discuss How do you contact local businesses to sell them some domains?

[wilbez]

Hi,
I've noticed that lot of local businesses don't have a domain that matches perfectly their activity.

Example: I've found lot of landscaping company with the name Karen, Julie, Mike, but their domain name were like karenscapes, karenscaping, mikescapes... So I've looked in the expired domain name list downloaded from Name Bio and found "karenlandscaping.com". Bought it. GoDaddy appraisal is around 900$.

How can I sell it to them? How can I ask them if they would like to buy it? A simple e-mail?ù

Does anyone of you use this "method" working with local businesses?

Thank you

 

[Joe N]

I think the method has some potential to work, but I would suggest keeping two things in mind (more detail below):

1. Keep your price expectations reasonable.
2. It has to make sense for the buyer.

1) Sounds like these are mostly small businesses you're thinking of approaching. Domain names and driving online traffic isn't going to be a high priority for most of them, so you'll have trouble getting more than a few hundred dollars.

2) Your idea only has potential if you're truly providing the buyer with a better option, or if you can show them that they're losing business by not having your name. You used "karenscapes" as an example... Does the owner already brand with this name? Is it all over their trucks, their literature, their website? If so, this is their established brand that customers know. Owning a domain name that does not match their brand would make little sense.
On the flip side... if you own Karen Landscaping, and are selling to a company with the same name (but operating on KarenLandscapingInc.com), then you're offering some real value. Of course you do run into an ethical/legal issue in this example... so the name would need to be a bit more generic.

For contact, you need the owner's email in most cases. Sending messages to the contact form or "info@" email address is unlikely to yield results.

Good luck with your efforts. Sales could be scarce, but the experience is good. The more you try to find quality names and outbound them to the right people, the better you'll get at it.

 

[lock]

Local would mean you would be close enough to face to face.