If you are new to selling websites online, I recommend a third party service such as Escrow.com to handle payment. Escrow.com and its operating subsidiaries provide online escrow services that facilitate and accelerate e-commerce by assuring secure settlement.

They have a service for buying and selling domains online. Domain Name Escrow Service protects your money and your domain.

Since the Buyer pays Escrow.com and not the Seller, Escrow.com can withhold payment until it’s satisfied the domain name has been transferred by the Seller. One of the ways Escrow.com does this is by checking the WHOIS database of the appropriate Registrar* to make certain it properly reflects the new Buyer’s name as the domain name Registrant. Once this has been verified, Escrow.com releases payment to the Seller.

Benefits for Buyers

• Peace of mind, Security, and Convenience
• Assured Domain name transfer prior to paying Seller
• Ability to confirm domain ownership directly with the registrar before the seller is paid.
• Ability to pay by wire transfer and in some cases PayPal, check, money order, or credit card (Visa, MasterCard, American Express) Restrictions apply
• Ability to send credit card information to a financial institution, not a stranger
• Easy access to live customer support by phone or email

Benefits for Sellers

• Peace of mind, Security, and Convenience
• Payment verification prior to Domain name transfer
• Guaranteed payment once transfer specifications are met
• Protection against credit card fraud, insufficient funds or credit card chargebacks
• Ability to accept credit cards and PayPal if otherwise not able to. Restrictions apply
• Escrow fees that may be lower than merchant credit card processing fees
• Easy access to live customer support by phone or email

You however have to be careful. There is always risk in selling your website online and getting paid for it. You can always opt for Paypal. This is a great alternative but just watch the fees. If you sell your site for a lot of money, the Paypal fees will really eat up your profit.

Today it is harder to find a quality domain name for your company or business niche. Just the other day I was searching for a domain name and someone bought up all the domains related to a niche I wanted. Every keyword version I could think of was taken. But what makes me mad is that every domain that was taken was a parked page. Now would it have been easier to just purchase a expired domain?

Registering a New Domain

The good thing about registering a new domain is that you get to pick the domain name yourself. You are guaranteed a clean slate and don’t have to worry about the domain name being black listed, tagged as spam, ect.

Buying an Expired Domain Name

It might be great idea to register an expired domain name since there is possibilities of traffic generated by previous owner and link backs. A domain name could have traffic flow or link backs only when a website was setup however, any search engine rankings will drop once the domain is dropped. Registered and dropped domain name without a website is not any different than a new domain name. There are online tools that will allow you to check the domain link backs and if there any previous indexed websites for the domain name. Widexl.com has a link popularity checker tool to view number of links backs for any domain or if any. You can also check if the domain has a previously published website by archive.org.

Benefits of buying expired domain:
1. Traffic coming from existing links on other sites.
2. Possibilities of previous advertising and promotions by it’s former owner.
2. Traffic coming from previous bookmarks.
3. Domain may have greater value than new name in terms of descriptions and length. Easy to remember is the key word.
4. Expired domain name can generate profit if redirected to a website similar to it’s former website.

At the end of the day it comes down to the domain name itself, if purchasing a domain name that has expired will benefit you down the road then do it. Whatever you do, don’t settle for a crappy domain name!