Selling a .co.uk domain name via Sedo

[ratboy]

Domaingenius - i'd say it really depends on traffic. I get about 3,500 views, with a 6.97% CTR which means i get about £25 a month. Thats 200 domains, many of these are rubbish thou. I use Sedo because I do believe people are more likely to buy if they have confidence in a third party. Domain parking is only going to earn mega money if your domains are very very good!!

Nigel - your right mate, why do those dealing in dollars get the deal half price? If I talk in an american accent can I have half price too? :grin:

 

[domaingenius]

Hmm thanks for that. In which case I shall definately NOT be using likes of SEDO as can get much much more parking or partially using the domains just with banners. As for selling the domains. I think if someone really wants a domain then they will buy it whether its on SEDO or not. Why not choose one or two good domains, join Tradedoubler and Commission Junction, put a few banners on a basic web page and see what it produces over 1 month ,just to see !.

DG

 

[miked]

Hi everyone,

This seems a really useful site. I've got alot of tips from it already.

Domaingenius:

I'm intrigued by your suggestions. Would you mind posting a fuller explanation of what this involves? I'm sure this would help people like myself that are new to the game of generating income from domains and domain sales. There can be alot of information to sift through at times!

Thanks,
Mike.

 

[SF]

Hi Guys,

Just listed my domains on sedo, I should now have stats to show the traffic :???: for those who have asked in the past!

I have noticed alot of you selling names via sedo, and you all seem to get really good prices for the domains, whats been your best sale on there yet?

I always point domains to my site, to give the buyer confidence that its me that actually owns the name? This is something that buyers in the past have asked for?

What are your comments?

 

[domainleases.co.uk]

Sedo are not .uk friendly

Unless you have a domain name worth at least a thousand pounds or more, Sedo is not a cheap or economically viable market place to sell your .uk domains for domains at the lower end of the market.

While they have relaxed their high fixed fee policy on .com and other domains, there is still a £100 fixed fee on .uk domains, charged to BOTH buyer and seller. This just seems very greedy on Sedo's part. It's certainly a major obstacle to selling .uk domains for many people. Sellers are being forced to price their domain names unrealistically high and effectively out of the market place. Those lucky enough to make a sale have to wait an incredibly long time, often years.

Why is Sedo being biased towards .uk domains like this? Sedo's costs are not any higher for handling .uk sales, and the buyer pays the transfer fee, so why the big fixed fee from Sedo?

You could take the view that since a large number of domains are parked with Sedo, Sedo stands to make a lot of money on advertising and clickthru revenues, so it's in their interest to have a domain name taking a long time to sell?

 

[retired_member16]

Domaingenius - i'd say it really depends on traffic. I get about 3,500 views, with a 6.97% CTR which means i get about £25 a month. Thats 200 domains, many of these are rubbish thou.

I feel a little better about my domains after reading that.

I have 56 with 1600 views a month with 20% CTR I might stick with this hobby a little longer....

 

[domaingenius]

Hi everyone,

This seems a really useful site. I've got alot of tips from it already.

Domaingenius:

I'm intrigued by your suggestions. Would you mind posting a fuller explanation of what this involves? I'm sure this would help people like myself that are new to the game of generating income from domains and domain sales. There can be alot of information to sift through at times!

Thanks,
Mike.

It is standard stuff really. Join http://www.tradedoubler.com and
http://www.cj.com and then decided what you want to sell from their
lists of advertisers. Then apply to join each of those individual
affiliate (advertiser) programs ,copy of paste the banners(html code)
that you will will again find on the aforementioned sites and point all
your names at that web page/s. Thats about it really it is simple, else
I wouldnt be able to do it !

DG

 

[Alpha]

.. and the big question, do they typically pay more than 10c per click? (btw does anyone know how much sedo get per click, if I only usually get 10cents?)

It is standard stuff really. Join http://www.tradedoubler.com and
http://www.cj.com and then decided what you want to sell from their
lists of advertisers. Then apply to join each of those individual
affiliate (advertiser) programs ,copy of paste the banners(html code)
that you will will again find on the aforementioned sites and point all
your names at that web page/s. Thats about it really it is simple, else
I wouldnt be able to do it !

DG

 

[aqls]

In my view sedo are cr*p when it comes to transfers. Big or small domains. They are slow at doing very little, unprofessional and expensive.

I used escrow.com the other day - lower commission and at least the money transfer stuff is taken care of though I still have to do the chasing (sedo doesn't help at all with this anyway). They have a 'domain escrow' process that means you don't get your money until the other buyer receives the Nominet forms etc - which I think is good.

Sedo are also cr*p when it comes to pay per click revenues as far as my experience is concerned. I think domain parking is not a good long term option for any domain, and if you do, then try NameDrive - they are friendlier, more professional and for 60% of my domains they pay higher.

Sedo pay higher for some but overall ND is better for me.

See my post re revenue share as an indication of how much you get out of the pie. Noone has contradicted it yet so it lends itself to be not too far off the mark.

'Theory on percentage of ad costs as payments' in NameDrive section.

Sedo say they pay over 50% of what they get. Guess what? - I think that's not the case.

Alot of my Sedo domains show up in Google with some sort of cr*p 'this domain is listed for sale on Sedo who by the way also have 1,500,000 other domains to distract you away from this one' type message and sometimes even in German. What a stonking self promoting load of rubbish that doesn't help me a bit. Compare that with NameDrive's tags which are all subject related and good.

You can still list your domain in the Sedo directory without having to park it there.

-aqls-

 

[ratboy]

I agree about the search meta tags.

Sedo:

<TITLE>smstextmessages.com - bulk sms info. This website is for sale!</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="The first internet search engine for domain offers, which are for sale. We have over 1.500.000 domains in our database. If you have domains/URLs to offer, place your free ad here!">

Namedrive:

<title>Subaruimpreza.co.uk</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="robots" content="index,nofollow">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style_park.css">

i.e. Sedo have a META name of their own description, whereas Namedrive allow the content to be searched, i.e. your chosen keywords.

OK namedrive looks a little messy in the search engine as it's all keywords, mainly from the top bar - BUT it's better than, as aqls points out: "The first internet search engine for domain offers, which are for sale. We have over 1.500.000 domains in our database. If you have domains/URLs to offer, place your free ad here!"

This IMHO helps get more hits through the search engines than sedo.

 

[Nigel]

Thanks Ratboy for making it so clear about the search meta tags. So many of us have queried this with sedo to no avail. They must be losing a ton of PPC traffic - so they lose and so do the domain parkers. It even shows that sale tag even if the domain is not for sale. I don't believe it would be difficult for sedo to have 2 search meta tags, one if its for sale and the other if its not for sale. Hope sedo read your post and improve everyone's earnings by doing something on this very important issue.

 

[ratboy]

I'm no expert, but it seems to work like that in practice.

Also, it would be great if you could customise the title of the page to help persuade clicks, although this may breach Google's rules on parking pages.

 

[texidriver]

Sedo

"there is still a £100 fixed fee on .uk domains, charged to BOTH buyer and seller."

"There are no fees for BUYING a domain through Sedo. Every purchase includes Sedo's 100% secure Domain Escrow service to protect you from fraud".

answer please Sedo?

 

[sedo]

Hi all. Ash Rahimi, Director of UK/Intl. Brokerage here. I'm sure if I've dealt with some of you before. That might be a good thing or bad thing, depending on the domain and whether you were a buyer or a seller. I just wanted to clear a few things up for everyone:
Firstly, I know how this 10% fee stuff can be confusing. Just to clarify, this fee is only covered by one person. If you list your domain as "for sale" on Sedo, and you reach agreement with a buyer, then you are responsible for the 10% fee . If you have ordered our domain acquisition service and reach agreement on a domain that was not listed with Sedo as "for sale," then you are responsible for this fee. We do have a minimum fee structure, and that stems mostly from the fact that transferring certain TLDs take longer than others. And since it does take some more time, and time is money, the higher fee stems from the fact that we do have to pay the transfer agents. The £100/$100/100€ minimum fee applies not only to .co.uk domain, but also to .fr. .nl, and .es to name a few. The fee is only half as much for .com, .net, and other gTLDs. You can check out the entire minimum commission price list at:
http://www.sedo.co.uk/services/prices.php3?tracked=&partnerid=&language=e

As for our transfer process, I can't speak from direct experience, but working with the transfer team on a daily basis I can tell you in all honesty that they are working as hard and as fast as they possibly can. Nobody wants a transfer to drag on. Not the buyer, not the seller, and certainly not the transfer agent. Delays are due 99% of the time to one of the parties involved in the transfer taking their time with either the payment or getting documents to us. Say what you might about escrow.com, but people have gotten defrauded before using them for domain transfers and when things do begin to fall apart with a transfer, it certainly helps to have an impartial 3rd party around.

Anyways, I'll be checking this forum more every so often, so if you guys have any questions about domain brokerage, domain transfers, or anything else drop me a line at [email protected] or just post something here.

Ash Rahimi

 

[mreeves]

Hi Ash,

Whilst you are around to clarify things please can you clarify the following situation for me. I once had some domain names listed with yourselves, a third party had then used your "hire a broker" service to negotiate with me for the purchase of a particular generic .co.uk domain name. During the course of negotiation I asked for clarification on who was to pay Sedo 10% should a transaction be completed. I was told that as the domain was listed on Sedo I as the seller would be the party liable to pay 10%.

So in effect, if a transaction was concluded, I would be paying Sedo for the privilege of having Sedo negotiate AGAINST me! (quite agressively I might add!). The negotiations by that point has reached £25,000 GBP which would have meant paying Sedo £2,500 to have you agressively negotiate against me! We did not reach a mutually agreeable price and this rediculous situation did not help.

Has policy now changed? If not, does this mean that anyone can use your hire a broker service for free to directly negotiate with domain holders that have desired domain listed on your site?

Regards
Martin

 

[retired_member27]

Has policy now changed? If not, does this mean that anyone can use your hire a broker service for free to directly negotiate with domain holders that have desired domain listed on your site?

Good point Martin.

And since it does take some more time, and time is money, the higher fee stems from the fact that we do have to pay the transfer agents

Two points here, (1) It might take longer for a .co.uk domain but still ALL the work is done by the buyer and seller, and (2) who or what are the transfer agents, and how are they involved?

Say what you might about escrow.com, but people have gotten defrauded before using them for domain transfers and when things do begin to fall apart with a transfer, it certainly helps to have an impartial 3rd party around.

I have used Escrow.com many times and never had a problem, and in my view it is probably safer. Are you saying that a seller using Sedo has never ever been defrauded before, if so I find that very hard to believe.

 

[sedo]

Wow, the questions coming in quick.
Martin:
There are cases like yours that are tricky. Previously, the line was that if the domain is listed with Sedo, no matter who is contacting you (be it us or an individual), the seller would be liable for the 10% fee. Since then, things have changed a bit. Essentially, in the situation where you've just mentioned, we have 2 parties (both buyer and seller) technically liable for one 10% fee. You have to take into account a couple of things. First, the reason a lot of people do order our service is because they saw the name as listed on our site for sale and would rather not spend time negotiating back and forth. Second, the buyer is paying for the service (the $49 fee), so we're certainly not negotiating for free.
Of course, you do certainly have a very good point. The way we do it now is we make clear at the beginning of the process that since liability for the fee is in a "gray area," one party does have to pay it and that this fee should be part of any negotiation process. I personally agree with your point, and it's good to know that this is a major concern for some others as well. I will take this upstairs and see if we can get the policy changed for the better.

Andrew:
If only we did have automatons running the transfer department. Unfortunately, they are a fine international group of living, breathing, people. And they do have kids to feed, so we do have to pay them. You're right that the buyer and seller are a bigger part of .co.uk transfers, but I think the company looks at it from a point of view that the transfer should cost more since these transfers do drag on longer than most and are still more assisted than for instance swapping a .com between Godaddy members. The time spent on a .co.uk transfer vs. the aforementioned .com does differ by a pretty large margin. But I promise that Sedo isn't discriminating just against .co.uk owners, as most ccTLDs are being charged the same rate. I do know that we are working on creating a more streamlined (and cheaper!) transfer process and that will hopefully be up at some point in the future.

Ash

 

[retired_member27]

So what you're saying Ash, is that if Nominet by some miracle brought in a system where we could transfer a domain instantly (without forms) via their website then Sedo would charge us the .com rate?

 

[sedo]

Andrew,

Well, I can't speak for the transfer team because I'm in sales, but I do know the reasoning behind the pricing, and if a .co.uk was as easy to transfer as a .com, then I don't see why the minimum commission wouldn't be the same. We've been hearing rumors for quite a while about Nominet changing things to something paperless, but nothing has changed. If/When it does, I'm sure our transfer team will revisit their pricing scheme.

Ash

 

[paymatters]

A benefit of sedo is that it gets a lot of hits so someone may find your domain through searching on sedo.co.uk?

Having said that unless you are a featured domain not sure how easy you would be found!

Having bought through sedo i found the domain i bought by entering the url www.debtconsolidation.co.uk rather than searching their site.