What it means
A Buy Now price is a fixed figure attached to a domain listing that a buyer can accept immediately, with no offer-and-counter process. The alternative is listing the name as make-offer, where every enquiry starts a negotiation. Most marketplaces support both, and the choice changes who contacts you and how the sale unfolds more than it changes the eventual price.
Why fixed pricing sells more names
Buyers dislike negotiation more than they dislike prices. A large share of domain purchases are made by someone with a task to finish and a budget already approved, and a name with a visible price they can accept converts while a make-offer listing sends them to look at alternatives. Fixed pricing is also a prerequisite for instant-transfer enrolment on most networks, which compounds the effect on completion rate.
What you give up
The ceiling. A make-offer listing occasionally produces an offer far above what you would have asked, usually from a company whose need is urgent or whose budget is large. A Buy Now price forecloses that entirely: the moment you name $3,000, nobody pays $12,000. This is the real trade, and it is a question about which risk you prefer rather than one with a universally correct answer.
How to set the number
Anchor it to something. A valuation estimate gives you a range; comparable sales of similar names give you a floor and a ceiling. Then decide deliberately where in that range you want to sit, knowing that a price near the bottom sells within months and a price near the top may sit for years. Round numbers negotiate worse than specific ones, and a price ending in 88 or 95 reads as considered rather than plucked.
The sensible default
For most names, set a Buy Now price. The names where make-offer is genuinely better are the ones with an identifiable corporate buyer and a plausible five-figure outcome, and for those a broker is usually the better route anyway. If you cannot name the company that would pay a premium for your domain, you are in fixed-price territory.
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