Three ways exist to sell a domain this year, and the right one depends entirely on how much the name is actually worth, not how much you think it’s worth.
Marketplace listing: volume over precision
Listing on a marketplace gets a domain in front of the most eyeballs for the least effort, and it’s genuinely the right move for names worth low four figures and below. Past that, marketplaces optimize for transaction volume, not for finding the one buyer who’d pay a premium for this specific string.
Direct outreach: slow, and it works
Identifying the handful of companies who would actually use a domain and reaching out directly routinely produces better prices than any public listing, because you’re negotiating from information asymmetry instead of a public price tag everyone can lowball against. It’s also slow, unglamorous, and gets ignored by half the people you contact.
Brokered deal: paying for access you don’t have
A broker earns their commission through relationships and negotiating distance, not paperwork. A founder emailing “we’d like to buy your domain” gets a defensive reply. A broker making the same call sounds like standard business, and gets a real conversation started.
The mistake most sellers make is picking the channel based on what’s easiest instead of what the domain is worth. A five-figure name deserves outreach or a broker. A name worth $800 does not need either, and paying a broker’s commission on it is a bad trade.
Match the channel to the number, not your patience level. Patience is free. Guessing wrong about which channel a domain belongs in isn’t.
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