About a year ago I started a web site for the purpose of selling domains. The site offers around a hundred domain names that I feel matter, mostly related to the niche market areas that my other sites deal with, mostly in English, and some in Spanish, French and Dutch.
I advertise the domains and the domain sales site on my other sites where relevant, created some incoming links for the domain sales site (which now has PR 4), created single-page sites for most domains, and multiple page sites for some (most of these have PR4).
Here's the question: I have not sold a single domain name all year. What sales tactics did I miss? Where is the domain names market? How do I get there? Or am I on the right track, and should I continue with creating higher PR and more visitors -and maybe lower prices- in the hope to sell eventually?
To keep things clean, I have temporarily removed the URL of my domain sales site from my Webmasterworld member profile.
Write this one down: "Domains sell themselves."
In other words, you can push them on a cart all over the planet, calling out "Domains here! Domains here!", however 99.9999999999% of domain sales come from somone a) who either wanted "your domain" before they ever even knew it was your domain; or, 2) who figures you have a great domain that you have seriously undervalued. (Which is about .00000001% of the time. Most domains are overvalued by players without significant experience.)
So, IMHO, there's not a lot you can do to "sell" a domain. You might post them on a domain forum, but at most such forums you will only find people looking to pay about 1/10 or less of the perceived end user value or people who are looking for traffic domains where the seller has no clue about the value of the traffic.
That's my experience. Anyone else care to add their insights?
I learned the reality of the situation. I only registered domains that had recently expired after that, and simply forwarded the domain to a blank page with the asking price and my email address. I've sold domains anywhere from $30-$500 each as a result, but because they were very useful and people were typing in the URL just to see what was there. I've sold several domain names for over $300 a pop, but like I said, useful ones. Register good stuff, post up a parked page, and be patient.
At stated, I temporarily removed my domain name sales URL from my Webmasterworld member profile to keep the discussion clean. So, maybe I can explain my pricelist, and elaborate with a few examples. I figured that a usefull name values at around $600.- to $900.-. In some cases I own sets of 2, 4 or 6 domains, like for example bluewidget.com, blue-widget.com, bluewidget.net, blue-widget.net, bluewidget.info, blue-widget.info, and offer them as a set at $600.- to $900.- per domain. In some cases the domain comes with a simple affiliate site that generates some income (that I do not track individually) at double price, about $1200.- to $1800,-.
So maybe this is on the high site? But then -offcourse- I can also be completely mistaken about how usefull domains are, but that will be hard to judge for you without getting into the specifics. On the other hand, I have sold two of my working sites that I did not offer for sale to people who approached me with offers. Both sales where in the mid-four figures range.
Traffic on the domain name sales site itself, and on the few domains that I have parked here and there with domain sales services, assure income from Adsense and similar services, and affiliate programs, at little over the cost of registration.
So, based on your reactions I come to the following, provisional, conclusion: lower prices, further develop working sites with the domains, so that they will actually make money for me, and forget about offering them for sale all too actively and see what comes.
Any reactions?
I figured that a usefull name values at around $600.- to $900.-. In some cases I own sets of 2, 4 or 6 domains, like for example bluewidget.com, blue-widget.com, bluewidget.net, blue-widget.net, bluewidget.info, blue-widget.info, and offer them as a set at $600.- to $900.- per domain. In some cases the domain comes with a simple affiliate site that generates some income (that I do not track individually) at double price, about $1200.- to $1800,-.
Personally, I think you're wasting money once you go beyond bluewidget.com. I avoid domain names with hyphens like the plague, the same thing goes for .net, and you shouldn't even be thinking about registering anything that's a .info (.biz, .us, etc). Stick to domain names that are low in characters, that exclude hyphens and numbers. Stick to .coms if you want to make real money.
Developing a site is good, or doing anything to generate traffic to it. I've sold more than a few domains just on the strength of the traffic that it had generated, particularly if it was an expired domain still indexed in search engines.
You have people with outlandishly long or mega hyphenated domains asking for 10k, 50k, sometimes even several million dollars for a domain (many which are obviously worthless). Nobody is bidding on any of the domains until you get to 3k, and that's for a developed ringtone site.
I was naive about this stuff at first, registering .coms I thought were cool and listing them at $5,000 a pop on ebay and wondering why they never sold.
[edited by: Webwork at 6:08 pm (utc) on July 20, 2005]
[edit reason] No URL drops please [/edit]
Work on getting your site to be listed higher in the SE's and people will find you. Also, participate and offer them for sale in the domain name forums, to see who will bite. People are always on the prowl for good domains that they can develop for adsence or simply to sell.
[edited by: Webwork at 6:09 pm (utc) on July 20, 2005]
[edit reason] No commercial solicitations in posts please. [/edit]
Especially the link that DXL put in (that was removed by the moderator shortly after) to an example of people trying to sell domains for astronomical, totally unreal prices, made me feel better. All in all it seems that I am on the right track. Actually today I got a reaction from what looks like an African scam artist, so my domain sales site seems to be drawing at least some attention, and I feel even better ;-)
By the way, DXL, the sets of domains (with and without hyphens, several extensions) are meant to keep competitors at distance. Some of these sets occupy all possible names for a new technology, and others as many names as available for a popular search. Since keywords in the URL still play a major role in search engine marketing, I feel it easier to reach page 1 with fewer competing URL's containing the desired keywords. I do feel that these sets offer an advantage, but maybe the second, third domain, etc, should be cheaper.
So, my second provisional conclusion, based on your reactions, is to further develop working sites with the domains where possible, and park the rest with PPC services. But, because of sachac's successstory I will also have a look at listing the domains for sale, which I haven't done sofar. Looks like Sedo would be a party to look at because they offer both PPC parking and a market place?
I do have one new question, though: how to make it clear that developed sites are for sale? Not putting up a "for sale" notice may make interested parties start looking for alternative domains, and putting up such a sign may make other visitors loose confidence, damaging the money-generating capacity of the site..
By the way, DXL, the sets of domains (with and without hyphens, several extensions) are meant to keep competitors at distance.
It's very common for traditional businesses to want to ring fence their brand (or one they are buying / setting up), so hyphenated variations and less mainstream TLDs are often considered and snapped up as a package.
In my experience, the one-man-band type site owners are less likely to go for these types of packages, whereas the established businesses would consider ring fencing their online brand as standard practice.
Perhaps create some optimised content and sell the package of domain names, existing traffic and content directly to businesses that are likely to want it. Maybe pitch it as a secondary brand / online presence, etc etc.
What you are offering isn't really mass market, so I would certainly consider more targeted methods of marketing.
MG
i know some guys who sell quite a few names over at Afternic and i listed some my names there but have had no offers
i get an occasional inquiry but it's always been someone who just happened onto the name and wanted it for cheap
one paticular guy i know frequently sells names in $1000 to $1500 range at Afternic. I see on their sold list names that fetch 20 times that amount or more but they are the exception
i think i'll keep a handful and let the others expire ... tired of messing with them
What you are offering isn't really mass market, so I would certainly consider more targeted methods of marketing.
Very true for some of the (sets of) domain names that I offer. Question is how to go about the more targeted methods of marketing.
In this recent post [webmasterworld.com ] Edwin asked for input on how to approach buyers directly, what works, etc. but he got little response. Any ideas?
tired of messing with them
