Selling Domain Names on Ebay
October 20th, 2009
Oh dear!
What a terrible result I had when I tried to sell a couple of names via Ebay.
They were both good keyword, generic names but despite my best efforts, there was only one bidder and the final sale price was a measly £0.99.
With listing and commission fees of £1.25, well, you know.
Needless to say, I won’t be putting any names on Ebay again in the foreseeable future.
I always knew it wasn’t the right place, but I did think that emailing the auction link to a few parties who should have been interested, I would have got a better response.
Never mind. I would have let them expire anyway, so no great loss, but the lesson is clear – stay away from Ebay if you want to sell domain names.
Posted in Domain Names
What were the names out of interest?
Its eBay so its not going to work that way.
Hi David -
While I mostly agree with what you say, I do think eBay has some uses in selling domains:
1 – to find a “base” market appraisal – ie. list a good domain with a high reserve and see what happens. Assuming it does not sell, at least you will have a figure which is more tangible than Estibot / gut feel etc.
2 – to offload domains you would otherwise drop. Usually they only fetch 1 or 2 dollars, but occasionally I have had these reach 20 or 30.
A couple of tips:
- Don’t leave your expiry sales until the last minute. If there is a delay then you can find yourself having to renew a domain in order to push it to buyer (who might have paid $0.99). Otherwise you might get negative feedback.
- Be absolutely clear about the transfer details. Even if you say “Free push to your Moniker account, or I can supply the auth. codes for you to transfer to your registrar of choice, which will cost…” buyers still say “Please push to my Go Daddy account”
- have 100% positive, and substantial, feedback
Best.
- Paul
…and another tip:
- check out the stories about using PayPal for high value transactions. I have no direct experience, but have seen some scary stuff about “charge backs” (I think that is what they are called).
I have been stung by exotic payment methods, including one where the funds showed up in my UK bank account but disappeared after I shipped the (physical) item. My bank said that for small amounts (less than GBP 500 I think) they assume the transfer is OK, but it can be reversed within a certain period – I think it was 10 days or 1 month. This was a complete surprise to me.
Best.
- Paul
who don’t know that… with 8000 listed and no way to pick out the decent ones without going through them all by hand… it used to be THE place to buy but never the place to sell.
@michael – There are ways to pick out the decent ones:
http://domainauctioncleaner.com/ – check the “Ignore domains with no bids” option.
Unfortunately that site has not been selecting listings correctly for a week or so (at least here in Spain), so I added a similar feature to my own site:
http://DNyap.com/domains-on-ebay/
That selects listings by the word “domain” and ignores any with less than 2 bids.
- Paul
Once upon a time eBay was a viable option for selling low- to medium-value domains. I was a regular eBay buyer and seller of many different products on eBay, including domain names, beginning in July 1998. It was a really good thing for me and many thousands of others for a long time.
Sadly, eBay had many “bright ideas” that resulted in their continuous changing of virtually every aspect of their business model. It became increasingly difficult for eBay sellers to keep up with all of the changes and continue to make a reasonable profit. Additionally, PayPal policies favoring scammers made it incredibly easy for sellers of “intangible” products and services (domains, ebooks, training, etc.) to not have to deliver what they sold. eBay/PayPal policy does not permit refunds on intangible products and services, under any circumstances!
I almost took a $7000 hit from a fellow domainer on eBay. I bought, he didn’t deliver, PayPal said, “too bad.” Thankfully I used my credit card, but it took over a year for my credit card company to get the charge back.
eBay destroyed itself as a viable auction house by giving the finger to most of its sellers and a great many of its buyers. I made some really good $$$ on eBay back in the day, but for all intents and purposes, eBay is DEAD.
And specifically for domains, no serious buyer or seller goes to eBay anymore.
The names were asbestosisclaim(s).com – not something I’d ever use personally, but valuable to a certain type of end user or Adsense fan.
It was just a small experiment and one that I’ll never repeat.
I mailed the ebay auction link to a few companies that I thought might be interested, as they were all buying those particular keywords on Google Adwords, so it was worth the risk to see what happened, if anything.
The reason for trying it was in case I ever get tempted to put a bigger name up for auction elsewhere – at least with ebay the loss was insigbificant. With some domain auction sites, the up-front costs can be quite restrictive, though obviously, a lot depends on the quality of the names being offered.
You had more than one bidder. I set my sniping software and it came back with “Ebay not responding.” I don’t know if it was just me, but an Ebay hang-up in the closing seconds of an auction is bad, since there are so many snipers.
All said, though, it’s really not a good place to sell decent names.
On Ebay, they need to be either obviously valuable to even the dimmest and newest domainer (eg good LLLL or LLL .coms), or flashy looking junk that wouldn’t get $1 from any respectable domainer.
If you must sell a domain that requires some discernment, you’re better off posting it with a reserve or higher price, as many times as is needed until the right party sees it.
The same name can go for 99 cents or $100 on Ebay, depending on who’s watching.
All these auction sites charge high price on domain sales or promotion. Thus I am developing a free domain name listing service at SigmaNames.com
I will list Dictionary word names with their respective contact e-mails after verifying the own ship for FREE!
Yes, absolutely FREE. Hope the domainers like my idea!
eBay is clearly a buyer’s market, with a handful of exceptions. For instance, someone looking to sell LLLL.com’s can easily see the types of prices that they’re bringing these days, and if that price range is acceptable, then quick sales can be made.
Every few days, I take 10-15 minutes and quickly look through the listings. (I prune out some of the irrelevant ones by running a search that excludes terms such as info, hosting, reseller, and ebook.) 98%+ of the domains offered are pure garbage, but once in a while I’ll pick up a decent .com cheaper than I could have gotten it elsewhere.
“I would have let them expire anyway”
“stay away from Ebay if you want to sell domain names”
If they are names you value at nothing yourself (ie would have let them expire) why would you expect them to sell for a good price on ebay?
I didn’t necessarily expect a “good” price. It was an experiment that gave me the answers I expected.
I’ve let hundreds of names expire this year and have seen them snapped up and that’s ok too.
Didn’t you sell one of those $1,000,000 Michael Jackson domain names on eBay? Sell one of those a week and you won’t have to work again for the rest of the year!
That’ll be the day! I am only good at giving things away on ebay
Most items now on ebay don’t sell for much. They charge more to put the item on ebay than you make. And, most domains are that are listed on ebay are GARBAGE! I still sell a few domains on ebay, but I do not get what I am expecting(plus, those domains I would of let expire). Domains PERIOD are not selling at all. Bido is another site that you lose money on your domains. Many on that site are garbage too! Then, you look at SEDO.com and words like Zoost.com sold for $25,000,koeling.info $650, mypsoriasis.com, $11,000, zanada.com $5,000, badefrien.ch(yes dot ch) $2,000,tanadu.org $6,000 and oher outrageous sales. Makes you wonder?
no surprises there with selling domains to other resellers for squat. But i’m with you on trying to sell to end-users through ebay. Did you direct mail or email? The thing is, ebay is so ubiquitous that every end-user knows what it is and most will already have accounts. I feel like sending an end-user to Sedo hurts for two reasons, which are that 1) maybe they don’t get what Sedo is, or maybe they dont take the trouble to sign up, and 2) it feels a little like sending them into a candy store. (i.e. Maybe your asbestosisclaim(s).com doesn’t look so hot sitting next to asbestos.com)