Domain Names

I don’t recommend wasting time with typos and trademarks. Your time is valuable, and if you’re going to spend time or money on domains, might as well spend your time and money on domains that are defensible and have long term value. Typos can never really be developed or sold at a premium to cash flow, and trademarks are always at risk of being taken from you. Trademarks also expose you to the potential of getting sued for damages. My attitude is that there are bigger fish to fry. Leave the typos and the trademarks to the bottom feeders. If you’re going to invest time and money into a domain, might as well spend it on a good domain that can be resold with confidence or developed at a later date.

Forums, auctions, and direct negotiations are some of the most cost effective ways to acquire high quality domain names. You should scour the DNForum and NamePros forums for names for sale. Auctions are held regularly though Sedo, GreatDomains, Pool, Moniker Marketplace, SnapNames, Afternic, and other locations. Direct negotiations also yield good results. This is when you email domain name owners directly from the information in the Whois database. Often non-professionals that own domain names will not understand how valuable their name is worth. If you can contact them directly, you may be able to buy a domain name worth tens of thousands of dollars for only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.

When dealing directly with another person for buying and selling, I recommend using Escrow.com for all transactions. Especially when the transaction is over $500. It’s not worth the risk. When you open escrow, make sure the domain’s administrative email is the same as the escrow seller email. This way you know you’re dealing with a real seller. Don’t do the final release of funds in escrow.com until the seller provides the name’s authcode, and you have used the authcode to successfully transfer the name to your registrar of choice.

When selling, I always ask the buyer to create an account at escrow.com and for them to open the escrow. Often scammers / timewasters won’t bother doing that. If you’re having the buyer open the escrow, it’s important to be specific as to what email address they should open the escrow to (it should be the same email you used to create your escrow.com account) and the fee arrangements. You should pre-arrange the fee split, i.e. 100% buyer, 100% seller, or 50/50 buyer/seller split.

PayPal is a dangerous way to sell because once you transfer a name to a buyer, the buyer can claim a fraudulent transaction with PayPal and have PayPal reverse the transaction and take the money back from you.

Always proceed with caution when dealing with buyers / sellers you don’t know.