How do I sell a domain name?

January 15, 2021 9:48 PM

I have a question about offering to sell a domain name to a business.

Early last year, I set up a Wordpress site and registered a domain name. This was in February, and I neglected the site because of the pandemic/health reasons. I have the spoons now to do what I want to do with it, and last night, I looked into trademarking the name. It’s kinda meme-y, but let’s call it uxyz.net, where each letter is a word. The .com is squatted for $2200, which is why I bought the dot net. Last summer, a small business trademarked uxyz as their business name, and their website is uz.com. I can easily rename my project, and I support their business model, so I’d like to offer to sell my domain to the business owner. How do I do that? I think the domain would bring value to the business owner’s brand, in that my domain is along the lines of “a great new thing” and their current domain is “a thing.” Where “a great new thing” is the actual name of their business. Please walk me through this step by step, because I’m afraid I’ll undercut myself because I’m unemployed and desperate for cash.

posted by Ruki to Technology (2 answers total)

I mean you could start by just emailing them and asking them if they'd like to make an offer. Obviously they're not going to pay anything like $2200, because they could have gotten the .com for $2200 and they decided that wasn't worth it. A .net is going to be worth much less than a .com in general. And now that they've been using the uz.com domain for a while and hopefully have been driving traffic to it, the uxyz.net is probably worth even less to them. Remember they could have reached out to you over the summer if they were interested in the .net. Basically the chances of you getting more than a couple hundred dollars are nil, and the chances of them wanting the domain at all are low.

So, don't expect much, but it wouldn't hurt to ask. If you do decide to sell you can use an escrow service to manage the transaction for you, but they will take their own cut; or you and the buyer can just trust each other and pay and transfer independently (exact procedure will depend on your and their domain registrars).

But the first step is to ask if they're interested at all, and to decide how much the domain name is worth to you right now (this would be the floor for what you'd be willing to accept).
posted by mskyle at 6:56 AM on January 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Seconding "use an escrow service." I sold a domain years back, and it took a lot of the stress out of the transaction because I knew that if they flaked on me or tried to short me, I would get the domain back, no muss no fuss. They also handle all the mechanics, so all the buyer and I had to agree upon was the price.
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 1:20 PM on January 17, 2021