Sell domains or websites

A website or domain name with history and content is worth something in most cases. When you lose the motivation for a domain name or website you can simply let it expire. Or you can try to sell it to another party. Let's cover how this works and how you can get started.

Websites and domain names are in a lot of cases still worth a certain amount of money. This varies greatly, and has to do with the content on it. In which niche it is located. Whether this is a website that can be taken over by another person or organization. And how much traffic the website receives. All these factors and more ensure that a website or domain name has a certain value. A website or domain can barely be worth the annual cost of registration, or it can run into the tens of thousands of euros. The sky is the limit. Imagine for example how much a website like Tweakers is worth with its many visitors on a monthly basis.

Let's take a closer look at the many factors that play a part in this.

Determining the value of a website

Determining the value of a website is a very difficult thing to do, the main rule is that you do the monthly amount that the website earns about x30 as a baseline. So a website that earns about 150 euros a month from AdSense revenues. This is however a rough estimation and can differ per website. If you want to use a separate broker for this, they are also widely available. Please do your own research on this.

Besides the net income of a website the value is also determined by a number of other factors. For instance, attention is paid to the user trend of a website. If you have a month in the year where the website earns the most, and the rest of the year almost nothing, this will also have a big impact on the sales price. Content is also very important here, if the content on a website is of low quality, or even taken from other sources. Then this will be almost impossible to sell. The content of any website should be unique and of high quality.

Besides the content we also look at the backlink profile of a website, when this is artificially pumped up via low quality backlinks then this will also have an impact on the overall health of a website. A Google update later on can cause a website to plummet in the search results. The last thing a potential buyer wants of course.

Which websites can you sell?

The type of website is also very important when selling a website. A website has to be easy to work with. That is why people mainly look for websites that are made in a CMS or Content Management System. This makes a move easy and you can often work with it right away without a new learning curve. By far the most popular CMS isWordPress hosting, and websites made with it are generally easier to sell than a custom made website that might not work on every server out of the box.

The type of website is also important, is it an informative blog, or a webshop with local stock, or a dropshipping store. The magic behind dropshipping is well known among the general public, and we ourselves have noticed that such webshops are often hard to sell. Delivery time is too long and low quality products for a higher price is not a business that has a long life.

Of course there are also many websites for associations, organisations and companies. Such websites are often unique and focused on a company or for example a sport. Such websites are often less interesting to buyers since they are strongly linked to the current owners.

Determining the value of a domain name

Determining the value of a domain name is often a bit simpler. It is based on the authority of a domain and its history. The domain authority is determined by a number of external tools such as Alexa rank, Moz rank and tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs. There is a value to a certain domain that also determines the sales price. Domain names which are or have been associated with illegal practices, lugubrious websites or webshops are worth less than a domain name which is easy to rebrand. Has a good history and is older than any other domain name in the same branch.

Domain names alone are worth less than a website, with website hosting there is also a monthly visitor number to it and the price is safer to determine by a potential buyer.

So where do you sell websites or domain names?

Opinions are divided on this and we unfortunately don't have 1 source for you where we can say that you can always go to. Often this will be a combination of taking action yourself, this can be on Social Media, a banner on the website itself or actively approaching possible buyers. Or it can be placed on forums, sitedeals.nl is a good candidate for this, and placed on brokers or services that specialize in selling websites and domains.

We recommend reading up on this on the various names we have listed here. For domain names you can also choose to offer this on dan.com or SEDO. However, don't take into account that this will be sold in a few days. Often domains are for sale for a long time.

If you have any further questions about this, you can always join us on the chat, and if you are ready to sell a website, you can always contact the administration to ask what further steps are necessary. We as a hoster can help you with this part, unfortunately not in actually selling a website or domain name.