Best way to transfer and sell a domain name to someone? Without getting scammed?

1/ Use Escrow.com. Costs a bit but relatively nothing if you want to stay safe.

2/ Accept payment, change nameservers to their hosting but only transfer the domain after 60 days (last day for a Paypal chargeback)

3/ Get them to do a direct bank transfer

Depending on the price of the domain and its quality, do whichever you feel safest with. All the above are guaranteed to stop you getting scammed.

If you analyse the buyer a bit though, it's almost impossible to get scammed on a domain/site transfer. Here's what you look at:

1/ Age / Reputation - if on a forum, how established is the member? Is it someone that just signed up a couple days ago or is it someone that's been there years. Not that the former are any less trustable, but you can usually feel safer dealing with the latter.

2/ Check if they have public websites. The more the better. Check if the WHOIS matches with their details (name, address etc)

3/ Check if the WHOIS / their details matches with their Paypal ones. Also see how reputable the Paypal account is.

4/ Transfer after 24 hours... the reason for this is if scammers do their common thing (paying with a hacked Paypal account) the original owner will usually notice within that time and do a chargeback.

5/ See their general attitude - are they open to answering questions or do they want you to rush, rush, rush?

As for GoDaddy, it's one of the easiest to transfer with... check out Initiating Account Changes - Help Center—Knowledge Base and FAQ

Good luck!

Good info indeed.Take it my dear and get to work.

Excellent advice Jason P. I was about to type the same thing.

Good luck with the sale!

Alex

Good info indeed.Take it my dear and get to work.

Jason P is spot on the money. Another company I used to work for purchased a domain for $20,000 and using the process that Jason outlines above, it worked like a dream.