- Impact
- 32,515
- Been asked how my sales are going lately.
My sales have been growing a lot in November/ start of December after the September - October slump. Year turned out very good overall, its early December and I've already hit yearly target. Had several sales between $2.5K and $6K. Smallest ones have been at $1.7k.
Tip, don't underprice - especially now. Keep prices up as these are top months. It's your chance to recover if things went slow after this summer.
- In fact , I'd recommend you to always increase your prices gradually. Everything else is more expensive. Why should domains be any cheaper?
Besides, with growing domain cost and insane auction prices, and DC / SN going rogue over drops, the math doesn't check out if you decrease your prices.
- Reducing prices to xxx range (or so) does not work like in the past in my observation. In fact discount seems to have the opposite effect. I still have $1.7k names (my weaklings) but plan to up them all to $2k minimum, or more. I've mentioned this already on NP but it is worth saying it again.
There's a long story why this happened lately but I want to keep things short in this post and yes there will be hints below as of why.
- Lately there has been an increase in Paypal scam attempts over sales on NP. New accounts, zero feedback, promise to pay via Paypal Family & Friends, and then they come up with a looong story as PP changed policy or whatnot.
Ignore any such requests, no matter what they promise. You're just wasting time. They'll always come up with a ton of reasons why you should accept (another) sneaky form of payment.
Oh, they are all very polite and with plenty of explanations... (I'm done with any of these BTW).
- I'm getting good results lately with Afternic NS3/4 landers. But there are things to be aware of.
You need to keep prices high in case there is any negotiation. Say if BIN domain price is $2k, use a 3K...3.5K price with 2k floor and perhaps $1.5K min.
I'll be switching soon to NS3/4 fully if things go like this. Side note @AbdulBasit.com was always right about NS3/4. The only real condition is, have good names - ideally $2k... $2.5K value minimum. Then set the lander and just let it roll.
Edit: - In many cases can improve your sales by a lot just upping the price somewhat. Higher prices make a higher quality impression on the buyers. Making them cheapo makes them appear as such.
- Don't mix BIN with make offer. Choose one or the other. The mix is worse, it will reduce your conversions.
- It appears there is an increase in cancellations for installments. If you ask me, stay out of installments. Side note I'm not going to use any such going forward.
- I ran a long lander test for traffic over my 5500 .COM names . The results have been surprising.
99.9% are bots. Once they are weeded out, I barely got 10 interested clicks per day over the whole 5.5K range of names. And at least half of them are good names, sold for several K usually.
So true lander traffic is extremely low in quantity; unless there is a particular reason for a given domain, say direct type-ins etc. But out of those few clicks, comes buyers. Oh, and those traffic stats? Or whois calls stats such as Epik shows? Ignore them. You're wasting time. No correlation whatsoever between traffic quantity and sales.
- Sedo is on the rise lately, brought me good sales. If you're not on Sedo, consider listing there too.
- I sold some co's so there is movement there. No show though on xyz. Although I have better xyz left. I wonder if the flame is dying out on xyz (don't see much on others either, apart from DNGear which is its own category).
- COM id king will always be king. No it's not going anywhere and didn't had its heart eaten out by ngTLDs.
- If you change landers, don't hastily change them again. You need at least 4...6 months to let them run just to make sense of what's going on.
- Don't change prices often too. This kinda resets your sales (bad).
Also at Afternic you are put back at the listing queue in Godaddy Auctions (takes 45 days from listing to get to the top of search results). Better keep prices on for say 6 months. I used to make this mistake in the past.
- Decide if you're a BIN or make offer / lead domainer. Then stick to one or the other. Again I see mixing them as affecting your performance. For mid 4-fig and above, use lead or just make offer. For below $1.5k, BIN. In between these, I'd still use lead or make offer.
- If you followed my history, I used to have a ton of BIN sales because I've been mostly a discount domainer. While it worked, in hindsight it's a mistake. I should have kept prices up (3k or more) and put a lead lander and wait for the right buyer to come.
- I see quite a gap lately in NP sales section. The gap is between offer and demand. On one hand if I want to buy there's mostly bad names or highly overpriced ones for what is a domainer to domainer market. On the other hand, I can't barely sell $2.5 K+ value names with solid applications for $20. I'm renewing most now or selling in bulk to other domainers which have the cash. There's also a lot of decrease in numbers sold although I've had increased quality at clearance sales.
Side note it's not NP's fault at all, but rather a side effect of the market status.
- Decreasing prices also doesn't help you at all for the sole reason that it's not the prices that have changed, but the demand.
There is still solid demand for top domains, but not so much on the lower tiers.
Reason is, companies with money are still purchasing strong at good pricing. But individuals and SMBs have largely dropped the towel, most likely due to dwindling cash reserves.
- Therefore, if you're into XXX range sales, you might be most affected now. In such case I'd rather up the prices and wait for those who would pay at least 1.5k for a domain - any domain. A company with reasonable interest should afford that. It's one months' pay for a worker or whatnot (even less depending on where you live).
- Match currency with where your most clients come from. USD for US, EUR for europeans.
Also on Sedo, use EUR. Sedo seems to be preferred by Europeans as far as I can tell. I've also read numerous times that EU buyers often distrust GoDaddy. This is just hearsay but my own experience also seems to match it; anyway just do your due diligence.
- Final tip, domaining is for the patient domainer. My best sales come from domains I've renewed for 3 years or more, even if at times seemed not to have much point further. It does. Don't ditch your names too soon. I have super names recently which don't sell at all (yet) simply because it is too soon. Set a price, forget, enable auto-renew, and good luck.
Disclaimer: These tips won't apply to everyone else as each domainer is different, portfolios are different. So don't throw shoes at me if I appear as being teacherly to you here or whatnot. I'm not (being that). I don't have the entire truth but just one view over things.
I'm just sharing what I learned.
Good luck there.
My sales have been growing a lot in November/ start of December after the September - October slump. Year turned out very good overall, its early December and I've already hit yearly target. Had several sales between $2.5K and $6K. Smallest ones have been at $1.7k.
Tip, don't underprice - especially now. Keep prices up as these are top months. It's your chance to recover if things went slow after this summer.
- In fact , I'd recommend you to always increase your prices gradually. Everything else is more expensive. Why should domains be any cheaper?
Besides, with growing domain cost and insane auction prices, and DC / SN going rogue over drops, the math doesn't check out if you decrease your prices.
- Reducing prices to xxx range (or so) does not work like in the past in my observation. In fact discount seems to have the opposite effect. I still have $1.7k names (my weaklings) but plan to up them all to $2k minimum, or more. I've mentioned this already on NP but it is worth saying it again.
There's a long story why this happened lately but I want to keep things short in this post and yes there will be hints below as of why.
- Lately there has been an increase in Paypal scam attempts over sales on NP. New accounts, zero feedback, promise to pay via Paypal Family & Friends, and then they come up with a looong story as PP changed policy or whatnot.
Ignore any such requests, no matter what they promise. You're just wasting time. They'll always come up with a ton of reasons why you should accept (another) sneaky form of payment.
Oh, they are all very polite and with plenty of explanations... (I'm done with any of these BTW).
- I'm getting good results lately with Afternic NS3/4 landers. But there are things to be aware of.
You need to keep prices high in case there is any negotiation. Say if BIN domain price is $2k, use a 3K...3.5K price with 2k floor and perhaps $1.5K min.
I'll be switching soon to NS3/4 fully if things go like this. Side note @AbdulBasit.com was always right about NS3/4. The only real condition is, have good names - ideally $2k... $2.5K value minimum. Then set the lander and just let it roll.
Edit: - In many cases can improve your sales by a lot just upping the price somewhat. Higher prices make a higher quality impression on the buyers. Making them cheapo makes them appear as such.
- Don't mix BIN with make offer. Choose one or the other. The mix is worse, it will reduce your conversions.
- It appears there is an increase in cancellations for installments. If you ask me, stay out of installments. Side note I'm not going to use any such going forward.
- I ran a long lander test for traffic over my 5500 .COM names . The results have been surprising.
99.9% are bots. Once they are weeded out, I barely got 10 interested clicks per day over the whole 5.5K range of names. And at least half of them are good names, sold for several K usually.
So true lander traffic is extremely low in quantity; unless there is a particular reason for a given domain, say direct type-ins etc. But out of those few clicks, comes buyers. Oh, and those traffic stats? Or whois calls stats such as Epik shows? Ignore them. You're wasting time. No correlation whatsoever between traffic quantity and sales.
- Sedo is on the rise lately, brought me good sales. If you're not on Sedo, consider listing there too.
- I sold some co's so there is movement there. No show though on xyz. Although I have better xyz left. I wonder if the flame is dying out on xyz (don't see much on others either, apart from DNGear which is its own category).
- COM id king will always be king. No it's not going anywhere and didn't had its heart eaten out by ngTLDs.
- If you change landers, don't hastily change them again. You need at least 4...6 months to let them run just to make sense of what's going on.
- Don't change prices often too. This kinda resets your sales (bad).
Also at Afternic you are put back at the listing queue in Godaddy Auctions (takes 45 days from listing to get to the top of search results). Better keep prices on for say 6 months. I used to make this mistake in the past.
- Decide if you're a BIN or make offer / lead domainer. Then stick to one or the other. Again I see mixing them as affecting your performance. For mid 4-fig and above, use lead or just make offer. For below $1.5k, BIN. In between these, I'd still use lead or make offer.
- If you followed my history, I used to have a ton of BIN sales because I've been mostly a discount domainer. While it worked, in hindsight it's a mistake. I should have kept prices up (3k or more) and put a lead lander and wait for the right buyer to come.
- I see quite a gap lately in NP sales section. The gap is between offer and demand. On one hand if I want to buy there's mostly bad names or highly overpriced ones for what is a domainer to domainer market. On the other hand, I can't barely sell $2.5 K+ value names with solid applications for $20. I'm renewing most now or selling in bulk to other domainers which have the cash. There's also a lot of decrease in numbers sold although I've had increased quality at clearance sales.
Side note it's not NP's fault at all, but rather a side effect of the market status.
- Decreasing prices also doesn't help you at all for the sole reason that it's not the prices that have changed, but the demand.
There is still solid demand for top domains, but not so much on the lower tiers.
Reason is, companies with money are still purchasing strong at good pricing. But individuals and SMBs have largely dropped the towel, most likely due to dwindling cash reserves.
- Therefore, if you're into XXX range sales, you might be most affected now. In such case I'd rather up the prices and wait for those who would pay at least 1.5k for a domain - any domain. A company with reasonable interest should afford that. It's one months' pay for a worker or whatnot (even less depending on where you live).
- Match currency with where your most clients come from. USD for US, EUR for europeans.
Also on Sedo, use EUR. Sedo seems to be preferred by Europeans as far as I can tell. I've also read numerous times that EU buyers often distrust GoDaddy. This is just hearsay but my own experience also seems to match it; anyway just do your due diligence.
- Final tip, domaining is for the patient domainer. My best sales come from domains I've renewed for 3 years or more, even if at times seemed not to have much point further. It does. Don't ditch your names too soon. I have super names recently which don't sell at all (yet) simply because it is too soon. Set a price, forget, enable auto-renew, and good luck.
Disclaimer: These tips won't apply to everyone else as each domainer is different, portfolios are different. So don't throw shoes at me if I appear as being teacherly to you here or whatnot. I'm not (being that). I don't have the entire truth but just one view over things.
I'm just sharing what I learned.
Good luck there.
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