Legal Practice Tips: How to Sell your Domain Name and Web Content

Many business people would be surprised to learn that there is something akin to a ‘securities” aftermarket for domain names.  Investment groups are formed to pool money in order to buy a portfolio of domain names.  Third parties are buying domain names with web content and income links.  The geo domain market is teaching domainers and other market niches how development can generate additional ad revenue fees as a result of increased traffic.  The domainers are starting to tacitly understand that higher quality content results in higher quality clicks from the advertiser’s point of view. 

Domainers selling domain names are essentially in the marketing and branding business.  While direct navigation is here to stay and provides some traffic, there is still no substitute to being in the top three pages of the Google search results.  If you are going to be selling a domain name which includes web content, you need to think about several additional issues:

• Copyright Issues:  Obviously, you are going to likely have to verify that the content that you have posted does not violate anyone else’s copyrights.  You will likely have to indemnify the buyer if copyright issues arise after the website content is sold. 
• Trademark issues:  Hopefully, you have already registered your domain name as a trademark for the content that you are providing on your website as a product or service.  This means that you not only get to sell the domain name and content driven traffic, but intellectual property rights as well.  However, you need to make sure that your domain name is not violating anyone else’s trademark in the process.  Oftentimes, buyers will want you to provide a warranty that you are in fact the trademark owner of the domain name itself. 
• Traffic Statistics:  Because the buyer of your domain name and website content are likely interested in the traffic that comes with it.  You need to make sure that your traffic statistics are verified by the buyer before you sell.  Again, you might have warranty and indemnity provisions which create liability down the line if traffic should drop off for some reason.

Selling your domain name and website content is a challenging endeavor once it comes down to drafting the contracts which transfer these valuable assets.  Make sure you contact an internet lawyer to help you structure the deal in a way that limits your liability and increases your return on investment.