Pick names that sell, not a large est. profit

Price times the chance of a sale

Est. profit is a gap, not a payment. Browse shows it in percent: how far the estimated value stands above the price today, before fees. It pays out only when a buyer appears at that value. For a held name, the chance of that happening in any one year is small.

How small is that chance? A sell-through rateSell-through rateThe share of the names somebody holds that sell in a year. Two names sold out of a hundred held is a rate of 2%.Read the definition is the share of a portfolio sold in a year. Andrew Allemann had heard of rates of 1% to 3% from large holders that do not sell proactively (Domain Name Wire, 6 November 2014). At a steady 2%, Allemann calculated, selling half a portfolio takes about 35 years, and selling 80% of it takes over 75 years.

The same article put a price on the wait. For a portfolio of about 950,000 names, a rate of 2% means about 19,000 sales a year. In 2014, renewals at about $8 a name came to about $7.6 million a year. That money goes, in Allemann's words, just to maintain inventory you do not sell.

So a name is worth its price times that chance, less the renewals until the sale. A large Est. profit on a word nobody asks for is mostly a renewal bill. A modest gap on a word that sold three times this year is income.

Count the return on everything you hold

Most investors measure the wrong thing, Allemann wrote on Domain Name Wire on 14 April 2026. Some divide the year's sales by what the names they sold had cost, which counts only the winners. Others divide the year's sales by the year's purchases, which ignores the money tied up in earlier years.

A fellow investor suggested to Allemann a measure that covers the whole portfolio. Take the year's sales after commissions, and divide them by everything spent on the names held at the start of the year. That spending includes registrations, renewals, tools and legal fees. In Allemann's example of 2026, $100,000 spent over the years and $10,000 of sales after commissions make a return of 10%.

The time you hold a name counts too. Allemann worked the arithmetic on Domain Name Wire on 25 May 2021 for a name bought for $10,000 and held 17 years. In those 2021 figures, earning 5% a year needs a sale at $22,920, 10% needs $50,545, 15% needs $107,613 and 20% needs $221,861. Selling for five times the cost sounds good until you count the years.

So the chance of a sale comes before the size of the gap. The return on a whole portfolio is set by the few names that sell each year. The unsold names only add to what you spent.

What a name that sells looks like

A liquid name is one that is easy to sell. Andrew Allemann reported on Domain Name Wire on 16 May 2016 that speakers from Sedo and GoDaddy, on a panel, both defined it as a name that sells in about a week, not instantly as a share does.

Short names, Allemann noted, tend to be the most liquid. A name's value is tied to how likely a company is to want it and to what that company will pay. At NamesCon, a GoDaddy executive pointed newcomers toward buying names at $30 to $60 and selling them at $2,000 to $5,000 on average (Domain Name Wire, 28 January 2019).

The typical sale is smaller than the headlines suggest. For the first quarter of 2026, EscrowEscrowA neutral third party that holds the buyer’s money and the domain until both sides have done their part, then completes the swap. It is how large domain sales avoid either side going first.Read the definition.com's index put the average one-word .com at $402,000, and Allemann noted that outliers can skew an average. The same 2026 index put the median price of a name at $5,369 (Domain Name Wire, 29 May 2026).

In the sales we track, the 12-month median on .com is $810, and the count of those sales is 28,214. A few large sales pull an average far above the median. So rest your plan on the typical sale, never on the headline.

Read demand from the market, not the estimate

You read demand from what sold and who asked. Allemann, who held about 1,700 names, published a list of renew-or-delete questions (Domain Name Wire, 4 January 2021). Around 150 came due each month, and the review covered those expiring in the next six months. One question is whether similar names in the portfolio have sold. If none in a theme has sold, Allemann wrote, the market is telling you something.

Another question is whether any similar name has drawn an inquiry. Two more tests are cheap to run. If the singular or plural of the name is free to register, the name might not be worth much. And if a name was priced below $500 and still did not sell, it is probably time to cut it, Allemann wrote in 2021.

Allemann added in the same 2021 article that a name drawing real offers is probably worth keeping, even if those offers are only $500.

Not every sale shows demand. When a company that will use the name buys it, a buyer has been found. When one investor sells to the next, a bet has been passed on, and a run of such sales measures the trade's own appetite. So ask who bought.

A fixed price and a for-sale page

How you offer a name changes its chance of a sale. In the Global Domain Report 2026, 76% of Sedo's sales were Buy NowBuy nowA listing with a fixed price you can pay at once to get the name.Read the definition, which means sold at a fixed price, and 8% were negotiated offers (Domain Name Wire, 23 March 2026).

At NamesCon, the same GoDaddy executive said that half of the leads on GoDaddy's own portfolio came from for-sale pagesFor-sale pageThe page a held name shows to visitors, saying it is for sale and how to buy it, often with a fixed price, instead of ads.Read the definition, not from registrar searches. One customer moved from a page that showed only ads to a for-sale pageLanderThe page a visitor sees at a name that is for sale: a price or an offer form, and a way to pay.Read the definition, and average monthly sales rose from $50,000 to $150,000 within a month (Domain Name Wire, 28 January 2019). Later months varied but stayed well above the old page.

A payment plan widens the pool of buyers. Five of Allemann's last six sales were lease to ownLease to ownA plan to pay for a name by the month and use it during the term, with the name moving to you at the last payment. A missed payment can end the plan and send the name back to the seller.Read the definition, where the buyer pays over time, as reported on Domain Name Wire on 29 July 2026. The article added that the marketplacesMarketplaceA site where owners list domains for sale and buyers make offers, such as Sedo or Afternic.Read the definition all say sell-through rises when a seller allows lease to own.

When the one serious buyer is on the line, close the sale. Writing on Domain Name Wire on 20 September 2018, Allemann described seeing the strongest possible buyer for a name, one of the few who could want it, make a maximum offer and be refused. In the article's 2018 example you pass up $60,000, sell for $100,000 ten years later and earn about 5% a year over the decade.

Read it in Browse and on the word's page

Unique Domains stores no probability of a sale, no sell-through figure and no portfolio of the names you own. It holds only the evidence this chapter reads, and you find that evidence in three places.

1. 1On a Browse row, read Est. profit, a percentage, then the Liquidity column. Its hover reads Liquidity band: Low, Mid or High. The band is built from demand, how many endings carry the word and the name's appeal. It is never a number or a forecast for one name.
2. 2On the same row, read Similar sales. The cell shows the median and the count of the sales we track that are closest to the name. It is tagged Sold before when this exact name has sold and can be bought today. A median needs three sales.
3. 3Open the word's page under Words. Its sales need the Investor plan: the page reads Sold N times, 12 months, with the median, then lists the word on every ending that sells. The exercise below walks you through it.
4. 4Without the plan, the website's availability checker gives one live check a day. It gives the word's sales as a count and a median, and the other endings where the word sold recently.

Before you buy for the gap

• Read the count and the median of the word's sales over 12 months before you read the Est. profit.
• Ask whether the buyer was a company that will use the name or another investor.
• Check whether a name of the same theme sold or drew an inquiry in the last year.
• Check whether the singular or plural of the name is free to register, and expect little from the name if it is.
• Price the wait by setting five years of renewal against the word's median sale.
• Count your return after commissions on everything you hold, including the names that did not sell.
• Set a fixed price and put up a for-sale page before you count on a sale.
• Weigh a serious buyer's best offer against the years of waiting, not against the estimate.