How to Sell Your Web Site or Domain Name for Big Money

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by Dr. Kevin Nunley

There's gold in web site domain names. You probably saw the headlines when business.com changed hands for $7.5 million. Wine.com went for big bucks, too. And who can forget when AltaVista had to shuck out millions to buy their name from the original owner?

On the other hand, you may have surfed some of the auction sites to find perfectly good domains going for peanuts. Even $25 seemed like a starting bid no one wanted to touch.

So how do you cash in on the domain name trading craze? Here are a few simple tips to get you on the right track to E-real estate profits.

Finding Good Unclaimed Names.

No doubt about it. It is harder these days to find killer domain names that aren't taken. A recent survey showed that of the 25,000 words we commonly use in the English language, more than 93 percent are already registered as domain names.

Fortunately, language experts have come up with some fresh ideas we can use to uncover hidden gems. First look for short, simple names that instantly tell what your business is about. The dentist who got dentalhelp.com had the right idea.

If you can't get the one word that describes you, add a prefix or suffix onto it. eDental, DentalX, Dental123 are easy to remember.

Some very smart businesses have created previously unknown words based on the simple term that describes them. For example, none of us have a problem remembering Virtualis.com, even though it is a word that previously didn't exist.

Try combining two words that could describe what a site does. NameBoy.com specializes in helping people find good website names. You can also hit pay dirt by creating a nonsense name from easy-to-remember sounds.

What words and sounds are easy to remember?

Experts say people recall colors and food (RedPie.com is already taken..I checked).

Those who know say all these possibilities will work better than very long domain names, misspelled versions of words, or several words strung together with hyphens. In tests, people simply don't remember those names very well.

Build Value By Building Audience.

These days most websites are valued by the number of visitors they attract. One common yard stick is your domain name is valued at $10 to $30 per hit per day. If 1,000 people land on your front page each day, your domain could be worth $10,000 to $30,000.

Another optimistic way of looking at domain values is each unique visitor you get over the course of a month is worth $250. If the visitor clicks to a second page on your site, her presence is worth $500. By this measure, a site getting only 10 hits per day could go for $15,000.

This strategy is a lot like the way traditional businesses have always been sold. The more customers a store has, the more it is worth to a buyer. That is a pretty solid way to value domains. It is a model that is likely to be around for a long time to come.

How can you quickly boost your site's visitors? Start by focusing on the needs of a specific group. A site on psychedelic short pants has a better chance of becoming a hit than a site that hangs their hat on the very general topic of pants.

A more specific, focused kind of site also does better with search engines. Indeed, search engines will be your fastest way of getting lots of eyeballs to your domain. Read the expert tutorial on getting listed high on search engines at WebMarketingNow.com.

Build Sales and Brand Awareness.

No buyer can resist a domain that is pulling in whopping sales and has a brand name seared into the minds of a profitable target audience.

Generally a domain is worth the amount of sales it creates in a year. If your site pulls down $60,000 this year, you could get that much for your domain name. CPAs, especially those working with publicly traded corporations, know all kinds of ways to count a myriad of transactions (even affiliate commissions) into cash flow stats.

Boost sales by offering low-cost products that can be mass produced. If hot demand can be created, you can sell thousands in no time. You can also rack up big annual sales by offering a pricey service that appeals to a lot of people in a specific industry. Higher prices are almost always the quickest way to double, triple, and quadruple sales.

Finally, work to establish your domain as a well-known brand name. Much of Amazon.com's legendary operating expense goes to making their not-so-common name a household word. You can pull off brand name awareness at a smaller level by keeping your ads consistently in important places, putting your name on key websites, writing articles that make you look like an expert, and participating in your industry's major Internet discussion groups.