strategy How to Find Potential End Users?

[shilmy]

Hi,

Do any of you has regularly sell your domain to end users? If so, do you mind share with me in this thread on how find potential end users for your domain?

Regards,
Sjarief

 

[bgmv]

There's no easy answer to this question that comes to mind, unfortunately, but it is interesting that unsolicited faxes are illegal yet unsolicited calls & mailing are lawful. It looks like you'll have to try other contact options.



Out of 80+ impending end-user sales on which the buyer & I have agreed on the terms over the past few months -- including one $1800 agreement which would have amounted to my most colossal sale to date -- around 5 of these end-users mysteriously "disappeared" after that point. Another 5-or-so other end-users changed their mind and reneged on the impending sale, often without stating why. It happens often (roughly 10-20% of he time), and it hurts when it does.

But many times a potential buyer will only "disappear" for a week, then come back ramifying they needed to 'put out a few fires' or 'deal with a sick parent' before re-focusing on business development. If you're out actively chasing end-users, you're probably more eager to sell (and more time-pressured) than the prospective end-user is to buy.

In your circumstance, I would start by sending a gentle-sounding e-mail to your end-user with soft deadline:
---
Hi John,

I just wanted to check in on whether you feel ready to make the XYZ.com swap we agreed on a few days back. I'll keep our agreement open through Thursday evening unless you feel a later date would be more convenient.

Hoping all is well,
Joshua
---

In your e-mail, allow them about 3-5 business days to respond. If you don't hear from them by roughly 24 hours before your deadline, call them and say something resembling "I wanted to call because I haven't heard from you in a while regarding our XYZ.com agreement and was just wondering whether you're okay." Play it cool, and be sure to inquire (at first) about their well-being rather than the domain. This strategy has worked well for me lately. Coming on as a compassionate person might make your end-user feel as if they're giving to a good cause and hence ease their hesitation.

Awesome advice Josh, thanks again. Yeah I have about $500 in sales pending which would be nice to collect. Its sort of frustrating hunting down these guys when they say they are interested. Well, I will try out your advice and see what happens. Thanks again.

 

[bgmv]

So, I got one reply and they provided me with their GD info so I pushed the domain. BTW, do you guys usually push first or wait for money? I feel that if you push the domain first they can sort of trust you, plus you have all their contact info.

I noticed that one of the replies I got back was marked as *spam* in the header....how do I bypass the spambots? Also what is setting off my emails as spam?

 

[Chef Patrick]

I noticed that one of the replies I got back was marked as *spam* in the header....how do I bypass the spambots? Also what is setting off my emails as spam?

You can use a service like aweber.com or constantcontact.com, they have deals with email providers that they will not be marked by spam. Both services have a 30-60 day free trial

 

[bgmv]

You can use a service like aweber.com or constantcontact.com, they have deals with email providers that they will not be marked by spam. Both services have a 30-60 day free trial

Awesome. rep added. i will try those.

 

[Chef Patrick]

Awesome. rep added. i will try those.

My pleasure, I have been using constant contact for the last four years.

 

[DNK.it]

So, I got one reply and they provided me with their GD info so I pushed the domain. BTW, do you guys usually push first or wait for money? I feel that if you push the domain first they can sort of trust you, plus you have all their contact info.

I noticed that one of the replies I got back was marked as *spam* in the header....how do I bypass the spambots? Also what is setting off my emails as spam?

Don't send email as HTML, but in clean text without any active link. Use in your email adress your name and surname: example: Max Power <[email protected]> . Try to send the same email to gmail account, yahoo, microsoft and many other to see if it pass the spam check.

download this software and check your email spam score: http://www.mailingcheck.com/

 

[soggyindo]

That takes 2 minutes, set it up for the domain ya selling and use
Postmaster@that domain .
When I reg domains I usually change the ns1 & 2 to one of
my servers and just add it there myself.

Actually I even offer the hosting as a tool for some at times..
Even host it free till they hit 5 gigs a month or for the first
6 months whichever comes first so they don't have to pay for
hosting while they're building a site with no income as yet..

Then I give them a great paid hosting package which they
usually keep for 2 reasons, one because they don't have to
move everything and 2 the price is great..
I lease servers with 2 gigs of Ram and duel Xeon CPUs and get 1500
gigs a month of BW for $227.00 so it doesn't really cost me anything
to carry them for 5 gigs..

Tiss a good way to keep making $$$ off the domain even after ya sell it..

no one likes to move a website - brilliant!



by the way, if people haven't added the "canned responses" google labs extra for gmail, it's great for this type of work.

you hit new message (or reply), select the canned response you want (perhaps you have three different pitch emails, for different responses), change some details, and voila!

even if you use your own domain's email address it's a good way to cut down on some time.

:ghost:

also - i've been sending some sales emails out to lawyers practices recently - scary stuff!

 

[bgmv]

Just received payment of $195 for Cocaine,Shop--com

Finalized offer on 1 .net for $300
Finalized offer on another .net for $185

Now heres a question for whoever is willing to answer:

After sending out your first set of emails and you get those few price inquiry responses, what do YOU right in your reply to the asking price?

Here is what I write and I dont really know if its working b/c alot of the time I dont get another response:

"Hi XXXXX,

Thank you for showing interest in XXXXXX.com. We currently have this domain
priced at $XX,XXX. Please let me know if this price is suitable for you.

Best Regards,

Ben Vardag
XXXXXXX.com"

Is this a bad response? Should i indicate that i am open to offers?

 

[copper]

Well, seems like you are doing good.

Perhaps you want to add why/how you come up with your price such as
mention some similar domains sold prices?

Just received payment of $195 for Cocaine,Shop--com

Finalized offer on 1 .net for $300
Finalized offer on another .net for $185

Now heres a question for whoever is willing to answer:

After sending out your first set of emails and you get those few price inquiry responses, what do YOU right in your reply to the asking price?

Here is what I write and I dont really know if its working b/c alot of the time I dont get another response:

"Hi XXXXX,

Thank you for showing interest in XXXXXX.com. We currently have this domain
priced at $XX,XXX. Please let me know if this price is suitable for you.

Best Regards,

Ben Vardag
XXXXXXX.com"

Is this a bad response? Should i indicate that i am open to offers?

 

[Jake]

Well, seems like you are doing good.

Perhaps you want to add why/how you come up with your price such as
mention some similar domains sold prices?

Just received payment of $195 for Cocaine,Shop--com

Finalized offer on 1 .net for $300
Finalized offer on another .net for $185

Now heres a question for whoever is willing to answer:

After sending out your first set of emails and you get those few price inquiry responses, what do YOU right in your reply to the asking price?

Here is what I write and I dont really know if its working b/c alot of the time I dont get another response:

"Hi XXXXX,

Thank you for showing interest in XXXXXX.com. We currently have this domain
priced at $XX,XXX. Please let me know if this price is suitable for you.

Best Regards,

Ben Vardag
XXXXXXX.com"

Is this a bad response? Should i indicate that i am open to offers?

I second what copper said.
If you mention similar sales from NameBio.com that are higher than what you are asking, then they will be more likely to accept your offer, or make one of their own.

 

[bgmv]

Well, seems like you are doing good.

Perhaps you want to add why/how you come up with your price such as
mention some similar domains sold prices?

Thanks for the replies. I have been trying to do mention other sales but there really are no sales to compare to, which makes it hard even in deriving a price for my domains.

For some reason I always get stuck when someone inquires about the price. Its really hard putting a price to a domain, espcially a .net.

 

[JoshuaPz]

Thanks for the replies. I have been trying to do mention other sales but there really are no sales to compare to, which makes it hard even in deriving a price for my domains.

For some reason I always get stuck when someone inquires about the price. Its really hard putting a price to a domain, espcially a .net.

That's an easy one. If you can't find similar domains to compare to on NameBio, try BuyDomains.com. They've got a massive selection of names in all major TLDs and it's extremely unlikely you won't be able to pinpoint a name similar to the one you're selling there.

For example, if I were selling PorticoProperty.com (a domain I'm about 10 minutes way from flipping -- just waiting for payment), I might search BuyDomains for domains beginning with Portico- or ending with -Property. You could use BuyDomains.com's advanced search functionality to perform these two searches.

While namebio.com shows no public reported sales of domains containing Portico, BuyDomains.com has a dozen of 'em n its tank.

 

[soggyindo]

^ nice tip!

for further refinement, if you have a pure .com, you can do an advanced search and edit out .nets, hyphens, numbers, long domains, and anything else that would bring your estimate down. then send that link.

by the way, i'm more and more realizing the wisdom of one of your previous posts about how much end users are willing to pay. i get the $200 - $300 figure over and over again.

to me it translates as "well, domains are basically worthless, but i'll shoot you something to make your effort worth your while". any more and it would be 'real money' to them (i.e. they don't believe it is a real asset).

once people 'get' the idea of names being sold regularly for more than reg fee we'll have a 'proper' industry running with the general public.

i'm afraid until then i have to rely on a good old bidding war by trying to get 3 or 4 interested parties. that they can understand.

 

[JoshuaPz]

I've been receiving a lot of PMs lately asking for a copy of the template I use for responding to those "what's your price?" e-mails. Truthfully, until this week I hadn't quite settled on a price proposal e-mail that met with with a very high success rate. However, so far I seem to be on fire with this one (the specific e-mail below resulted in a $250 sale, pending whois change):

---
Hi [...],

Thank you for getting back to me. The fairest accepted way of determining a domain name's retail price is to base it off past reported sales of similar domains. In the case of domains ending with -Creative, there have been eight such sales, ranging from $60 to $2500. The two median sales amongst these eight are NewMediaCreative.com (rung up at $150) and ACreative.com (sold for $350). Only the -Creative domains that sold for $2000 and up appear to have been purchased by companies holding those brands. The other, sub-$2000 -Creative sales were to other domain investors. You may verify all this information at namebio.com, a well-known database listing prior domain name sales.

Since I promised to present you an attractive offer well below market value in my initial message, I'll ask $250 for StrategicCreative.com. I would ensure your security by transferring you the domain before requesting payment. Please feel free to ask any further questions that would help you arrive at a decision.

I will keep my offer open through Monday evening (EST) unless you would like more time to think on it. There's a handful of creative marketing companies that go by the name "strategic creative" and I would like to ensure this premium domain lands in the right group's lap.

Speak to you soon,
Joshua
---

I used the "cite similar sales on NameBio tactic" above because there wasn't much Google search traffic on "strategic creative" to speak of, but there were many analogous NameBio sales available as reference points. If the domain DID have excellent Google traffic volume (as was the case with another domain I flipped for $1200 today), I would have built my asking price + justification around those Google figures instead.

If your buyer attempts to counter, use secondary selling points to counter back and compromise. In the case of StrategicCreative.com, I could have pointed out that the domain has usage history dating all the way back to 2001 (according to archive.org), indicating the domain likely has inbound links and receives a residual stream of visitor traffic.

 

[didiert]

One of the best!

Thank you for all the information, ideas and experience posted.

So far this thread have helped many new domainers to approach the golden end users.

This is really one of the best threads of all times.

Thanks, good luck to all

 

[stingrae]

Great thread people! I've taken dribs and drabs from everywhere in this thread to send out about 10 letters to end users.

I've already received one indication of interest very quickly although nothing discussed in terms of price. I've put a timeline on taking offers through the end of the month. I'll keep you updated. Thanks to everybody who contributed. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

 

[defying]

Timing of emails

When should emails be sent out to end users? What has worked well for people and what hasn't?

 

[Sameh]

When should emails be sent out to end users? What has worked well for people and what hasn't?

Welcome to NamePros


From my own experience, Don't send on Friday, Saturday & Sunday.

 

[mwzd]

When should emails be sent out to end users? What has worked well for people and what hasn't?

Read the thread from the beginning.

Might be better than asking the same questions again.

Cheers

 

[defying]

I did, just checking for any progress updates or if anyone had anything to add. I have heard a lot of different ideas, just wanted to poll the crew for some extra input. Sorry if it is a bother.