Perhaps you bought a domain name, planning to build a website, but have moved on since then and aren't sure what to do with it. You could always try selling it. Although the domain aftermarket isn't as lucrative as it was at the end of the 20th Century at the peak of the dot-com bubble, there is still a tidy sum to be made, as big-time domain speculators will tell you.

Valuing Your Domain

First of all, try to get an idea of the value of your website. You can pay someone to value it for you, but there's a high chance that the consultation will cost more than the domain name is worth, so a free appraisal is your best bet. This will only give you a vague idea, so you will probably need to assess your domain name yourself for various factors.

- Do you get any unsolicited offers to buy the name? If you do, it must be worth something to someone, so you have a base value there and then for your domain name.

- Is it a .com domain name? The .com version of any domain name is worth 5-10 times more than any other top-level domain version.

- How long is the domain name? Generally speaking, the shorter the better, but not to the detriment of legibility. For example, ILoveYou.com is worth more than ILuvYou.com or ILuvU.com.

- Is the domain name hyphenated? Although hyphens can improve the legibility of a domain name, they're usually worth less, especially if the unhyphenated version has been registered by someone else. If you have both the hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of a domain name, you may be able to sell them as a package, but unhyphenated domain names are always going to be your best bet.

- How many words are in the domain name? Fewer words usually make a better domain name, but a domain with two-word industry-specific phrase (like fancydress.com) is worth more than a single, difficult-to-market word (like coarse.com).

- Does the domain name involve prefixes or suffixes? If it has "e", "my" or "your" on the front, it's probably worthless – similarly, if it has "site" or "online" on the end.

- Is the domain name spelled correctly? Acommodation.com or Mississipi.com are not going to fetch much. Use a dictionary if you're not sure.

Domain Brokers

There are many domain brokers available online who can sell your website for you. Prospective buyers browse these sites and choose domains, and of course, the broker takes a cut of your profits. The advantage of using a broker is that you don't have to do much except wait for your domain to be sold. Review the available services and try to find one that suits your needs.

Sell It Yourself

The alternative is to sell your domain name yourself. You can have a go at some of the techniques for selling your domain yourself in conjunction with using a domain broker if you want to (check their terms and conditions to make sure that they don’t demand exclusivity).

You can "park" your domain while you wait for a buyer. This basically involves a page which is something like a contact card, which indicates that your domain name is for sale and displays your email address for potential buyers to contact you with their offers. You can also display pay-per-click advertisements which will earn you a bit of cash while you're waiting, as well as giving you an indication of how much traffic your site is receiving. There are domain parking services available from companies such as Sedo.com, or you can just set up a parked page yourself.

Better still, build a developed website around your domain name. This will really add value to your domain name, especially if you offer all the website as part of the sales package. If you really put the work in, drawing as much targeted traffic as possible with good search engine optimisation and site design, and interesting, useful content, there's really no telling by how much you can increase the worth of your domain name.

By Natalie Catchpole