When you don't use a domain you've registered, you have two options: either let it expire and see if someone else uses it or try to resell it to a prospective developer before it expires. I realized after a couple of years that I wouldn't be using one domain I registered, so I decided to try to recoup my costs by selling it. I'm now a couple of hundred dollars and several hours down, and there's no sale in sight. I thought this would be as simple as selling attic junk on eBay, but it's shaping up to be as tricky as trying to sell a house.

I had the domain (which I won't name here, even though it might help to sell the cursed thing) appraised and put it up for auction at GoDaddy's domain resale site, The Domain Name Aftermarket, or TDNAM. That process set me back around 30 bucks with registration fees and getting the thing appraised. I didn't even opt to pay extra for special placement or bold text or keeping my identity secret on the Whois record.

	Two days into the seven-day auction, I checked the listing and realized that my certified appraisal wasn't showing up.

Two days into the seven-day auction, I checked the listing and realized that my certified appraisal wasn't showing up. Because I had paid $14.95 for that appraisal, I wasn't about to let this omission go. So I began a time-consuming struggle with technical support and my own schedule that ended up with?no sale.

What am I bid?
GoDaddy's certified appraisal system valued my domain at between $622 to $1,617, based on the name being a relatively short, 11-digit dot-com property based on two easy-to-remember, catchy words. This independent assessment seems like a valuable asset in the effort to sell for top dollar, so it rankled me that the estimate wasn't showing up. I spent a whole week exchanging e-mail with a GoDaddy tech support rep because it was cheaper than dialing a long-distance number for support. Alas, it was also less effective.

After the escalating frustration of several e-mail exchanges, in which I gave the tech support rep the appraisal number and the date of purchase, the all-business support rep informed me of the following:

We show that a Certified Appraisal was purchased for [YOUR DOMAIN], but it was cancelled. If you would like the value of the Certified Appraisal listed on your auction, it will need to be repurchased. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Luckily, a phone call sorted things out. A couple of weeks ago, I had set up two usernames, one at TDNAM and another at GoDaddy. I realized my mistake and asked them to consolidate these two accounts, and they accidentally deleted the certified appraisal during the process.

A simple technical mistake, no problem. GoDaddy offered to reappraise my domain, which involved refunding the cost of appraisal, then charging me again for the new appraisal. The reappraisal took about a day and cost zero extra dollars. However, the company refunded me only $9.94 and charged me $9.95 to upgrade to a certified appraisal, so on balance, I was behind one cent, one week, and 20 minutes of long-distance call time.

What else am I bid?
Then things got strange. During the two weeks between the deleted appraisal and the new one, GoDaddy appears to have sold about 2,000 certified appraisals. (At least, that's the difference in serial numbers between my two appraisals.) In that time, the value of my domain appears to have gone up slightly. The first time around, the company reckoned it was worth $622 to $1,617. Now, it clocked in at $628 to $1,633.

	Short of actually naming the domain in a column, which good taste and my editor forbid, I'd done about everything I could to raise its profile.

It's not as if I did anything special with the domain in the interim. But if the appraisal system showed that my domain was becoming more desirable, I figured I'd try to add to its curb appeal a little to see if I could get close to that price. Step one: Put up a nice little welcoming Web page. Instead of displaying generic "for sale or "parked" signs, which many sellers use, or having a redirect to the auction page, which wilier sellers do, I put up a sample live page demonstrating what the domain could be used for--and, of course, a little "for sale" link leading to the domain auction.

Brilliant though this ploy was, it failed to elicit a single bid at auction. But it did improve the look of the lot, so it seemed like a good thing to do. And so did goosing up the description a little, though this wasn't as easy. The Domain Name Aftermarket gives you 255 characters to describe your auction lot. Even to someone trained in the noble art of making text fit into highly designed magazine pages, that's quite a restriction.

What would Afternic pay?
One valuable item I wasn't using to describe my lot was a second certified appraisal I had commissioned from another domain aftermarket, the venerable Afternic. In the end, I'd listed my domain at TDNAM.com, but why not put my $20 second appraisal to use in marketing my lot? Well, the obvious reason was that Afternic appraised my domain significantly lower than TDNAM did. Afternic, which has a decade more experience in selling used domains than GoDaddy, reckoned that the current market value of my domain was $200. Ouch! That's less than a third of what GoDaddy's TDNAM estimated. Afternic reckoned that the domain's potential market value was $1,100, about $600 less than the top end of TDNAM's evaluation.

But even though this large difference makes me wonder whether the mysterious domain appraisal process involves picking numbers out of a hat, I cited Afternic's appraisal URL in my auction listing. After all, this made me look like an honest vendor with nothing to hide, one who showed due diligence before selling. Exactly the kind of person I'd like to buy from (for $200 instead of $628, of course).

Along with its appraisal, Afternic gave some good advice for selling your domain name:

• Include the fact that you've had your name appraised. It lets potential buyers know that a third party has assisted in estimating the value.
• Feel free to use all or part of your appraisal notes.
• Always have your domain names pointed somewhere. When someone types in your domain name, have it point to your auction page, your domains-for-sale site, or even a one-page site with your contact information.

Check on the first and third items. As for the second item, although the notes they offered were brief ("Open to further commercial definition and branding"), I'd covered that too, with the one-page site I'd put up.

OK. I'd now followed the best advice of the old lags in the market, and I upped the curb appeal on my little corner of the domain real estate market. Short of actually naming the domain in a column, which good taste and my editor forbid, I'd done about everything I could to raise its profile. And all this work increased the number of bids on the auction from zero to zero.

It seems as though the domain resale market is in a bit of a slump, at least in my portfolio. Should anything develop, I'll revisit this topic in another column. Don't hold your breath.

Will Matt Lake ever sell his domain? Does he appraise his opinions higher than the information market can bear? Share your domain aftermarket opinions and experiences in the feedback section below.