Geo Domains HQ

[cdnbigd]

Just thought I'd create a thread where we can all talk openly about Geo (Service) Domains. Seems like a hot topic which I've been discussing quite often now.

Let's get together and chat geo domains.

Advice, Questions, Statistics, Recent Sales, Venting Frustration, etc..

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

@WebInvestments

1) It depends on the service/product. I have no research behind this or theories, I just put up what I think will look nice. The key is that 90% of my customers do not know how to edit a website or manage a domain or anything.

2) As for what pitch I use, this is a good question, I try to increase the value of the domain to the buyer with the memorability of the domain. For example (random example) poolcleaningmiami.com is memorable and good for billboards and business cards. If the business is called +"mikes pool cleaning" then my domain name is easier to remember + my template is prettier + it can redirect to his current site.

3) Website + Domain is $399-499. I do not sell in the 1000$+ region, its a waste of time compared to what I make with lower sales. I automate most of my work and I prefer working hard on websites than working hard on finding leads for a 1000$ sale.

4) Very important: 3/4 of all buyers are not ready to buy, at that point in time. They could be having a bad day, low on cash, fight with their wife, trouble with their car ect ect. NEVER make just one offer. Do not spam them, do not bore them every week, but DO make another offer in 2-3 months time. Make a total of 3 offers to every lead.

 

[WebInvestments]

Ok. This thread I have been searching for everywhere, finally found! Awesome idea.

My Question
How do I get emails of end-users ??

Two ways I currently use:

1. Google Search

Step 1. Search your Geo domain Place + Service/Product in Google (example, if you own SeattlePlumber.com then Google search <Seattle Plumber> without <> of course). Gather companies from organic listings and paid ads (as highlighted on the top and right-side of Google search results). REMEMBER, only collect companies that are relevant to your offered domain, do not collect plumbing blogs, article sites, and etc. as they may not be your target buyers.

Step 2: Create an Excel Sheet and make 4 columns: S. No., Domain Name, Emails, Contact Person Name.

Step 3: Use who.godaddy.com to collect site owners/admin emails and note them down in the Excel Sheet.

Step 4: Use Whoisology.com to search the buyers' domains and to see what other similar domains they own. This will give you a precise idea how potential a buyer is and whether they are Internet savvy when it comes to websites and domains.

2. ZFBot.com

Step 1: Search your domain keywords in ZFBot.com and see how many relevant domains are registered.

Step 2: Check whois info and note down emails of only those domains that are either parked with Godaddy parking page (new registrations) or are relevant sites matching your domain name. Do not send emails to domains that are parked on marketplaces like Sedo/Afternic etc. as most probably such domains belong to domainers, like you, lol.

Hope it was helpful.

 

[DavidH]

When looking for the "service" or "goods" to add on to the geo part of the name, you may find it useful to go to www.Spyfu.com (you can just sign up for the free account - I have nothing to do with this site but find it very useful) and find out how many people are actually searching for that product or service and what the CPC is.

It makes more sense to me to go after the names with a higher value service than a lower value service - if a business is making more money per customer off one sale, then they may be more likely to consider purchasing a name which reflects that service.

So , for example, to me, "Fencing" would appear to have a rather better chance of a sale than " Clock Repair", since more people are looking for the first term and the CPC is higher reflecting a higher value product / service.

 

[Omar Negron]

FloridasRealtor(com)

Hey Aaron.

I've heard the phrase "realtor" has trademark issues. Not positive on this but worth looking into.

-Omar

 

[briguy]

I have
MiamiConstructionLawyer.com
and a few "420" (marijuana slang)
BC420.ca


420Ont.ca


420Alberta.ca

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

If you want to make more geo+location sales you should put up a website template, not the usual "buy now" page. Most normal people do not know what to do with a domain name. Its like I was to offer one of you guys a truck full of industrial pellets. Domain+custom website gets me more sales than just domains. I throw a wider net. Regardless of whether the buyers needs a website (he may already have one) when you offer a complete package you will interest more people or "Throw a wider net" as I already said :D

My time is my money and I do not mind closing more sales and doing the extra work on the website, compared to doing less work and less sales. After the sale I offer them SEO and Adwords promotion. The SEO work I delegate to somebody else. I do the webdesign myself and the Adwords.

Just my approach to geo+location. I do not have a particular sales strategy in picking up what town + what profession or service. Its pure luck what sells IMO.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

@WebInvestments

The title of the email is their website. For example "About their-current-website.com". If they do not have a website the title will be the domain name I am trying to sell. If he is a miami pool cleaner (for example) he will be professionally interested in anything pool cleaning+his location. You will get more opens this way.

I cut straight to the pitch. Try to keep the email as short as possible, but still including pertinent information about the sale. If I am trying to sell domain+website I will write something like this:

Hello,

I own miamipoolcleaning.com, I am selling it with a beautiful custom website that will be tailored to the needs of the new owner and is a very memorable geo+service domain name. It is ideal for promoting on billboards and business cards, when people need pool cleaning in miami, this is the name they will remember the easiest. I am offering a complete solution, you do not need to hire a web designer or have technical knowledge to set up the new website, I will be happy to help you with any technical issues that you may have.

If you are interested feel free to give me a call any time at xxxx-xxxx-xxxx or email me for more details,

Kind regards,
FULL NAME
[email protected]
phone
skype
Linked in profile



I do not use a gmail accont, I use my real name so that they can check me out, I also give them lots of material like my linked in, so they can do more due dilligence, and I do not give them a price in the first email. If they ask "how much" I will not try to use any fancy tactics I will just come out with the price and explain the process and work involved under the price and the estimated time of delivery for the website.

I have long given up on psychology and tactics and focused on working as many offers as possible and this seems to give me the best results. I have not done many tests with sending out prices first or sending out longer or shorter emails.

If they do not answer back I email them again in 3 months. And then again in another 3 months with a discounted price. I get very little complaints because I check out every lead before emailing, so my offers are very relevant and maybe 1 in 1000 people will tell me to fuck off or that I am a spammer/squatter/scammer/whatever :D

I am no guru, I do not claim to know more than everybody else, I just do lots of hard work for long periods of time and it adds up in sales. I suggest that you try my approach and also other approaches to this, what works for me may not for you, and vice versa. Hard work is 90% of success. The other 10% is luck/method/tactics ect.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

Hey Aaron.

I've heard the phrase "realtor" has trademark issues. Not positive on this but worth looking into.

-Omar

Yes you are right. Realtor is trademarked in the USA and some people will try to make you hand over the domain name based on this. If you are not putting anything up on the page that is realtor related, there is little they can do about it. They monitor the use of their trademark etc.

 

[Fancy.domains]

I really like GEO:s, but currently I have far to less .COMs. I'm working on it.

Ok, showcasing a few of mine:

• Dallas.center
• Dallas.company
• Bangkok.nu
• NightlifeBangkok.com
• ThailandBars.com
• HongkongFans.com
• Guernsey.club
• Malaga.club
• Kohsamui.org
• Kohphangan.net
• Asia.center
• Explore.wales
• Kentucky.apartments
• Phuket.city
• Ibiza.video
• Ibiza.guru
• Newyork.tennis

I've sold about 5 Thailand related names and 8 -10 GEO related new gTLDs.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

@cdnbigd

I do not find 300 leads per domain, I do 10 domains/day, and on average I find 30 quality leads/domain. So its 300-400 emails total for all 10. Some leads will have broad range keywords and have 100s of quality leads but they are far and few between. I am a full time domain investor and its hard work.

At risk of sounding like my whole posting in this thread was to pitch my own product in my sig, I use my own customs software. I would like to make it clear that its not a magic domain selling software, it simply automates repetitive and time consuming work. Like an excavator automates digging holes in the ground. You can quickly research the amount and quality of leads before you decide to acquire a domain for your portfolio, quality input gives quality output. You can also automate most of the selling process. Its very good at finding geo+profession leads and also websites competing for the same keywords.

The tool will not make you money unless you work with it regularly, I constantly compare it to prospecting for gold. Excavators by themselves will not help much unless you dig a LOT. Do not buy one unless you plan on moving some serious dirt. Somebody who got an excavator to dig a small hole in his back garden would think that excavators are useless for finding gold, the same goes for my software. I would not want people to think its useless because they started a few campaigns and got no results and quit.

Hard work is the magic selling tool I would like to pitch in this thread

Lets say that 30% of my sales are from the first emails. I do 2 more cycles and this is maybe 30% of my sales and then I give the domains to my colleagues at work, they find their own leads, do their own cycles and this is 20% of my total sales (they get a 30% cut) and the rest are sellouts at low prices. I am just talking about total sales, Its hard to estimate but lets say I sell 30% of my domains and 70% I do not manage to sell. It is a one year effort for each domain. Literally: 70% of my sales come from repeated efforts<-----this! this is what allows me to live from domain sales only.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

@cdnbigd

I work 8 hours/day literally every day. Today was a work day just like any other day, work is vacation from bankruptcy, and I am on vacation every day so I have routine and work fast and putting up pre-prepared templates with "your logo here" is automated for me because setting up 10 domains/day would be inefficient.

If i cant find better things to do, I would do 100$ domain+lander no problem because its 2-3 hours total work for me for a template. The changes I make are logo and text and insert pics but changes to the coding costs extra, if they want a site coded this will cost 200-500$ depending on how much work.

Maybe 30% of all customers want me to do everything. The others do not need so much assistance, there is no 1 type of customer. Some have hosting, some buy from me, it depends. You will encounter literally every possible situation. I have people who got just hosting and did not buy the domain or website I initially offered.

 

[damance]

hmm, that's a new one. I never thought of sending different prices like that. Did you have a good look at the prospect & decide a price which they could afford or were the different prices just random?

prices in the initial emails?

15 emails: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Responses:

1. without price
2. without price - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -"How much?"
3. without price
4. without price
5. without price
6. without price
7. without price
8. $150
9. $150
10. $200 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Is the total price $200. no other monthly fees or anything????"
11. $200
12. $250
13. $250
14. $350
15. $450

 

[New2Domaining]

Could you elaborate why CleanersHouston.com sounds awkward? Is it the word "Cleaners" specifically or in your opinion all business types before a location are not good?

I am definitely not saying that all service + geo domains sound awkward, some work very well. Off the top of my head it's kind of difficult for me to explain why "Cleaners Houston" is awkward but for me the grammar is off. Someone might type "cleaners Houston" into a search engine but not many people who speak English fluently would say to another person "I'm looking for cleaners Houston"; they would be much more likely to say "I'm looking for cleaners in Houston" or "I'm looking for Houston cleaners".

That said, I have seen members on this forum talk about sales of domains that sound a bit awkward so some people do buy them (I guess). Maybe some people who have sold grammatically awkward domains might want to say something about them.

 

[CJ6]

I think I have only 1 geo domain + niche (marijuana) domain...

VegasMJ(.)com

For sale if anyone wants it.

 

[NetworkPearl]

This is great, hoping to gain some new information and helping others.

 

[cdnbigd]

I'd like to use custom pages, but it's uncomfortable to do with most free hosting services. Are there any good providers for having ton of websites with tiny amount of data on each, who charge little for it?

I use HostGator. They're $10/mo and you can have unlimited amount of websites under that one account. I've got about 150 websites under my one account. lol

 

[headsupp]

This thread is a great idea, so thanks for starting it

I really like real estate geo domains but have not been able to sell any through outbound sales. I’m wondering if anyone here considers real estate geo domains easier or more difficult to sell via outbound sales relative to other niches. What about law / legal geo domains? For some reason I imagine people in the legal profession being less receptive to unsolicited domain offers, does anyone have experience with this?

I bet the new gtlds are hurting effectived niches such as Real Estate and Lawyers. You can now register. .realty .realtor .house .law .lawyer .attorney and who knows what. Why would these companies want to fork out a good amount of money for a .com if they have the freedom of choice of buying their domain of their choosing. .com are simply good for the type in traffic that the few selective premium ones offer.

I am pretty sure to see a steep decrease in more than 2 word .com demand for where a new gtld exists. I let my 3 word geo lawyer domains drop do to this.

 

[WebInvestments]

Why would these companies want to fork out a good amount of money for a .com if they have the freedom of choice of buying their domain of their choosing.

End user will continue to choose .com and spend $xxx simply because:
1. .com is the King
2. .com is more popular than any new gTLD so far, and the majority of gTLDs aren't even known to end users yet
3. .com is the King (oh, I said that already, lol).

 

[New2Domaining]

If I owned an existing real estate company in Miami and had the choice to own MiamiRealEstate.com or Miami.RealEstate (and the prices were the same) I would choose MiamiRealEstate.com without hesitation for all the reasons other people have stated. However if MiamiRealEstate.com cost $50,000 and Miami.RealEstate cost $10,000 - $15,000, Miami.RealEstate might be the better (only) option, depending on my budget.


The new gTLDs may or may not become well-known and popular among general consumers but .com is popular and well-known right now. Even if the new gTLDs really take off and are wildly successful I don’t think that will make all (good) .com domains worthless. If more people choose to use the new gtlds that will decrease the value of some .coms a bit but there should be room for any solid domain whether it’s a .com or a new gtld.


The domain pioneers who invest in the new gtlds early will reap rewards if they really take off but domainers who are currently able to flip geo domains for $XX - $X,XXX should still be able to do so at least for the foreseeable future. I don’t think many domainers who hand register or buy low cost geo domains to flip are thinking of them as long-term investments.

 

[azanmi]

So I've been building out CaribbeanIslands.org. There are 40mil full time residents, millions more in visitors each year so there is an incredible amount of tourism ad potential I think. I am just beginning by discussing the Island groups with custom articles. We are seeing some good traffic already but it will amp up as the content grows. Not sure which way to go on monetization for this site though. I previously co-owned visitUSA.com so the I'm familiar with the big travel affiliate groups but I was hoping maybe to pursue direct relationships and sponsorships this time around using DFP to manage campaigns.

Thoughts?

 

[wealthtaker101]

I actually need hlp selling GEO domains. I have a ton of them I own and need to sell. great idea to start this thread

 

[cdnbigd]

@WebInvestments

1) It depends on the service/product. I have no research behind this or theories, I just put up what I think will look nice. The key is that 90% of my customers do not know how to edit a website or manage a domain or anything.

2) As for what pitch I use, this is a good question, I try to increase the value of the domain to the buyer with the memorability of the domain. For example (random example) poolcleaningmiami.com is memorable and good for billboards and business cards. If the business is called +"mikes pool cleaning" then my domain name is easier to remember + my template is prettier + it can redirect to his current site.

3) Website + Domain is $399-499. I do not sell in the 1000$+ region, its a waste of time compared to what I make with lower sales. I automate most of my work and I prefer working hard on websites than working hard on finding leads for a 1000$ sale.

4) Very important: 3/4 of all buyers are not ready to buy, at that point in time. They could be having a bad day, low on cash, fight with their wife, trouble with their car ect ect. NEVER make just one offer. Do not spam them, do not bore them every week, but DO make another offer in 2-3 months time. Make a total of 3 offers to every lead.

Some great suggestions man.

I'm sure it's the same with many others but I tend to be all over the board when it comes to geo domains keywords. Because of this, it would be pretty expensive to buy a WP template for each type of service (unless you use cracked ones). Although if I get $400 instead of $280 for a domain with the website, I'll pay the extra $49 for the WP template.

How do you go about handing off the domain + website to the new buyer? Do you zip up the contents and database then email it to them? (and hope they know how to extract that and get it all up and going) Just curious..

I usually write someone on Monday, give them a week then follow up the following monday. If I don't hear anything still... I mark the domain as unwanted and move on.

 

[Domain Lead Finder]

@WebInvestments

You can use wordpress no problem. As long as you can make it look nice its all the same to the buyer.

@ProDomains

I do not contact them before the template is set up. I do not want to sell just the domain name it is not in my best financial interest, and my chances of closing a sale are less with just the domain name. If he does not want the website this is fine, I will use the template with another customer.

@cdnbigd

I mostly end selling them cheaper hosting than they already have (they sign up with my affiliate link) and I install everything for them. A few of them will have a friend do it for them but in general I end up doing the whole thing.

As for your strategy to email on monday and wait a few days, I can not over stress that 75% of buyers are not ready to buy at that specific point in time when you email them. They might be having a bad day, low on cash at the time of your offer, fight with wife, there's 100 reasons why. Never ever write a lead off on your first attempt, email them in 3 months time. Most will not remember your offer from a few months ago at all. The new email you send will definitely reach him when he is in a different mood, with a different financial situation, be it good or bad. Its like dealing a new deck of cards, a new poker game.

Never give up on the first attempt, but do not harass them. Once in 3 months is fine. You can lower the price on your 3rd attempt for example. Sweeten the deal. Making a discounted deal is better than making no deal at all.

 

[NetworkPearl]

@Domain Lead Finder thanks for educating newbies like me. It is really helpful when pros like you share their knowledge in educating new comers in the domaining industry.

And now, question time, lol:

1. I am still a bit confused as to how to "start" the email? Either introducing myself, opening with an unusual comment to grab reader's attention (comment about their company/website, or something from their blog/updates/news), or directly start with my domain sale pitch?

2. How long do you keep your email pitch, and how long do you suggest it should be?

3. What works best for you, including the domain price in your first email or later on?

Again, really appreciate your guidance.

Let me help you .Keep the email short and simple.

{Start off stating that "i thought that you would interested to know that the domain"....com" is for sale".Leave a line and then write the advantages etc that it's short memorable etc(be short).

Leave a line and state the price or state "We're offering it for a small price" etc.

End it by asking that they may reply if they are interested and you're contacting other companies too.}

Regarding the price, it's upto you to mention it or not , All the sales that I got until now , i mentioned the price later on but since yesterday I include the price in the first email as suggested by fellow domainers.