How To Choose An Asking Price For A Domain

Many domain name auction services won't accept bids for less than US$500 or US$1000. However, domain names are increasingly priced for tens of thousands of dollars. Some examples: TV.com sold for US$15,000 and Business.com sold for US$150,000 (reported by CNET - News.com June 1997).

When negotiating to sell your domain name, it's best to get a sense for how it will be used and how committed the buyer is to that particular name. For example, Compaq anxiously sought to replace "altavista.digital.com," the domain name for the popular search engine that they had acquired. They approached a small Oregon company that owned the domain name "altavista.com." After much negotiating, Compaq finally paid US$3.35Million to the small Oregon company for the "altavista.com" domain name (reported by the SF Chronicle, July 1998).

On the other hand, if a smaller company was in the process of choosing a new product name and was searching the web to see if the corresponding domain name had already been taken, they might rather change the name of the product before paying too much to acquire the domain name.

In order to give you the best negotiating room, you might simply choose "open" as your asking price. If you find that you're getting too many low offers, then we can easily update your catalog entry to include a minimum price.

"How To Choose An Asking Price For A Domain" by DomainBook.com