How to Price a Domain: Buy It Now, Make Offer, or Lease to Own

Once you have a defensible valuation range, you still have to decide how to present it. That decision changes who contacts you, how many people contact you, and how much you eventually get — often more than the number itself does.

The three structures

Buy It Now (BIN)

A fixed price. The buyer clicks and pays.

• Converts best. No friction, no negotiation, no waiting.
• Caps your upside. If a funded company would have paid $8,000, you get your $2,500.
• Filters out tire kickers before they reach you.
• Sells while you sleep, which matters more than it sounds — your listing works across time zones and while you're busy.

Make Offer

No price shown; buyers submit offers.

• Preserves your ceiling. The occasional buyer who'd pay far above market can.
• Converts worse. A meaningful share of buyers who'd have clicked a price simply leave rather than start a conversation.
• Generates noise. Lowball offers, tire kickers, and negotiation for names that were never worth the time.
• Requires you to respond, promptly, or the buyer moves on.

Lease to Own (LTO)

The buyer pays monthly over a term, taking ownership at the end.

• Closes deals a lump sum can't. A business that can't sign off $3,000 today can approve $56/month.
• Widens the buyer pool to businesses with cash-flow constraints rather than valuation objections.
• Spreads your income over years instead of landing at once.
• Adds default risk — though the domain stays under the platform's control until it's paid off, so the downside is a deal that stops rather than a loss.

What the numbers actually look like

Here's a real lease-to-own from my own portfolio, so the shape is concrete rather than theoretical.

RemoteAttorneyJobs.com, sold August 2026 through Spaceship:

| | | | --- | --- | | Total price | $2,997 | | Down payment (10%) | $299.70 | | Monthly payment | $56.19 | | Term | 48 months | | First payout to me | $269.73 | | Commission | 10% |

The headline price sits in the same range as my cash sales. The experience of it does not. Instead of roughly $2,700 arriving at once, it arrives as $269.73 now and small monthly amounts for four years.

That's not worse — it's different, and worth being clear-eyed about:

• You wait. Four years is a long tail on a single sale.
• The name is locked up. You can't sell it to someone else during the term.
• But the deal happened. The realistic alternative for many LTO buyers isn't paying cash — it's not buying at all.

Compare it to a cash sale the same year: BankBrewing.com at $1,297, 10% commission, $1,167.30 net, all of it immediately. Half the headline price, and I had the money that week.

Which to use when

Use BIN when:

• The name is in the $500–$5,000 range where most buyers decide quickly
• You want volume and turnover more than a maximum
• You'd rather not negotiate
• You have many names and can't give each one attention

Use Make Offer when:

• The name is genuinely premium and the ceiling is unknowable
• You suspect a specific high-value buyer exists
• You have time to negotiate properly
• Your valuation range is very wide

Offer LTO alongside BIN when:

• The price is above roughly $1,500, where budget approval becomes a real obstacle
• Your likely buyer is a small business rather than a funded company
• The name has been listed a while without moving

Setting the actual number

Working from your comps range:

1. Know your floor. The number you'd accept today without regret. Never publish it, never mention it, but know it before anyone contacts you.
2. Set BIN above your target. If comps say $1,200–$2,200 and you'd be happy at $1,800, list around $2,450. You want room to concede.
3. Avoid round numbers. $2,450 reads as considered; $2,500 reads as a placeholder. It also signals there's a reason behind it.
4. Don't anchor to what you paid. The market has no interest in your cost basis. HarborPointHomes.com cost me under $100 and sold for $3,000 — pricing it from acquisition cost would have been absurd in that direction, and it's equally absurd in the other when you overpaid.
5. Price to the buyer you expect. A local contractor and a funded startup are different conversations. If the plausible buyer is a small business, a $9,000 asking price doesn't get negotiated down — it gets ignored.

The most common pricing mistakes

"Make offer" on everything. It feels like preserving upside. Mostly it suppresses inquiries — many buyers won't start a conversation without a number, and you never learn they existed.

Pricing from an automated appraisal. The number isn't grounded in a buyer, and quoting it signals inexperience to anyone who knows the industry.

Pricing from your cost. Irrelevant in both directions.

Never revisiting. A name listed at $5,000 for four years with no interest is telling you something. Reprice annually as part of renewal season.

Refusing a good offer while waiting for a great one. The comparison isn't "$2,000 versus $5,000." It's "$2,000 today versus a chance at $5,000 someday, minus renewals in the meantime, discounted by the real possibility that nobody ever comes."

A default that works

For most names in most portfolios:

• Buy It Now, priced 25–40% above your target
• Lease to own available above about $1,500
• Listed everywhere you can list it
• Repriced once a year at renewal season
• A floor written down before anyone contacts you

That combination converts reasonably, doesn't require you to negotiate constantly, and captures the buyers whose obstacle is cash flow rather than value. It won't get you the maximum on the one name where a strategic buyer would have overpaid — but you don't know which name that is in advance, and optimizing every listing for that possibility costs you the sales you'd otherwise make.