After a number of year of running a web-based business, my father recently retired. He has already discontinued the account with his web hosts, but the domain name had been registered separately. A similar business in the same city has expressed interest in buying the domain name (it would be a very good one for them to have), but neither they nor my father (nor I, for that matter) know what are considered good, fair, and acceptable practices and prices for selling a domain name. They are on friendly terms, however, so this is not necessarily any kind of hostile action. This is not an issue of cybersquatting, where someone just sat on a domain for a long time, waiting for someone who wished to buy it, but was a domain for a legitimate business with an active website that another business with an existing website would like to purchase. I guess the two primary questions are: 1) What kind of price ranges are considered typical/acceptable for such a transaction? 2) Are there any particular business/legal practices which should be followed to handle the transaction properly? Of course, if there is something they should be considering that I have not even mentioned here, please bring that up, as well. Thanks!
It depends on the domain, how well developed the website was, what sort of traffic numbers the domain was getting, etc. and of course any sort of 'premium' that may be attached to the domain ... for example, is it a 3-letter .com, eg. rod.com. Legally, unless it is a trademark, there are no specific interests to consider. Even with a trademark, if the rights are granted for its use, then no problem exists.
It is an eight-letter name in the .com TLD, so it is not something that EVERYbody will be jumping to get but it IS very germane to the company's business. For my father, the name had a double meaning, since the first two letters were his initials, and the remaining six related to the type of business, but my dad's initials also happen to be the initials often used for the city, so whoever has that domain name has an instant association with the name of the city, which is , obviously, very good for business. My dad's website was well developed in the sense of being developed well, not necessarily in the sense of being flashy and packed with features. It did exactly what it was supposed to do and, since my dad was the one who handled the transactions and this is not an e-tail business, it didn't have a shopping cart or other such things, because it didn't need them. I don't know the traffic he was getting, but he was way ahead of his time, having started this very early, and this other companies in this business (including the interested party) have only been on the web for two or three years. Still, it is something about which THEY keep asking, and not something that my dad has been trying to shove at them, so there is definitely interest.
Y'know, in your situation it might be best to sign up for a free account at a company like www.sedo.com, park the domain there and then get them to appraise it's value and perhaps also handle the sale. They do charge a fee for selling (minimum $50) but if the domain is worth several hundred / several thousand dollars, they would be the ones to tell you. They also act as domain brokers and can negotiate a price for you. Parking the domain, after you have signed up, simply involves changing the nameservers to point to Sedo.
Okay. That's a start. I'll look into that. Thanks for your quick responses! Of course, if you or anyone else has any other feedback, it would still be appreciate - Sedo may not be the only answer, and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of question. Thanks again!
Since they are in the same city it seems like the easy way would be to agree on a price, you go to their office and transfer the name and they have a certified check ready for you. It doesn't sound like any content has value; they just want the name. In that case I would suggest the value will decrease with time so the sooner it gets transferred the better.
You're welcome. Sedo are not the only answer available by any means but given my understanding of the circumstances you have outlined, they are probably the easiest and fairest way for you to organise the sale. Other options include finding someone to give you an appraisal / act as a broker or guessing a price and handling the transfer yourself.
You could post it here for appraisal, but in general, end-users pay much more than what the appraisals would say, since those are mostly prices from resellers' point of view. People usually use Escrow or a similar service to ensure that the transaction will go smoothly, but if they're in the same city as yours and you can deal with the finances in person, that might be a better way to avoid the fees that Escrow (or Sedo) might incur on the transaction.
Before you go parking it at Sedo, you should consider the value of the existing content and search engine rankings (if any), especially if it is an older site and the buyer's business is in a related field. Once a website is put on Sedo it may lose any aged link/serp value. The bottom line is that the value of a domain is what somebody will pay for it, and I would agree with the above comment that the value may decline with time (especially if the former business is no longer active). If there is a very interested party, I would just ask them to make an offer and that will give you a better sense of how serious they really are.