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strategy My outbound this month

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Happened to try outbound after like months, properly. By properly, I mean, reaching out to the right leads instead of 100s of random leads to get a sale. There were a mix of extensions, length of domains and the number was also good.
Here is more about the outbound and the results:

1) Geo-domains
I had close to 6 geo-domains that I purchased for cheap for $7 or so, per domain. Mostly, there were 2 niches with 3 domains each. I was very sure that I am closing one sale for sure, tonight. I opened YellowPages, types the name of the city (200,000+ population, and a pretty popular niche, even at this time). One of the domains had 19 characters and some others were between 10 and 19.
Reached out to 10 best leads for each of these domains. Took me close to 30 minutes of research to find the domains. Another 10 minutes to register it and then 30 minutes per domain (close to 3 minutes per lead to find the contact and reach out).
Number of domains - 6
Niches: 3
Mails/contact form per domain - 10
Total time investment - 220 minutes
Number of replies - 7
6 said, not interested. 1 agreed for a sale of around $199 and then never replied back.


Followed up with the leads after 3 days, Wednesdays mostly, around 12 pm.
4 replied not interested.


2) .CO domain

Outbound for 30 .CO domains. Most were either 1-word domains, 2-word domains, or brandables.
Mail/domain - 3
Reply received - 5
Time invested - 360 minutes (approx 6 hours)
2 not interested.

1 asked "Explain why your name is better than mine." I explained. It looks like he was not convinced.
1 offered $100 for a domain I wanted $699. Then I thought, since it may expire, let me get rid of it. Said yes. The buyer said can't buy.


3) Brandable domain

Had a few brandable domains in .ORG with a lot of leads. I outbound for 1 of them. Reached out to close to 15 leads for this one.
1 replied that not interested. Only interested in .COM version of the domain.

So that's my experience with outbound after a month. Close to 10 hours of investment with 0 sales. I believe the names were average and I have sold such names earlier. My question is:

1) Has the market changed for outbound or is it the COVID thing?
2) How has your experience been with outbound lately?

Share your comments!
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
You will have to buy the domain first. Then you do a 301 redirect to your website using a link that gives click counts. I use a plugin called Linker on a wordpress installation. If you like the traffic, you keep the domain. If not, you get you get a refund. You have 5 days with Godaddy.

Oh wow. Thanks. I will try it out
 
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They will know it is free and enjoy it , for one month. This is a common business strategy. I don't like it when it is done to me, but endusers may like risk free trial, and consider it as a proof of our good intentions (but I'm not sure if Epik allows it.)
 
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I agree. It is hard to even sell good domains.

I get endless $XX and low $XXX offers for domains that would sell for 4 and 5 figures reseller.

Brad

Yeah, outbounding is domain investing on hard-mode.

upload_2020-5-9_6-50-20.png


I did this last year trying to sell names for $250-$450. Did super targeted outbounds on names where existing businesses would get a significant upgrade with the proposed name, and it was like 2-3 sales out of 100 contacted. This is in line with what marketers teach, that at any given time there are only 3% of the potential buyers who are "active" and want to buy right now. So on average, you'll at best get around 3 sales out of 100.

upload_2020-5-9_6-55-40.png


https://stickybranding.com/3-rule-engage-customers-before-they-need-your-services/

The types of names I was outbounding were names like A/Slice/Above(dot)com to places like A/Slice/Above/Pizza(dot)com and A/Slice/Above/Pembroke(dot)com. So, definitely names that would be $xxxx priced normally.

Some are able to sell in the $xxxx range via outbound and seem to be successful at it. But it appears those who are able to sell in the $xxxx range are typically offering a $xx,xxx name at an $xxxx price. While at the same time putting themselves at a huge risk for a UDRP if they just acquired the domain.
 
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Yeah, outbounding is domain investing on hard-mode.

Show attachment 153847

I did this last year trying to sell names for $250-$450. Did super targeted outbounds on names where existing businesses would get a significant upgrade with the proposed name, and it was like 2-3 sales out of 100 contacted. This is in line with what marketers teach, that at any given time there are only 3% of the potential buyers who are "active" and want to buy right now. So on average, you'll at best get around 3 sales out of 100.

Show attachment 153848

https://stickybranding.com/3-rule-engage-customers-before-they-need-your-services/

This was my experience too, with my stats closer to 4% or 5%. Granted, that's only for first-time emails. I didn't really follow-through with follow-ups and re-sends to opens. When I did that, I had probably 2x more sails but at the $100 to $299 region.

There's a lot of factors involved. For example, if you're new to it, your email won't be auto-spam with email providers. But the more you do it, the more your email gets sent to the spam box...

In fact... I had an interested buyer contact me almost a year later saying he didn't see my email because it was in SPAM and then almost made a $500 offer. I could only wonder how many successful buyers just didn't see my email because it was sent to spam.

At the end of the days too, the guilt will eat at you.. that you're spamming people. Yes, it's in-line with the CANN-SPAM act.. but morally, it's not lol. Law and morals never truly mix.

But consider this -- I outbounded an exo tower domain that I bought for $300ish and there were no bites even when I brought the price down to $545 or something. And that's including re-emails to the whole list whether or not the opened.

And then suddenly, recently I got an offer out of the blue from GoDaddy brokerage services (which means the buyer paid $79 or $72 just to find me) to acquire it and their initial offer was $1,500. So yeah............................................................ outbound is good only if you know what you're doing and really send out a formal-looking email that doesn't get flagged as spam.

But I believe the true key is to get your domain in front of interested buyers that would make inbound inquiries. The only way to do that is to do what the mass media has been doing... buying ads.
 
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i always try to reach out for potential buyers never had someone respond to me i just send out one email and if i don't get a reply i don't send another
But people say that majority of their sales comes from follow ups.
You will have to buy the domain first. Then you do a 301 redirect to your website using a link that gives click counts. I use a plugin called Linker on a wordpress installation. If you like the traffic, you keep the domain. If not, you get you get a refund. You have 5 days with Godaddy.
Ya you get the refund for the domain (which would be what, say $50-$100).
But what about the money you just spent on the newsletter advertising? Isn't that a lot?
I am thinking that we are looking at close to $200-$300 for this newsletter space - Am I wrong here?
 
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Yeah, outbounding is domain investing on hard-mode.

Show attachment 153847

I did this last year trying to sell names for $250-$450. Did super targeted outbounds on names where existing businesses would get a significant upgrade with the proposed name, and it was like 2-3 sales out of 100 contacted. This is in line with what marketers teach, that at any given time there are only 3% of the potential buyers who are "active" and want to buy right now. So on average, you'll at best get around 3 sales out of 100.

Show attachment 153848

https://stickybranding.com/3-rule-engage-customers-before-they-need-your-services/

The types of names I was outbounding were names like A/Slice/Above(dot)com to places like A/Slice/Above/Pizza(dot)com and A/Slice/Above/Pembroke(dot)com. So, definitely names that would be $xxxx priced normally.

Some are able to sell in the $xxxx range via outbound and seem to be successful at it. But it appears those who are able to sell in the $xxxx range are typically offering a $xx,xxx name at an $xxxx price. While at the same time putting themselves at a huge risk for a UDRP if they just acquired the domain.
How was your stats? When you say 3%, you mean there are 3 buyers for every 100 buyers contacted, am I right here?
Also, a second question is, what is the sale percentage - say you buy 100 domains and contact 100 prospects for each of these. What kind of conversion rates are we seeing then?

Third thing, where do you get 100 leads from?

This was my experience too, with my stats closer to 4% or 5%. Granted, that's only for first-time emails. I didn't really follow-through with follow-ups and re-sends to opens. When I did that, I had probably 2x more sails but at the $100 to $299 region.

There's a lot of factors involved. For example, if you're new to it, your email won't be auto-spam with email providers. But the more you do it, the more your email gets sent to the spam box...

In fact... I had an interested buyer contact me almost a year later saying he didn't see my email because it was in SPAM and then almost made a $500 offer. I could only wonder how many successful buyers just didn't see my email because it was sent to spam.

At the end of the days too, the guilt will eat at you.. that you're spamming people. Yes, it's in-line with the CANN-SPAM act.. but morally, it's not lol. Law and morals never truly mix.

But consider this -- I outbounded an exo tower domain that I bought for $300ish and there were no bites even when I brought the price down to $545 or something. And that's including re-emails to the whole list whether or not the opened.

And then suddenly, recently I got an offer out of the blue from GoDaddy brokerage services (which means the buyer paid $79 or $72 just to find me) to acquire it and their initial offer was $1,500. So yeah............................................................ outbound is good only if you know what you're doing and really send out a formal-looking email that doesn't get flagged as spam.

But I believe the true key is to get your domain in front of interested buyers that would make inbound inquiries. The only way to do that is to do what the mass media has been doing... buying ads.
And where do you prefer to buy ads? Related forums, blogs, newsletter? What else?
In such cases, what kind of sale figure are you looking at, given that you may be experimenting with say, 5 domains at a time?
 
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But people say that majority of their sales comes from follow ups.

Ya you get the refund for the domain (which would be what, say $50-$100).
But what about the money you just spent on the newsletter advertising? Isn't that a lot?
I am thinking that we are looking at close to $200-$300 for this newsletter space - Am I wrong here?
it feels like you are spamming people after a while i don't think it is a follow up when you send couple of emails to someone that is not responding to you if they said i will think about it or maybe then sure after a couple of days why not see if they have made a decision but just sending emails to someone that ignored you the first time just feels pushy and spammy
 
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Go their web site, use a variable email address, send your message, and forget about it... If it is a big company this won't work, because only people at the bottom of the company will receive it and then ignore it. If it is a small company , after a while , it may work. For example, they will keep your message but not take any action, and one day they will hear, that someone upgraded to .com or shortened their web address by paying 5 figures, and increased profits quickly. Such a thing would be a big motivation, and they will remember your email. Unfortunately summer is coming soon, and lockdowns will be lifted or relaxed (good thing), so not much time left to do outbounding until the fall. Can this summer be like oct-nov or feb-may in terms of domaining? I hope.. just before elections, economy needs to look good. Lots of free money to everyone, part of it must go to domains.
.........
Don't pay for advertisements, instead create "news" which Yahoo news would be happy to publish on their homepage. ..Alternatively you can fill your landing pages with keywords, hoping it will do well for some targetted noncompetitive keywords.
 
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How was your stats? When you say 3%, you mean there are 3 buyers for every 100 buyers contacted, am I right here?
Also, a second question is, what is the sale percentage - say you buy 100 domains and contact 100 prospects for each of these. What kind of conversion rates are we seeing then?

Third thing, where do you get 100 leads from?

This was about 35-40 domains, and contacting 2-3 highly targeted people for each domain.

If you are contacting 100 people per domain, that would be definite spamming at the expense of other people. I would avoid anything like this.

So the number of people contacted was around 100 and I had 2 sales upfront, and 1 I had to reply back and forth with for a month before he completed the purchase.

It was hours of work manually looking up all the contacts. For the pizza domain this meant figuring out who the owner was and determining the best way to contact him/her.


I'm not advocating doing this in any way. For me, I think it worked out to $20 per hour. That is after I already had the domains. You are contacting your best prospects for those names and putting yourself in a weaker negotiating position. Not only that, but you are taking your chances of that prospect approaching you when it is "their big idea" next year and setting it on fire, or at best highly discounting your final price.

When I started it, I thought "hey, I've got 7,000 domains, what if I can spend 5 hours and make an extra $1,000 per week. Didn't work like that. You'll likely be grinding....HARD.
 
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This was about 35-40 domains, and contacting 2-3 highly targeted people for each domain.

If you are contacting 100 people per domain, that would be definite spamming at the expense of other people. I would avoid anything like this.

So the number of people contacted was around 100 and I had 2 sales upfront, and 1 I had to reply back and forth with for a month before he completed the purchase.

It was hours of work manually looking up all the contacts. For the pizza domain this meant figuring out who the owner was and determining the best way to contact him/her.


I'm not advocating doing this in any way. For me, I think it worked out to $20 per hour. That is after I already had the domains. You are contacting your best prospects for those names and putting yourself in a weaker negotiating position. Not only that, but you are taking your chances of that prospect approaching you when it is "their big idea" next year and setting it on fire, or at best highly discounting your final price.

When I started it, I thought "hey, I've got 7,000 domains, what if I can spend 5 hours and make an extra $1,000 per week. Didn't work like that. You'll likely be grinding....HARD.
I don't see how contacting 100 potential buyers can be called spam if you sent an email to each i don't see a problem with it but if you choose to keep on emailing people that don't reply to you then that is spam it would make more sense to send out 100emails to 100 people than 10emails to 3 people don't you think so ?

Don't pay for advertisements, instead create "news" which Yahoo news would be happy to publish on their homepage. ..Alternatively you can fill your landing pages with keywords, hoping it will do well for some targetted noncompetitive keywords.
care to elaborate on this ? (the news part)
 
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I don't see how contacting 100 potential buyers can be called spam if you sent an email to each i don't see a problem with it but if you choose to keep on emailing people that don't reply to you then that is spam it would make more sense to send out 100emails to 100 people than 10emails to 3 people don't you think so ?

Spam is generally bulk + unsolicited emails.

There are different levels of spam though. I will get some people pitching domains then 4 or 5 followup emails looking for updates. That is no doubt spam.

If people don't respond, move on, and quit annoying them with further emails.

Brad
 
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Spam is generally bulk + unsolicited emails.

There are different levels of spam though. I will get some people pitching domains then 4 or 5 followup emails looking for updates. That is no doubt spam.

If people don't respond, move on, and quit annoying them with further emails.

Brad
outbound in it self is unsolicited so i think there is no clear answer on what is ok what isn't for example i contacted someone on Facebook that owned a small shop he was annoyed with me saying hey i have a domain that you might be interested in
 
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This was about 35-40 domains, and contacting 2-3 highly targeted people for each domain.

If you are contacting 100 people per domain, that would be definite spamming at the expense of other people. I would avoid anything like this.

So the number of people contacted was around 100 and I had 2 sales upfront, and 1 I had to reply back and forth with for a month before he completed the purchase.

It was hours of work manually looking up all the contacts. For the pizza domain this meant figuring out who the owner was and determining the best way to contact him/her.


I'm not advocating doing this in any way. For me, I think it worked out to $20 per hour. That is after I already had the domains. You are contacting your best prospects for those names and putting yourself in a weaker negotiating position. Not only that, but you are taking your chances of that prospect approaching you when it is "their big idea" next year and setting it on fire, or at best highly discounting your final price.

When I started it, I thought "hey, I've got 7,000 domains, what if I can spend 5 hours and make an extra $1,000 per week. Didn't work like that. You'll likely be grinding....HARD.

LOL i love the 7,000 domains in 5 hours :D hahahhaha must've been the biggest surprise of your life.
 
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But people say that majority of their sales comes from follow ups.

Following up with people that contact you is a great way to get or close sales. Following up with people that express some level of interest is also a good way to close sales. If you are a real estate agent, following up with past clients is a great way to keep a steady stream of business.

But, I think the notion that most sales come from persistent outbound type of follow ups is an urban legend from the Zig Ziglar days in the 1980s. His books are great and everyone should listen to his audio book "The Secrets of Closing the Sale", but I think this part of the data he used was incorrect.

Take a look at the excerpt from the site below.

upload_2020-5-9_15-47-43.png

source:
https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/15/...everyone-cites-are-actually-completely-false/


You can test this by asking yourself, how many of your purchases were made after someone cold contacted you 8+ times? I can think of maybe 1 at most. Sales are usually made because you had a need and the product filled that need.
 
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LOL i love the 7,000 domains in 5 hours :D hahahhaha must've been the biggest surprise of your life.

Oh, I was just referring to spending 5 hours a week, trying to sell maybe 10 domains a week. I figured I'd contact these people that "really need" the domain and I would get 2-3 sales at $450 each. With 7,000 domains I would have enough to do it for years to come.

The reason I was thinking this is because I did this with my first outbound ever, which was my first real sale back in around 2004 or 2005. I contacted the owner of fastbath.net, who had a really nice website and offered FastBath.com at $450. They purchased it within a couple hours and it was completely easy. (Looks like they went out of business by 2008 and someone else bought the domain at that point.)

So I thought I'd just replicate this, but based on my experience last year, it doesn't typically work out that way.
 
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thank all for sharing, I read all experiments above

in fact, in 2 reported sales threads on here, almost are inbound only
 
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it feels like you are spamming people after a while i don't think it is a follow up when you send couple of emails to someone that is not responding to you if they said i will think about it or maybe then sure after a couple of days why not see if they have made a decision but just sending emails to someone that ignored you the first time just feels pushy and spammy
Makes sense. But then, it is also a fact that majority of the sales come from follow up, in outbound.
In fact, I remember someone quoting like 4th follow up.
Never went upto that, but ya, that's a lot.

Go their web site, use a variable email address, send your message, and forget about it... If it is a big company this won't work, because only people at the bottom of the company will receive it and then ignore it. If it is a small company , after a while , it may work. For example, they will keep your message but not take any action, and one day they will hear, that someone upgraded to .com or shortened their web address by paying 5 figures, and increased profits quickly. Such a thing would be a big motivation, and they will remember your email. Unfortunately summer is coming soon, and lockdowns will be lifted or relaxed (good thing), so not much time left to do outbounding until the fall. Can this summer be like oct-nov or feb-may in terms of domaining? I hope.. just before elections, economy needs to look good. Lots of free money to everyone, part of it must go to domains.
.........
Don't pay for advertisements, instead create "news" which Yahoo news would be happy to publish on their homepage. ..Alternatively you can fill your landing pages with keywords, hoping it will do well for some targetted noncompetitive keywords.
Never worked for me, except this one time, when I received $100 offer, which never converted.

This was about 35-40 domains, and contacting 2-3 highly targeted people for each domain.

If you are contacting 100 people per domain, that would be definite spamming at the expense of other people. I would avoid anything like this.

So the number of people contacted was around 100 and I had 2 sales upfront, and 1 I had to reply back and forth with for a month before he completed the purchase.

It was hours of work manually looking up all the contacts. For the pizza domain this meant figuring out who the owner was and determining the best way to contact him/her.


I'm not advocating doing this in any way. For me, I think it worked out to $20 per hour. That is after I already had the domains. You are contacting your best prospects for those names and putting yourself in a weaker negotiating position. Not only that, but you are taking your chances of that prospect approaching you when it is "their big idea" next year and setting it on fire, or at best highly discounting your final price.

When I started it, I thought "hey, I've got 7,000 domains, what if I can spend 5 hours and make an extra $1,000 per week. Didn't work like that. You'll likely be grinding....HARD.
But why would someone approach you for a sub-optimal name. Like hand-reg type names. That is a major issue. You have to go out there and sell, I feel
 
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Makes sense. But then, it is also a fact that majority of the sales come from follow up, in outbound.
In fact, I remember someone quoting like 4th follow up.
Never went upto that, but ya, that's a lot.
i would think on the fourth follow up you lose the right to negotiate in your price range
i know if i was buying a domain and someone emailed me four times before i replied i would simply put my own price and if he doesn't like it he can try to find another buyer it makes you seem desperate
 
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Following up with people that contact you is a great way to get or close sales. Following up with people that express some level of interest is also a good way to close sales. If you are a real estate agent, following up with past clients is a great way to keep a steady stream of business.

But, I think the notion that most sales come from persistent outbound type of follow ups is an urban legend from the Zig Ziglar days in the 1980s. His books are great and everyone should listen to his audio book "The Secrets of Closing the Sale", but I think this part of the data he used was incorrect.

Take a look at the excerpt from the site below.

Show attachment 153874
source:
https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/15/...everyone-cites-are-actually-completely-false/


You can test this by asking yourself, how many of your purchases were made after someone cold contacted you 8+ times? I can think of maybe 1 at most. Sales are usually made because you had a need and the product filled that need.
Ahh, this was what I had been reading! The wrong book I guess.

Oh, I was just referring to spending 5 hours a week, trying to sell maybe 10 domains a week. I figured I'd contact these people that "really need" the domain and I would get 2-3 sales at $450 each. With 7,000 domains I would have enough to do it for years to come.

The reason I was thinking this is because I did this with my first outbound ever, which was my first real sale back in around 2004 or 2005. I contacted the owner of fastbath.net, who had a really nice website and offered FastBath.com at $450. They purchased it within a couple hours and it was completely easy. (Looks like they went out of business by 2008 and someone else bought the domain at that point.)

So I thought I'd just replicate this, but based on my experience last year, it doesn't typically work out that way.
One of those rare deals when things flow smooth and it gets completed within hours.
 
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Good day bosses in the house.. Sorry to ask this here.
Pls I have a question, asides brandables, can a newly (Geo and emd) hand reg name be sold on namesilo and other marketplaces or it's a must it should be an expired domain?
 
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Good day bosses in the house.. Sorry to ask this here.
Pls I have a question, asides brandables, can a newly (Geo and emd) hand reg name be sold on namesilo and other marketplaces or it's a must it should be an expired domain?
Yes, it can.
 
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Had two sales past two weeks (mid $xxx) generated from outbound calls/emails. I think. Thing is the actual sales came through Afternic. Since I often hold domains for several years, occasionally, shortly after I renew them I do the outbound contacts. In one case, my email mentioned it was priced at $xxx “this month.” No responses to me but apparently somebody talked to somebody on the team and a few days later I got a sold notification. (Often my outbound email includes A suggestion to “discuss it with your team and let me know.”)

This has happened multiple times in the past, too.
Note, too that both names were on my own landers (not Afternic) so to increase your success you probably should list with Afternic/Go Daddy even if they ding you for 20%

I try to make the phone calls and emails to each prospect concurrently so that I can say “I left a message” or “I sent an email” rather than let them stop the 2nd contact by just saying no thanks” - it gives me two points of contact. ALL my outbound contacts would have their name/image improved by MY name (ie .com for .net, or eliminating a hyphen.
 
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Had two sales past two weeks (mid $xxx) generated from outbound calls/emails. I think. Thing is the actual sales came through Afternic. Since I often hold domains for several years, occasionally, shortly after I renew them I do the outbound contacts. In one case, my email mentioned it was priced at $xxx “this month.” No responses to me but apparently somebody talked to somebody on the team and a few days later I got a sold notification. (Often my outbound email includes A suggestion to “discuss it with your team and let me know.”)

This has happened multiple times in the past, too.
Note, too that both names were on my own landers (not Afternic) so to increase your success you probably should list with Afternic/Go Daddy even if they ding you for 20%

I try to make the phone calls and emails to each prospect concurrently so that I can say “I left a message” or “I sent an email” rather than let them stop the 2nd contact by just saying no thanks” - it gives me two points of contact. ALL my outbound contacts would have their name/image improved by MY name (ie .com for .net, or eliminating a hyphen.
Do you include the Afternic link as well in the outbound mail?
 
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Yesterday i decided to try it for the first time seriously speaking
i sent out over 300 emails for the sale of 5 different domains waiting on replies will let you know if i get any sales Worst part of it is acquiring the emails
 
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