What’s the first thing you do when you acquire or register a domain name? Some domainers may already have a slick setup sequence in place for investment domains, but some of you may need a little help with this.
Consistently performing the right actions after you have acquired a domain name to be resold can ensure that you use the best practices to keep your related domain data accurate, which is extremely important.
To help with creating a post-acquisition routine, I’ve created a checklist below. You can bookmark this, or note it down for easier access.
Table of Contents
Log the price
On a spreadsheet or a portfolio management site such as Efty, log at least the following information:
- The domain name
- Your purchase price
- The date of purchase
- Current expiration date
- The registrar where the domain name is held (for example, GoDaddy)
Why?: keeping a record of your domain name purchases will help you to keep your portfolio organized. It will also help you to quickly review data before either selling the domain or deciding whether to renew it.
Check the WHOIS info
Go to your domain registrar account to check that the contact details for your domain name are correct.
Why?: maintaining correct contact details for your domain name is an ICANN requirement. Aside from that, you’ll need correct details in order to receive notices from your registrar (such as renewal notices), and potential inbound inquiries from anyone interested in purchasing your domain.
List your domain for sale
If your aim is to sell your domain name, you need to get it in front of potential buyers. That’s why listing it for sale at a specialist domain name marketplace may help. Here are some popular marketplaces you might consider:
- Afternic (afternic.com – 20% commission from $0 to $5,000)
- Sedo (sedo.com – between 10% and 20%: https://sedo.com/us/what-we-offer/price-list/)
- GoDaddy Marketplace (auctions.godaddy.com – 20% commission from $0 to $5,000)
- Uniregistry Market (uniregistry.com/market – free, or 15% if sold via a Uniregistry broker)
- DAN (dan.com – 9% commission)
If your domain name is brandable, then you may be interested in listing your domain for sale on selective brandable marketplaces:
- Brandbucket (brandbucket.com – $1 appraisal fee, 30% commission below $10,000, 25% between $10,000 and $50,000, 20% between $50,000 and $100,000, and 15% above $100,000)
- Brandpa (brandpa.com – $8 listing fee, 25% commission)
- Squadhelp (squadhelp.com – typically 30-35% commission fee below $5,000)
Why?: listing your domain name at many different domain marketplaces increases the potential number of buyers that may view your domain, potentially increasing the likelihood of selling.
Change your sales settings
Wherever you have listed your domain, go to your account page and check the sales settings. You might need to make adjustments based on your sales strategy. On most marketplaces, you can list your domain as one of the following:
- “Make Offer” – so anyone interested in your domain will have to submit a purchase offer to you.
- “Buy Now” – a listed price that is publicly listed so that anyone can click it and immediately buy your domain.
- A combination of both – sometimes, a platform will allow you to list a “Buy Now” price as well as displaying a “Make Offer” field.
This may not be possible at brandable-specific marketplaces.
Why?: To make it clear to a buyer exactly how they can go about buying your domain name.
Set a minimum offer or BIN price
In the sales settings at each marketplace, set a minimum offer price or a “Buy Now” (BIN) price. Remember that different marketplaces set different commission fees. Build these into your minimum offer or BIN prices.
Why?: Setting a clear minimum offer or BIN price clearly shows buyers the price you’re looking to achieve for the domain.
Change your nameservers
Go to your registrar account and change the domain’s nameservers (DNS). After purchase, the name will either point to the previous domain owner’s nameservers (if you bought the domain privately), or the name will point to the default registrar nameservers (most common if you registered the domain).
You can point your nameservers to destinations such as:
- a marketplace
- a parked page
- a custom landing page
- your own marketplace
Here are some current nameserver settings for some popular services:
- Efty: ns1.eftydns.com, ns2.eftydns.com
- DAN: ns1.dan.com, ns2.dan.com
- Afternic: ns1.afternic.com, ns2.afternic.com
- Sedo Parking: ns1.sedoparking.com, ns2.sedoparking.com
- Uniregistry Market: ns1.uniregistrymarket.link, ns2.uniregistrymarket.link
If you have any other suggestions for this checklist, comment below.
Information is accurate as of June 16th, 2020.
It’s a very clear check sheet . Please make check list on
What to Do before Buying a Domain Name via godaddy, or sedo or any other place .
Thank you.
Thanks, Ravi. I’ll take a further look at your idea. Appreciate the feedback!
One should also log the registrar if one is buying from different registrars.
Very good point @Sohil. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll add it to the checklist.
Great checklist, very informative. One question though about buying expired domains…
At GoDaddy, for example, it takes about a week to get the domain in your account. What can/can’t we during that time? Any workarounds?
Before the renewal time comes, one needs to check the type-in traffic on every domain. If a domain receives almost no traffic in the entire year, it’s better to drop it unless one wants to keep it for one additional year at max.
great. Informative as always
Prior to parking or assigning name servers to a domain name I like to check the trademark database (tess) to see if there are any registered trademarks associated with the term and what classes of goods the trademark covers! Good information to have in order to try and prevent Or mitigate potential infringement & or cybersquatting claims