Ask HN: What's the best way to sell a domain name?

[wanderboy]

I recently decided to call it quits on a Web application that I was pretty excited about at the time: I was planning on adding restaurant menus to a database so that users could add their feedback about the menu items themselves, rather than the restaurant as a whole. Each menu item had the same price and description as the physical menu, but also showed which percentage of users liked the item.

The domain that I was using for this project was menuvoice.com

Just looking through the current offerings on GoDaddy's site, I see that MenuAssistant.com is selling for $2700, and other domains that lead off with menu are priced similarly. I'm interested in selling this domain for roughly $2000-$2500 - since both words are easily pronounced and spelled, and the domain is only nine letters long. I also own the Twitter account name for it, which I would be offering as well.

My question to the HN community is: what is the best way to expedite this process? Is this a domain that should theoretically be valuable? I don't want to have to spend years sitting on this before anyone bites, but I understand that patience here is probably important.

One strategy that I thought about was to contact start-ups with a similar focus, and send them e-mails explaining that I'm looking for a buyer.

[ohashi]

I would be amazed if you could get that price for that domain. It's 2 words, but they don't really 'speak' to me. I think you are overvaluing it based on your idea. What you must realize about domain selling (passive domain selling that is) is that it is a probability game. Big portfolios passively sell maybe 2% of their portfolio per year. They also charge much higher price than the liquid rate.

If you wanted to sell that domain right now, I would say $50-100 if you were to offer it to resellers.

However, if you go into active selling mode and contact potentially interested parties... the price can go higher. This depends entirely on your ability to sell and your network. I have no idea who you are, perhaps you are wolfgang puck and know every restaurateur and can sell it for a few grand no problem. However, based on where this is, I am going to say you're a programmer and probably don't have a deep network of restaurateurs.

So the question you have to ask yourself... how much time are you willing to spend on selling it and what is the price you would be satisfied at? If I am looking to liquidate generally I would find maybe 10-20 businesses and contact them, my reply rate is 5-10% on average. I take what I can get, I am dumping it anyways. Emotional attachment to domains lowers your chance of making a sale.

[vitovito]

During SXSW this year, I had a discussion with someone about domain reselling. They said that rather than try and resell just the bare domain, they went to an inexpensive logo design service and had the domain branded first, with the landing page showing the logo and a simple layout saying the domain and brand were for sale. You'd be offering the logo you just bought, plus the Twitter account, and maybe even the details of the project.

He said that the branded ones always sold quickly and for much more than the bare domains did, although I don't recall the figures. It was worth his time and money to have the additional work done on them, apparently.

[BrandonFletcher]

I'll give you $100 for it right now via PayPal if you go with ohashi's advice.

[wanderboy]

I'm willing to do this, but have no way of getting in touch with you. My e-mail address is in my info if you're still interested in this domain.

[GBond]

I've used sedo.com with success. They seem to have a wide international audience of domain pros. It is good for when you don't have the time to execute your plan of contacting biz's directly. They handle the transaction process via concealed identity offer and counter-offers. The con is they charge 10% of the selling price to the seller.