How to sell a domain at auction
There are three ways to sell a domain, and only one of them makes the buyers compete. This guide is for anyone sitting on a .co.uk or .uk name they no longer need — a lapsed brand, a project that never launched, a speculative registration that has aged well — and wondering how to turn it into money without guessing at the price or trusting a stranger with the transfer.
Auction, broker, or fixed price
Start with the choice of method, because it shapes everything after. A brokerworks one buyer at a time. They find a party who wants your name, negotiate privately, and take a commission — often 15% to 20%. Brokerage suits genuinely rare names where there is one obvious buyer and discretion matters. Its weakness is that the price is set by a negotiation you cannot see, and a good broker’s incentive is to close quickly, not to squeeze the last pound out of a bidding war that never happens.
A fixed price — listing a name at a set figure and waiting — is the opposite problem. You name a number, and every buyer who sees it decides whether to pay it or move on. Nobody competes. Price low and you leave money on the table; price high and the name sits unsold for years. A fixed price is a guess dressed as a decision.
An auctionmakes buyers bid against each other in public. The final price is not your guess or a broker’s — it is the second-highest bidder’s true valuation, plus one increment. When two parties both want a name, that competition is the only mechanism that finds the real number. That is why we run a saleroom and not a price list. If you want to understand what actually drives that number, our valuation guide covers it in detail.
Setting an honest reserve
The reserve is the lowest price at which you will let the name go. Below it, the domain does not sell and you owe nothing. Above it, the hammer falls and the domain is sold. Set well, a reserve is a safety net. Set badly, it is the single most common reason a good name fails to sell.
The temptation is to set the reserve at the price you are hoping for. Resist it. A reserve pitched above what the name can realistically fetch does not raise the final price — it stops the auction dead, because bidders can see the reserve has not been met and drift away before the competition gets going. A reserve set at or slightly below fair market value does the opposite: it gets bidding moving, and once two people are committed, the price climbs past your reserve on its own.
The honest reserve is the floor you would genuinely accept, not the ceiling you would love. Our advice is to set it at the low end of the comparable range, then let the room decide where the top is. We set it with you, using real results — you are never guessing alone.
Bidders can see whether a reserve has been met, and that visibility is doing quiet work throughout the sale. A domain showing “reserve met” early tells the room the name is genuinely in play, and momentum builds; a domain stuck on “reserve not met” at 7.55pm reads as overpriced, and the underbidders you needed have already gone. Keep the floor sensible and you keep the room engaged right up to the hammer.
What makes a name auction-ready
Not every domain belongs under the hammer, and being honest about that saves everyone time. The names that perform share a few traits.
- Length and clarity. Short names win. One word beats two; two beats three. A name a person can say once, over the phone, and have spelled back correctly is worth more than a clever construction that needs explaining.
- The right extension. We deal in .co.uk and .uk, the extensions British businesses actually trust and use. A strong keyword on a .co.uk carries weight the same word on an obscure extension does not.
- Commercial intent. A name that maps onto a real business category — a service people pay for, a product people search — attracts bidders because it has obvious buyers. Exact-match keyword names in commercial niches are the reliable performers.
- Clean history. Buyers pay for names with an unblemished record. Before a domain reaches the catalogue we check its ownership and usage history; a name previously used for spam or penalised in search is a hard sell, and we will tell you plainly if yours has a problem.
- Renewable value. A domain is an annual commitment for its next owner too. Names in categories with lasting demand hold their value; names riding a fad do not.
The consignment timeline
Consigning a name follows four steps, and none of them costs you anything unless the domain sells.
- Valuation. You submit the name and we benchmark it against thousands of real UK auction results — not asking prices, which lie, but hammer prices, which do not. You get an honest range within one working day. This step is free and carries no obligation.
- Reserve set together. We agree the reserve with you, grounded in those comparables. This is a conversation, not a form. You keep the final say; we bring the evidence.
- Under the hammer. The name goes into a daily catalogue and opens to verified bidders. Proxy bidding and the published increment ladder do the work; anti-snipe extensions make sure a late bidder cannot steal the domain in the final second. You watch the bids arrive in real time.
- Paid via escrow. When the hammer falls, the buyer pays into independent escrow. The name transfers, the buyer confirms it, and the funds — less commission — are released to you. For .co.uk and .uk names the transfer runs through Nominet and usually completes within 24 hours.
The full fee schedule lives on the fees page: free listing, free valuation, 10% commission on the hammer price, and nothing at all if your reserve is not met.
A worked example
The figures below are illustrative — chosen to show how the numbers flow, not drawn from any single past sale.
Suppose you hold a two-word .co.uk in a commercial niche. Comparable results on our sold archive cluster between £1,600 and £2,400. We agree a reserve of £1,500 — the low end, set deliberately to get bidding moving rather than to protect a hoped-for figure.
The domain opens at £25. Early bids climb through the increment ladder over the day. By the evening two bidders are committed: one has a proxy maximum of £2,000, the other £2,300. The board settles the way proxy bidding always does — the higher maximum wins at one increment above the lower. In the £1,000–£5,000 band that increment is £50, so the hammer falls at £2,050.
On a £2,050 hammer, commission at 10% is £205. You receive £1,845, paid through escrow once the transfer is confirmed. Had the top bid stalled at £1,450 — below your £1,500 reserve — the domain would not have sold, and you would have paid nothing. That is the trade the reserve exists to make.
Ready to consign
An auction turns a name you were unsure how to price into a public contest with a clear result. Set an honest reserve, present an auction-ready name, and let the competition find the number. If you are on the buying side as well, our buyer’s guide covers bidding without overpaying. When you are ready to consign, the room is open.