How To Buy (And Sell) Domain Names Through eBay

^{At spotcoolstuff.com we usually write about unusual hotels, great gadgets, cool music and things that make us go WOW. Recently, we've gotten a lot of questions about the more mundane stuff of starting a website. So we're taking a quick interlude from our usual topics to write a series of five articles on web hosting and website domain name procurement. The other four articles in the series:}

• The Best Companies For Buying Domain Names
• The Best Places To Make Money Parking A Website Domain Name
• The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Top Two Hosts
• The Best Website Hosting Companies: The Two Best Value Hosts

_{And with that . . .}

eBay is the best place for buying used domain names (see our review here). If you'd like to sell your domain name quickly (though not necessarily at the best price) eBay is your best choice also. But there are some important tips to know:

1) Be patient. It might take a day or two for a good deal to come along.

2) Stay away from IDNs (unless that's what you want and really know what you are doing). An IDN, or Internationalised Domain Name, is a name in a non-roman script. This will be obvious if the domain is, say, in Chinese characters. It will be less obvious if the domain uses cyrillic letters like P, C or T that exist in the roman alphabet also -- an IDN domain that is PCT.com is not the same as a normal roman character domain that is PCT.com. eBay ads will almost always say that the domain being sold is an IDN . . . but they might slip that into the fine print.

3) Always know the domains expiration date. Renewing a domain is typically around $10/year. That incremental cost is insignificant if you are playing $1000 for your domain. Percentage wise, the renewal fee plays a large factor in deciding whether to buy that domain for $5. Many domains sold on eBay have a nearly a full year before they expire, others less than a month.

4) Beware of claims of page rank! Some are genuine. Many are not. Always confirm page rank for yourself, independently (ie. not through any link provided in an eBay posting). Two good websites for verifying page rank are CheckPageRank and seologs.

5) Stay away from auctions offering a domain with a turnkey business of some sort. eBay auctions promising to make you millions are almost all hollow.