Tips for Selling a Domain on Flippa

When Flippa first started out, they were mainly a marketplace for websites. Since then, they have grown and now a big part of their business is domain transactions. Here are some tips for selling your domain on Flippa if you’ve been thinking about listing there.

Only list good domains.

Your domain doesn’t have to be a premium, but don’t list a crappy domain and hope to find a sucker. Most buyers on Flippa are market-savvy, so chances are they’ll know which domains are valuable and which ones are not. Although, I have to admit, I have occasionally come across some hideous domain names that are sold on Flippa, and wondered what the buyer was thinking.

Upgrade your listing.

A basic listing on Flippa is affordable for most ($9 + 10% success fee), but once you start tacking on the upgrades, you’ll find yourself paying way over the basic listing fee. A featured listing costs $250, but you can choose your upgrades à la carte. Because of this upfront cost, many sellers are faced with a dilemma. You risk losing money if your sales price doesn’t cover the listing fees.

On the other hand, if you do not upgrade the listing, you’ll save money on the listing fee, but most-likely your listing will be buried under a bunch of other listings. In my experience, listing upgrades make a huge difference in the outcome of the auction. One thing is for sure, you will receive a lot more views and watchers from a featured listing. For this reason, I only recommend listing a domain that has potential to go above and beyond the upgraded listing fee.

Write a good title and description.

For your title, you’re limited on the number of characters, so write something catchy without the fluff. For the description, include as much details as you can about the domain. I think the rule of thumb is, the less premium the domain, the more you need to sell it. Some info you could include are: search volume, revenue, age, possible uses, and recent comparables.

A long description is not necessary for premium domains because they pretty much sell themselves.

Promote your Flippa auction.

If you are not already a member of any domain forums, join one. I recommend NamePros. Some forums allow you to promote external domain auctions. This will get more eyes on your listing. You may also consider advertising your auction on various domainer blogs or publications, depending on your advertising budget.

Remind your listing watchers.

Flippa allows people to “watch” or follow certain listings. As time passes, these watchers may forget about your auction if there is no activity. So, a way to keep your auction in people’s minds is to write a comment on your listing page. Whenever an action, like a bid or comment occurs for a listing, notifications are sent to the watchers list.

Consider a no reserve auction.

When it comes to auctions, psychology plays a big role. The more activity an auction has, the more response you will get from the people involved. For this reason, setting a no reserve on your auction might get more people to bid on your auction. This then becomes somewhat of a snowball effect where people keep trying to outbid each other.

Also, the most active auctions get extra attention on Flippa. Their site has a sorting option in their menu called “Most Active” which lists the auctions with the most bids first.

Check out: Flippa