Alternative to Parking for Names for Sale?

[markfromslo]

I've got a lot of great high-value names that don't necessarily get much type-in traffic. Sometimes I wonder if, for these names, instead of just parking the name for the small parking income it receives, perhaps I should just forward the name to my Sedo sales page. After all, I don't think everyone pays enough attention, or is sophisticated enough, to know that although the page is parked, it is still for sale. I know that the page says "This domain may be for sale by its owner" but still I wonder if everyone see it, or gets it. I'd hate to lose someone who did not understand the concept. For example, I could see a businessman, unfamiliar with domain names (as I'm sure are most), simply trying the domain names he is interested in. When site comes up, he might very well quickly close the window thinking it's taken. But, the "For Sale" page is different enough to warrant a second look. I know a couple years ago, that's what I would have done.

Anyone ever try this? Any comments??

 

[The Engineer]

What about a turnkey site to pick up some pr and traffic, with a banner on the first page
"This domain is for sale contact [email protected]"

 

[gazzip]

That seems like a great idea if your not interested in PPC - Well worth a try IMO I may just give that idea a "test drive".


.

 

[markfromslo]

I had a similar thought a while back and posted the idea in NamePros. It's in this thread. If you have a moment, I'd be interested in your thoughts.

What about a turnkey site to pick up some pr and traffic, with a banner on the first page
"This domain is for sale contact [email protected]"

By the way, what turnkey sites were you thinking of? Any names?

What about a turnkey site to pick up some pr and traffic, with a banner on the first page
"This domain is for sale contact [email protected]"

 

[SpareDomains]

I have been playing around with this as well on a few of mine, example...

do ya forward it for sale? http://www.sparedomains.com/index.php?a=d&id=81

do ya minisite it? http://www.chicagoaudition.com/

or do ya just park it? http://www.buyinsurance.info/

options are endless and I guess it just depends on if the domain is making tons of income parked/minisite why change it, if it isn't making any parking/minisite revenue and your goal is to sell it I think it could be a good idea to just forward to the sales page.

 

[The Engineer]

I have been playing around with the idea for some time and even made a site at
developyourdomain.com which offers turnkey sites + hosting. The idea stalled because of to many other projects.

 

[markfromslo]

Speaking of minsites, I'm no coder although I get by. Sometimes I use WordPress to create something. But, even though WP is easy, there is still installation, upgrading and some maintenance involved. If I had a hundred minisites on WP, it could be a pain. So, is there some other program that will create simple sites easily, designed for placing Adense and banner ads, (maybe) doesn't require a database and offers some flexibility so each site doesn't look canned?

I have been playing around with this as well on a few of mine, example...

do ya forward it for sale? http://www.sparedomains.com/index.php?a=d&id=81

do ya minisite it? http://www.chicagoaudition.com/

or do ya just park it? http://www.buyinsurance.info/

options are endless and I guess it just depends on if the domain is making tons of income parked/minisite why change it, if it isn't making any parking/minisite revenue and your goal is to sell it I think it could be a good idea to just forward to the sales page.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I've got a lot of great high-value names that don't necessarily get much type-in traffic. Sometimes I wonder if, for these names, instead of just parking the name for the small parking income it receives, perhaps I should just forward the name to my Sedo sales page. ...

I definitely found I got less sales when I move a lot of my non-com domains to a parking service from my for sale pages. Actually, I currently have plans to sort though my portfolio and take my low traffic domains off PPC and move them back to simply being parked on my site which uses domainsellerpro for sales pages. The hard part is sorting out which to do what with.

 

[markfromslo]

I was thinking about the forwarding of some of my domains to my Sedo sales page. 99% of my names are on Godaddy and forwarding is very simple, quick and free. However, I had a name on Register.com and they wanted $50 to forward a name without their banner ad on top!!!! My worry is if this is a trend and once I get a thousand or two thousand names forwarded and then GoDaddy starts charging too? Anyone have any feeling on which way this is going?

Also, any idea what swapping number of hits on parked pages to number of hits on sales pages in the statistics will do to your placement in Sedo searches? Maybe hits on the sales page tell Sedo that the name is more sought after and it moves up the search list? Or, maybe not.

 

[SpareDomains]

I was thinking about the forwarding of some of my domains to my Sedo sales page. 99% of my names are on Godaddy and forwarding is very simple, quick and free. However, I had a name on Register.com and they wanted $50 to forward a name without their banner ad on top!!!! My worry is if this is a trend and once I get a thousand or two thousand names forwarded and then GoDaddy starts charging too? Anyone have any feeling on which way this is going?

Also, any idea what swapping number of hits on parked pages to number of hits on sales pages in the statistics will do to your placement in Sedo searches? Maybe hits on the sales page tell Sedo that the name is more sought after and it moves up the search list? Or, maybe not.

I highly doubt registrars will start charging for domain forwarding, register is old school so their prices reflect that, too much competition to eliminate features like that, anything is possible but I don't see it happening, could be a possibilty with the sedo ranking being better not sure on that one, I'm in the same boat with AdoptableDomains and am going to forward a few of mine to the actual sales pages instead of parking as well on the ones that don't make any revenue worth keeping them parked, the advantage to using your own site to list them for sale is that all offers come into you and you can then direct them to paypal or escrow and have a closed deal in a couple days, plus a lot of times the buyer will send you an offer from an email that is traceable or leaves clues to who they are so you can gauge a price potential, a deal closing on one of the big markets could take a week to close but often it is 2-8 weeks depending on buyers quickness and you have absolutely no clues to who the buyer is, I will still leave everything listed for sale at sedo & afternic but I wanna test pointing them to my own for sale pages for a month or two at least.

 

[markfromslo]

That's a good point about the tracability of emailed offers if you have your own site. I just wish I could find a script that I really like. I am aware of all of them, but have needs beyond what they do. Perhaps I should just get one written custom. Hell, I have 2,700 domains so I should be able to justify the cost. If I were to have one custom written, I'd have Adsense ads running down the side of each sales page to make up for lost parking income. I'd have to write up a description on each sale page related to the name so that the proper Adsense ads appeared. I'd have to keep those ads off of my adult names though or Google would kick me off (I wonder if they care if other pages without their ads have some adult names???)

I'm in the same boat as you now....which names to do.

I highly doubt registrars will start charging for domain forwarding, register is old school so their prices reflect that, too much competition to eliminate features like that, anything is possible but I don't see it happening, could be a possibilty with the sedo ranking being better not sure on that one, I'm in the same boat with AdoptableDomains and am going to forward a few of mine to the actual sales pages instead of parking as well on the ones that don't make any revenue worth keeping them parked, the advantage to using your own site to list them for sale is that all offers come into you and you can then direct them to paypal or escrow and have a closed deal in a couple days, plus a lot of times the buyer will send you an offer from an email that is traceable or leaves clues to who they are so you can gauge a price potential, a deal closing on one of the big markets could take a week to close but often it is 2-8 weeks depending on buyers quickness and you have absolutely no clues to who the buyer is, I will still leave everything listed for sale at sedo & afternic but I wanna test pointing them to my own for sale pages for a month or two at least.

 

[SpareDomains]

yeah in order to get good ads to show for the domain name you would probably have to write a short novel for the description :hehe: be sure to read google adsense terms on using their ads for that as I'm not sure if they consider a for sale page on your own site a parked page and I believe it is not allowed, if that is the case look at other options for ads adbrite etc...

 

[AdoptableDomains]

If I were to have one custom written, I'd have Adsense ads running down the side of each sales page to make up for lost parking income. I'd have to write up a description on each sale page related to the name so that the proper Adsense ads appeared. I'd have to keep those ads off of my adult names though or Google would kick me off (I wonder if they care if other pages without their ads have some adult names???)

Actually, google doesn't even allow adsense on domain for sale pages unless you can show you get something like 1 million hits a month. I submitted by site adoptabledomains.com for review when I signed up for adsense and they declined based on "domains for sale" sites was not an allowed use of adsense. Unless they've changed, you'll probably have to look beyond google for click income.

 

[markfromslo]

That requirement is for getting the name parked with them. There is no hits requirement for placing Adsense ads on any page.

Actually, google doesn't even allow adsense on domain for sale pages unless you can show you get something like 1 million hits a month. I submitted by site adoptabledomains.com for review when I signed up for adsense and they declined based on "domains for sale" sites was not an allowed use of adsense. Unless they've changed, you'll probably have to look beyond google for click income.

 

[SpareDomains]

when in doubt email them and find out, I'm not 100% sure, better than getting your account shut down after the fact.

 

[markfromslo]

What is involved in finding a web host that allows you to have thousands of "add-on" domains with them, in an easy-to-do manner? Let me explain. My host (LivingDot.com--highly recommended) allows me to create add-on domains. Essentially, I can add many (don't know the limit) additional domains to my one account (one price). It's great. But, the process is too much if I had to create hundreds or thousands of them. It sets up email, it's own folder for each domain, and other administrative things.

So, I'm wondering if there is a type of web host that lets me set up one page per domain name, tell the server which domain names are involved, and then simply change the nameserver on the names to point to this web host. Something simple and quick. Does this make sense? Then, no forwarding and the address of the landing page is just mydomain.com not nameseller.com/mydomain-page.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

That requirement is for getting the name parked with them. There is no hits requirement for placing Adsense ads on any page.

Okay, to clarify, I was rejected on using adsense on my site, and when asked of alternatives, I was told that parking was an alternative if I had a high enough hit count (which I didin't). Regardless, I was rejected on a plain domains for sale site as their reply stated below:

Hello Mark,

Thank you for your continued interest in Google AdSense.

We apologize for not being able to approve the first website that you
submitted. However, we are pleased to let you know that you have now been
approved to participate in AdSense, and your account has been activated
for www.***********.com.
--------------------
Hello Mark,

Thank you for your email.

We have certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the
effectiveness of the Google ads for our publishers as well as for our
advertisers. We review all publishers, and we reserve the right to decline
any application. After reviewing your account, our program specialists
found that www.adoptabledomains.com does not comply with our policies at
this time. As we grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program
to more web publishers with a wider variety of web content. Please note
that we may not be able to respond to inquiries regarding the specific
reasons for our decision.

 

[SpareDomains]

if your gonna do thousands of them you could forward them from the registrar to the actual sale page and use masking so it shows the url name which could be time consuming, the script used for spare domains actually allows you to just point nameservers to server and park the domains and they automatically forward to the sales page, which is really easy, not sure on thousands of names parked if it still runs smooth, adoptabledomains probably has better input on that, my guess is it would probably work fine, or you could just grab your own vps or dedicated server and create 1 page sites for the thousands of them and you will have resources available so no one will bother you, sometimes shared hosts don't like to see thousands of domains parked or added on, doing thousands of domains will take some time no matter which route you go.

 

[cjcjcj]

If you are part of our brokerage system, we can create a customised landing page for you with a professional, clean look and handle all of your enquiries so as to remove the hassle from yourself.

We'd recommend this for high value names which do not attract much traffic as corporate buyers like the chance to make offers through us anonymously, rather than contacting the owner directly with an email address which normally results in the seller upping their price massively - ie, what would you do to your price if Microsoft contacted you about buying your name?!

Not a good plan if your name generates income through parking, but could be a good idea if you wanted to attract the right buyers and get the names sold.

Anyone interested could email me charlie at jonesdn .com if they wanted more information.

 

[markfromslo]

To those of you using Domain Trader software: It seems whenever I look at customers using this software, I don't see anyone parking their own pages through the system, which is supposed to be a big benefit of it. I'm wondering if anyone here is doing that, and how they are fairing compared to traditional 3rd party parking. And, how easy was it to sign on with the XML feed companies for the ads?

 

[VegasCoupons]

Speaking of minsites, I'm no coder although I get by. Sometimes I use WordPress to create something. But, even though WP is easy, there is still installation, upgrading and some maintenance involved. If I had a hundred minisites on WP, it could be a pain. So, is there some other program that will create simple sites easily, designed for placing Adense and banner ads, (maybe) doesn't require a database and offers some flexibility so each site doesn't look canned?

I have a similar problem, and haven't found the best solution. One thing I have been using is Blogger.com. Just setup to use your own domain (Very easy). It easy to update, constantly monitored by google, and you never have to install anything on your server.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

For a while, I used fabulous.com's parking pages and had my individual domain for sale appear in a popunder window. However with popup blocking becoming common that doesn't work well any more.

 

[gazzip]

Intersting thread and a very good question, I thought I'd give it a try although I have done it a little different as I think url forwarding will not do too good in search engines.

This name was parked and was getting about 20 to 80 views per month but it got dropped from Google's results :td: As so many parking page domains do !!!

What I've done is a small one page ad stating that the domain is for sale with a link that goes straight to the sedo offer page.

I hope this way it will get relisted in the Google results and traffic to it will hopefully increase - I've also put a few links to Property websites and linked it to a couple of my other small sites to help get it crawled.

I may expand on it a little later - If anyone wants to take a look you can do so here >take a peek !.

Thoughts - Suggestions - Advice is appreciated :]


.

 

[markfromslo]

I like the page alot. Perhaps you could get some ad income by adding Adbrite ads since google probably won't accept it.)

Intersting thread and a very good question, I thought I'd give it a try although I have done it a little different as I think url forwarding will not do too good in search engines.

This name was parked and was getting about 20 to 80 views per month but it got dropped from Google's results :td: As so many parking page domains do !!!

What I've done is a small one page ad stating that the domain is for sale with a link that goes straight to the sedo offer page.

I hope this way it will get relisted in the Google results and traffic to it will hopefully increase - I've also put a few links to Property websites and linked it to a couple of my other small sites to help get it crawled.

I may expand on it a little later - If anyone wants to take a look you can do so here >take a peek !.

Thoughts - Suggestions - Advice is appreciated :]


.

 

[gazzip]

I like the page alot. Perhaps you could get some ad income by adding Adbrite ads since google probably won't accept it.)

Thanks slobizman, your question inspired me to have a "test drive" - I will pobably go with affiliates eventually, most the logos on the ferries site (link at the bottom) are ones that offer affiliate schemes.

On the domain one I may just sign up with a few registrars perhaps but I am more interested in trying to get sales - one day LOL

ps - The other good thing about offering free links for related property websites is that people contact you to get listed - this gives you a chance to offer/show your domains for sale to them in your reply email.

I have been contacted a few times this way :hehe: Hey, its a chance for a free pitch !


.