Is selling a domain on GoDaddy a good idea?

January 14, 2010 11:18 AM

Is GoDaddy's domain auction service any good? I am looking to sell a domain and already have my domain registered with GoDaddy.

From what I can tell, it costs $4.99 to join the service (it looks like either as a buyer or a seller). Hopefully this would not be seen as a big hoop to jump through for a potential buyer. It looks like they can look at the listing for free, though.

I have had this domain since at least early 2001 (thanks, wayback machine!), but I can't remember exactly. I did have a small amount of content from 2001-2004, but didn't really put much effort into the site. It's just had a placeholder page for years now, and doesn't appear anywhere worthwhile on Google.

The site is a .com of two simple English words that form a very meaningful and generic topical phrase. It would lend itself to being used for a listing service if someone were interested in that, or would be generally applicable to all sorts of types of sites.

In the top Google results I notice that someone is selling an item with the name of the domain (they have never contacted me accusing me of trademark infringement or anything, and I am not sure when their product dates from - my site may have been created earlier), and there are also sites with the .org and .net that appear high in the listings. They might want it just for the redirect value, maybe? I would plan on dropping these sites an email to let them know it is for sale.

I don't know how much it would likely sell for. If I had to guess, maybe $100-200, but if it were sold auction-style I might get more for it. The area of commerce / interest it covers is not one that is generally considered all that lucrative, so I don't think there would be a lot of people bidding that had thousands to spend.

I don't want to list the domain here, but if you want to know what it is, just MefiMail me.

So basically my question is, are GoDaddy's domain selling services good? It would be the easiest way to sell this domain, I think. I have never sold a domain before.

posted by marble to computers & internet (5 answers total)

you could always ebay it, lots of people appear to be doing so after a quick search.


I'm not familiar with eBay's terms lately, but would that be cheaper/easier than GoDaddy? Probably easier on the customers at least.
posted by safepants at 11:47 AM on January 14, 2010

forgot ebay link.. doh
posted by safepants at 11:48 AM on January 14, 2010

I had a nice domain name and decided to list it for sale. Made sure my contact info was available from domain registrar (dotster.com). Over a couple years, got lots of inquiries, a few offers, 1 that I might have taken, but the buyer decided to back out.

Buyer returned, raised offer, I accepted. He was using godaddy as a transfer agent. They were less than useful, required me to register, but no one seemed to make available an actual process for me to transfer the domain name and him to transfer actual money.

So I used escrow.com. He paid the money to escrow, I transferred the domain using dotster, escrow.com confirmed the transaction was complete, and released the money to my account. Godaddy was a huge time-waster, and all I got from them was spam. Escrow.com and dotster were no-hassle and effective.
posted by theora55 at 3:52 PM on January 14, 2010

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/06/29/0625249.shtml
posted by cowmix at 5:49 PM on January 14, 2010

I tried it, didn't get any bites for a four-letter domain name. So this year I sold it on ebay for a lot less than it was worth - I only got one bidder. I didn't especially mind; at least I won't need to keep paying for something I don't use.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:24 PM on January 14, 2010