How much should I sell my personal website for?

January 8, 2019 4:41 AM

I've largely been a TV producer most of my adult life. I'm getting out of it to go back to teaching. I'm also divesting myself of all my social media. I have a personal website that's largely a name placeholder - and a twitter handle of my name. The other major person with my name is a successful video director. I offered to sell him my twitter handle and domain. He's interested. So what do I charge?
posted by rileyray3000 to Technology (7 answers total)

Man, maybe you should anonymize the question?
posted by Omnomnom at 5:21 AM on January 8, 2019 [23 favorites]

You charge whatever he is willing to pay. Has he been waiting for years for the chance to buy his name on social media, or is this all your idea? This is a situation where he literally may be the only person in the world for whom your social media handles have any monetary value. There is no formula to tell you what to charge.

Do you really care if you maximize the monetary value of the domains? Will it keep you up at night knowing you may have left money on the table? How much would you pay if the situation was reversed? If you really don't know or don't care you could let him name a price to start.

My sense is that a video producer is not somebody who really needs an active social media presence for his career. The people that will hire him mostly know who he is already, right? So his interest may be more ego/vanity or just defensive to make sure it doesn't end up being used for spam or porn or something.

So going on nothing more than what you posted, I'm guessing the monetary value to him is on the low side. But I don't know what "low" is. A few hundred to a thousand, maybe?
posted by COD at 5:22 AM on January 8, 2019 [5 favorites]

Five hundred dollars.
posted by Umami Dearest at 5:24 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

Five hundo sounds fair to me too. I'm assuming you two are successful but not like wildly successful to the point where you have super megabucks. Having your name as a domain and Twitter handle is nice, but hardly a make-or-break issue especially since the person you're selling it to has already made it, so to speak. So, five hundred sounds reasonable.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:39 AM on January 8, 2019 [2 favorites]

$500 sounds low. You're giving him the Twitter handle too right? I'd at least suggest 2k or let him make the first offer.
posted by arnicae at 8:17 AM on January 8, 2019

Note that selling Twitter usernames is against their "rules" so if they find out, they may suspend it.
posted by Seboshin at 8:32 AM on January 8, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you are interested, I may be able to connect you with a buddy who sold a domain and may have real-world negotiating advice/valuation perspective. Not convinced MF, however fabulous, is the best place for that. PM me if so.
posted by Bella Donna at 8:47 AM on January 8, 2019