com URL has increased dramatically for those ventures which are strongly tied to the concept of traditional URLs. Which of these ideas affect your sale really depends on the priorities of the buyer.
When I made my sale, the idea was pretty basic. Apps weren’t around, TLDs were very limited and in some cases ISOC restricted. If you wanted a .com URL which was already registered to someone else, you had two choices: settle for some other URL, or pay. Well, the third option: stalk the domain and wait for a registration lapse (which wasn’t uncommon when NSI was the only registrar game in town.
Can’t speak for others, but regarding “Apps” taking over domains… not for me - at least not for new “secondary” content.
I’m in App-overload mode. I resist very strongly adding yet another app to the pile. It must be especially value-added to gain entrance. And it quickly gets tossed in the wastebasket if it gets on my device but doesn’t pan out.
For specialized content sites, still a fan of Duckduckgo’ing in a browser to get to the content. However, this method, like Apps, also de-emphasizes the value of domain names.
Can’t recall the last time I fully typed a domain name even for common domains. Too dangerous to mis-type it and get hacked. Safer to search for it and click from there.
If you are sure you trust the buyer might not be an issue but if you are selling to unknowns consider escrow.com’s domain transfer service… make the buyer pay the fees.
https://www.escrow.com/domains
@thismyusername I used escrow.com the one time I sold a domain; no problems at all and made both of us comfortable. The alternative was him mailing me a postal money order since if I failed to transfer the domain he’d have me on mail fraud, which the feds took seriously (and may still).
if you want to sell, do it sooner rather than later, .com names in general will slowly loose value. and by sooner i don’t mean tomorrow. like within a couple years.
Well, I replied and said I’d take $18K for the name.
The ball is in their court, we’ll see what happens!
If they go for it, I’ll probably be buying cases of wine over at Casemates.
@transplant Cheers!
@transplant let us know how it goes!
Nobody has mentioned the site itself. What amount of money is worth it to you to let this site die? It’s someone’s legacy, but more importantly… it’s a part of the internet. Upon redacting the URL, you mentioned that it’s the top Google result for a search term… a search term implying children learning.
How much is that worth to you?
I’m sure this sounds ridiculously moralizing. But, we’re in a pretty fluctuative state of the internet right now. Lot of changing hands in the DNS sphere. Lot of historical sites disappearing. I don’t even like children, and I think… children want to see this content, what capitalist hell are we in where we say no!?
I do not know your financial situation. I do not know the detailed, FML SEO garbage numerology. But if there’s a chance that this content is important to somebody… and if that chance means something… Take whatever spare time you have and develop it, recreate it…
(This sounds like a dick move but I’m going to say it anyway… my initial response was to put up money to keep the thing alive. But visiting the site and getting a bunch of Flash notifications red-flagged me. I understand there’s an issue if all the source material is held hostage by a dead, proprietary format. But if there’s content to be salvaged… consider keeping the domain alive and reaching out to one of the web devs here.)
@brhfl From a quick glance, it looks like none of the flash stuff is too complicated- they’re basically just gifs with links.
@Seeds Well that’s good. I wasn’t drunk enough last night to enable Flash and find out
@brhfl @Seeds Can somebody whisper to me the website–this curiosity is bugging me
I’m a buyer at $100. You have 24 hours.