🏷️ Reselling vs Wholesaling Domains: Two Prices, Two Businesses

Two prices for the same name

Every domain has a retail price — what the end user who needs exactly this name will pay — and a wholesale (reseller) price — what another investor pays today, in cash, to hold it until that end user shows up. Wholesale runs roughly 10–50% of retail. The gap is not a discount; it is payment for time and risk. The reseller is buying the years of renewals and the 1–3% annual chance of a sale (the numbers).

DomainDumpsterDive's valuation shows both so you can choose per name rather than pretending every name is a retail name.

When to sell retail

• The name is category-defining (a real word or phrase a business would search for) and a .com.
• You can carry the renewal for years without minding.
• You have it listed everywhere a buyer would look, priced at or a little below the comparable sales.

When to sell wholesale

• You need the cash, or the renewal bill is due and you would not re-buy the name today.
• The name is good but not category-defining — a brandable that needs the right buyer to walk past.
• You own too many names to market each one; selling the tail wholesale funds the marketing of the head.

The trap is the middle: pricing wholesale names at retail and waiting. That is how a portfolio grows to 500 names and a $7,000 renewal bill with two sales a year.

Being the wholesaler

The other side of this trade is a business too: buying at wholesale from investors who need liquidity and holding for retail. It needs three things — a valuation you trust more than the seller's story, patience measured in years, and cheap holding costs. The $1 .com Playbook is about the third one.

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