discuss How far will having your own page get you towards more sales?

[JLJ]

Hey guys!

I wanted to ask you how does your page (for those who have one) help you get leads. I've acquired a domain which I plan to use to make my online portfolio and blog, however I am unsure how I can get the right possible end users or investors/startups to find me. (It's a pretty good brandable in my opinion as well)

Since I have some background on html and css, plus vast photoshop experience, I'm planning on building a mini marketplace with no more than 20 names, making a logo and description for each name and try to target my sales that way, in addition to a blog. I'm into brandables at the moment, and I think it's the niche I'll be learning for at least the rest of the year.

Before I do this however, I wanted to ask if someone has had good and bad experiences following this type of sales model, so here are some questions:

How many leads do you get from your pool of domains, and is 20 a good number for that kind of market?
Do you often find contacts in the industry this way?
Is it a reasonable long term investment? And fulfilling?
How do you use SEO in this kind of market? I could really use some helping links on this one.
And finally could I ask to if you know helpful threads on these subjects in NP or other forums?

Cheers
Jaime

 

[infosec3]

In my experience, having your own site is essential, even if it is a one or two-page site. There are several reasons for this. These reasons are especially important for people who do outbound promotion for their domains.

First, here you are trying to sell domain names for people to have an online presence and you are not practicing what you preach.

Second, if you email and end-user, you must give him as many reasons as possible to trust you, since he has no idea if this is a scam. Having an online presence adds (at least a bit) to that desired trust.

Third, and probably the most important one. Many end-users have no idea of Whois and how to find who owns a domain, so what they do is they visit the domain. If you have the domain redirected to your site, they will know you are the owner and offers will come to you directly.

This has worked for me for years. I redirect most of my names to the Contact Page of my site and that is how many buyers find me.

 

[Justin Matmor]

Waste off time and money! Park with sedo or afternic and you do better. Thats typical newbie thing that you want to have a blog and sslling site

Wrong advice.

What hasn't worked for you may work for someone else.If you have never implemented a stratgy like this then why are you giving advice?

I believe it is a viable strategy.

 

[alcy]

the general rule is that if you own domains that are worth buying, people will find you, even if you're parked on the dark side of the moon.

just make sure when a lead arrives at your page its not so complicated that even the most intelligent and most intrerested in your domain buyer will not be able to complete and send his inquiry form. anyone who tells you it isn't possible to make overly or unnecessarily complicated sale landers, does not know what they say.

use a simple thing like parking crew parking service. which has a clear big sale banner on top u can customize.

 

[Justin Matmor]

Parking your domains in a marketplace with 30m other names is like hoping to win the lottery.

Not a viable business plan. In fact this is terrible advice.

 

[Silentptnr]

I built a site for my domains and for anyone wanting more free exposure. Ive had my site up for about six months and seems Im getting more inquiries from it all the time. I gotten msgs from other users of the site that they too are receiving inquiries here and there.

I built it simply to have my own platform for sales. Im networking alot and hope to be a player in domaining one day.

For now the site is a baby with just over 100 members and 1100 domains submitted. I enjoy the heck out of it.

I get why some domainers might say just park and wait, but I not only like buying and selling but I like being involved at domain conferences etc. I believe end users will come to my marketplace and in time will gain more trust and familiarity. At the same time i continue to make friendships that might prove valuable down the road.

Its really about you, your plan, and where you want to go. Sure, I use Sedo, GD, Afternic, NJ, NP, Flippa and so on, but I also like the small link I created in the industry chain we call domaining.

None of the replys here are bad, just different points of view. Nothing wrong with parking and your own site wont hurt anything. Might even surprise you.

Good luck

 

[Doron Vermaat]

I don't necessarily believe that having your marketplace will directly get you more sales. What I do believe however is that by having your own marketplace with its own corporate identity, branding and email address it will position you as a professional entity instead of hobby domainer or simply a random domain owner, therefore indirectly making you more sales and higher sales prices.

My marketplace is NameRockstar.com and I link to it from all of my individual For-Sale landing pages. When I have offers coming in from For-Sale landing pages I can respond from [email protected] instead of the free email address I used previously. It makes me look more professional, authoritative and trustworthy and the best thing is it took me only a few minutes to set up and customize using Efty. (which is my company, full disclaimer).

I agree with others here that it's not a good idea to invest a lot of time and money into building your own marketplace, especially when you're a small portfolio holder or a newbie you are much better off spending that time learning about the industry and the money on building your portfolio.

 

[Bram C.]

You should have your own landing pages, so that you can field inquiries, but it makes absolutely no difference how 'pretty' the page is.. it makes ZERO difference.

I've been doing my own landing pages from day 1, and I have done every kind of landing page you can think of. You know what works best?

The domain name, a contact form (or eMail), and that's it.

You might remember this thread, where the OP was touting how amazing his landing pages were and how it helped him convert sales.

Well I actually put his pages to the test for 3 weeks.

I made a exact mirrored copy of his landing pages, with better usage of the domain on the page because the wording was too generic due to the OP of that thread did not knowing how to integrate domain names into the copy via code.

Guess how many inquiries came flying in... ZERO... as predicted.

Lol you never give up do you.

First of all I was never touting how amazing my landing pages were. I was simply saying that having your own landers brings many benefits compared to having them parked at for example Sedo and that my landers (for me personally) were bringing me more sales.

Secondly, if you really did copy my landing pages but you failed with your domains and your own landing copy (which basically is not the same setup then) I don't see how that would result in a conclusion that my landers don't work? So if I would copy your landers and put some different text on it and use different domains and none of them get inquiries I should say "just as predicted? They don't work."? My advice: never become a statistician.

Btw, my landers are not meant to get many inquiries. They are all BIN landers so I'm surprised, if you copied them, that you didn't notice that. There's no direct contact form on my landers for people to send me inquiries.

As soon as I took that junk off my domains, I got 2 inquires that week; by using just the domain and a method of contact.

Turning landing pages into sales portals is not going to sell a domain any faster. You can go ahead and try, and spend time and money on this - but it's already been done.

Good luck to all.

You know I tried with the "domain name + contact form and nothing more" approach that you're doing many times and I always had worse results compared to the landers I have now. If "domain name + contact form" would give me beter results then wouldn't it make sense for me to change my landers instead of continuing to use what I use? Maybe I'm using what I use because it works best for me?

So like I said many times before we can go back and forth on this or stop it once and for all and accept that you have your view and I have mine. If you're happy with the performance of your landers then keep using them. I'm happy with the performance of mine so I'll keep using mine.

 

[domeen]

Waste off time and money! Park with sedo or afternic and you do better. Thats typical newbie thing that you want to have a blog and sslling site

 

[JayT]

In theory having your own site can allow you to bypass marketplace commissions of 20% and negotiate directly with the buyer.

In practice, you end up with a lot of lowball and spam offers that you normally don't even receive when you have fixed price listings in a domain marketplace. Those lowballers just show up as offer page views at SEDO or Godaddy.

You have way more control though. You put your own links and ads on site / sales pages to cut out the middle men. Your domains bring YOU the traffic, helping your whole site rank higher.

 

[BrandZen]

I have to agree with Domeen to a certain extent. Starting from scratch is a waste of time. Just blogging and SEO won't bring any traffic your way. The only way I see you being successful is if you have some good names which get some type in traffic. Good names will sell no matter where they are listed.

With that said, I am planning on starting my own site with my Brand Bucket rejects. I'll be using an Efty marketplace theme.

http://dngeek.com/2016/06/efty-launched-new-marketplace-themes-heres-mine/

I have had some success selling BB rejects with GoDaddy premium listings. These sales were a result of type in traffic. I will continue to keep these names listed with GD but if I can funnel the sale through my own site then I can save the 15% commission.

 

[frank-germany]

for me it makes a huge difference if you park your domains
or have the domain at a place that you can control

when you get an inquiry
you need to know whom you are dealing with
thats the core point

even if you lose a sale or 100 on those marketplaces
you will regain you lost profit
if you understand the needs of the lead
and can adjust your price tag accordingly

number of domains owned is no criteria
get a nice landing page
where its easy to contact you

I have done this in the early days
and now I do it again
-I was only stopping it for legal reasons-
always it had been working well

those marketplaces don't need your sale
they won't help you

there is no reason not to list your domain there
if they sell it they deserve the fees


but for the direct traffic
you better fetch your own leads yourself

 

[Doron Vermaat]

Doron

How do you promote your domain store (namerockstar) given that it is not associated with a blog. Without a blog how do you do SEO on your site?

I personally link to it from all my For-Sale landing pages which instantly creates hundreds of backlinks. I link to it from my blog and you can of course link it from your email and forum signature etc. We do have plans to add a blog and/or content pages functionality because quite a few users have requested this feauture.

Efty marketplaces are already very well optimized for SEO and Google loves their link structure (as you can see in the screenshot below) . If you have custom descriptions for your landing pages this content will also be displayed on your marketplace, ie: http://www.namerockstar.com/domain/BadMonkey.com/ or http://www.namerockstar.com/domain/StarTalent.com/

My point however remains the same and that is that you shouldn't spend too much time and/or money on creating and/or promoting a marketplace - the way I see it is that its a must have to own a good looking marketplace because you want to come across as a professional when you negotiate with end-users.

Most domains sell because a buyer wants that domain, they have already made a decision. It's rare that a company uses a marketplace to discover a name and if they do, chances are they start with a Sedo or a BrandBucket where there's ton of inventory and not with a small marketplace that has a couple of hundred or thousands names.

 

[JayT]

I have been working on that exact thing for a few months. I don't know how much better it is! I am waiting for winter to write more, when I have more time. You can see on my signature the site and many of my domains for sale have individual lander on the site (you'd have to type-in a domain to see lander). I think it is a great idea, fun at least.

As for seo you can use a plugin, they help a little. Give images alt tags, use h1,h2 etc. Unique content is important and meta tags for pages too.

 

[domeen]

I implied you might have used this strategy. Read my post carefully.

Obviously it never worked for you.

Does that mean it is a waste of time?

No it doesn't.

It actually dose!
Its a waste of time, better use the time to buy new domains

 

[garptrader]

In theory having your own site can allow you to bypass marketplace commissions of 20% and negotiate directly with the buyer.

In practice, you end up with a lot of lowball and spam offers that you normally don't even receive when you have fixed price listings in a domain marketplace. Those lowballers just show up as offer page views at SEDO or Godaddy.

 

[alcy]

I have never tried nor read any success story from brandbucket or brandroot competitors (and to be honest I've seen many people create such a site for a few months and abandon it later)

It may be easier if you specialize in a narrow segment, say music business names or medical business names.

You can also resell names from other sources. But is it still called domaining ?

I would not recommend you or anyone go around trying to sell domains you do not own.

 

[boker]

You can not start your own website with a few names and expect it to bring you a lot of leads in short time....take by example BB or Brandroot, do you think that when they started, they were selling 2 names a day in the first months? BB is counting on type in leads and some connection made in the last 10 years or so in the startup communities and on returning customers. Not really based on marketing or adwords. I have mine for almost a year now and 70% of the inquiries are coming from there...around 20 or so are coming from search engines every day and a few hundreds from type in a day...but I have invested something in advords at start, I have around 700 names, all redirected, so I have some type in and I have a few names that are bringing leads from start up communities, even do they are not brandables. In conclusion, it's hard, you have to spend some money and be prepared to do it for some time before you can see some results.

 

[JayT]

I mean I can get if some big boy . let say 50k domains, opens his own marketplace, I would say that makes sense, but xxxx or even xxx domains don`t make any sense at all.

Depends on what you sell and who you want to sell to. End user are the ones that will pay, they will visit by type-in. Why would you want to give up 20% of your profits for no reason other than a simple inquire form? Your own site take all the profits.

Most you guys really over-estimate how many people are actually seeing your sales page on sedo etc. No domainer is going to invest top $ in your domain there. If you have tools, a blog, some domains, chances are you'll get MORE views, honestly, because domainer / person visit your page, and sees ALL your domains.

 

[DomainVP]

You should have your own landing pages, so that you can field inquiries, but it makes absolutely no difference how 'pretty' the page is.. it makes ZERO difference.

I've been doing my own landing pages from day 1, and I have done every kind of landing page you can think of. You know what works best?

The domain name, a contact form (or eMail), and that's it.

You might remember this thread, where the OP was touting how amazing his landing pages were and how it helped him convert sales.

Well I actually put his pages to the test for 3 weeks.

I made a exact mirrored copy of his landing pages, with better usage of the domain on the page because the wording was too generic due to the OP of that thread did not knowing how to integrate domain names into the copy via code.

Guess how many inquiries came flying in... ZERO... as predicted.

As soon as I took that junk off my domains, I got 2 inquires that week; by using just the domain and a method of contact.

Turning landing pages into sales portals is not going to sell a domain any faster. You can go ahead and try, and spend time and money on this - but it's already been done.

Good luck to all.

 

[Justin Matmor]

If your domain can generate type in traffic you are better off using the domain to create a minisite. Then you can sell your minisite for alot more than if you had to sell the domain on its own.

It costs very little (under a couple hundred $$) to create a 10 page mini site.

 

[frank-germany]

you guys
do you know there is an IGNORE feature in this forum?

I use it with great results for my peace of mind

 

[iAchilles]

I can't speak for everyone, but personally I think it's worth having something, even if it's very basic. Think of it as having an online business card at the bare minimum.

I got a simple WP theme, made a few customizations, a small bit of basic content and I was done. Did it all myself over a couple of days. I did have previous experience developing a site with WP, wordpress is a bit like riding a bike.

I recently closed a mid $xx,xxx deal with a NDA attached. Much to my surprise the inquiry came directly through my site. Buyer wished to pay to via bank wire, no middle man, no fees. Having my own site has already paid off for me with the money I saved on that deal.

I don't forward my domains to my site and it's not what I'd describe as a polished article, but it does the job, it gives me some form of presence online outside of marketplaces. My names are pointed via BIN @ Sedo and NameSilo and via makeoffer @ Uniregistry - I love their landers.

When you Google my domains my site shows up in Google search results.

This particular name was pointed at uniregistry but the buyer chose to contact me directly through my site.

Each end user has their own purchasing preferences/habits when it comes to domains imho. It never ceases to amaze me how offers come in via another marketplace while the domain is pointed somewhere else.

In my experience they are not a waste of time. If you've never developed a site then it's a great skill to learn which you can apply to other domains in your portfolio.

 

[domeen]

Wrong advice.

What hasn't worked for you may work for someone else.If you have never implemented a stratgy like this then why are you giving advice?

I believe it is a viable strategy.

Hi, thanks
But where do you take that i have not used this strategy?

 

[Justin Matmor]

Hi, thanks
But where do you take that i have not used this strategy?

I implied you might have used this strategy. Read my post carefully.

Obviously it never worked for you.

Does that mean it is a waste of time?

No it doesn't.