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

 

[Volguuz]

Volguuz -- even if you attempt to sell a company its [exact company name].com at a very "modest" price, chances are only about 10-20% they'll express any interest at all, and less than 5% they'll proceed with the purchase. When you throw in additional levels of indirection (.net instead of .com, hyphenating the domain, adding an "s", "inc", etc.), those odds drop off exponentially.

There might be less of a dropoff if your domain corresponded to a real financial product or service, but I bet you couldn't articulate what a "mortgage financial" is -- because they don't exist! No more so than a "grapefruit apple", "algorithm software", or any other two similar terms put together. If I were attempting to sell you a product you found out I hadn't a clue about its composition, use, or corresponding industry, wouldn't that turn you off?

You should only attempt to flip domains whose keywords you could RESEARCH. Maybe it has a Wikipedia entry (e.g. "energy crops"), an explanatory website w/ directory of major players (e.g. "lawn greetings"), or has alternative TLDs which forward to major players in the business (e.g. "shed designs" -- ShedDesigns.net is a redirect). You need concrete evidence that endusers have found labeling themselves with your exact [keyword].sometld has raked in dough to optimize your profit potential -- and trust me, a 15% "I am interested" response rate on sub-$100 domains is quite optimal in this business.

Addendum: I would advise staying AWAY from finance domains since the space is ridiculously overcrowded. I've only managed to flip a couple of purely financially oriented domains, and not for high amounts. Stick with consumer goods, the trades, software/technology names, and GEOs.

Thank you for the time you took to share your thoughts Joshua.

I have just now confirmed my hypothesis in which the importance given by SE's to both the singular and plural forms of a word are similar, and although i understand that there are several factors that influence the way an SE rank any site, should both the singular and plural form of it share similar conditions both are prone to receive the same rank and be listed amongst the first.

My basis for this is a small research and one such article i read is the following:

How a Search Engine Might Handle Singular and Plural Queries

So ultimately it is a sum of factors not related to pluralization of words that influence it's rank.

Now as for the articulation of these two keywords together i haven't thought of it Joshua but it is an interesting point.

Looking at the markets/niches on a broader perspective there are many examples where the joining of two words don't mean much but they're individual expression has its meaning, still you can see examples where words that mean the same or point towards the same thing are used together and you have people advertising with PPC campaigns, I also have no idea how to articulate MortgageCapFinancial and the name is being used for over 10 years by a mortgage company with a terrible website design and it has ownership of another 4 or 5 domains.

Truth is they may be found by SE's based on singular keywords they contain and if the domain helps boost this i see no reason for the lack of interest.

Chances are you may be right Joshua and chances are i may also succeed, i have seen several cases where people succeed against all odds and made a profit and you yourself have complimented these people

I also understand the need to follow some general rule which mirrors the way this market IS but i also want to see where i can bend these rules and create exceptions of course all of these will be at my expense and effort :D that is the beauty of learning by ourselves.

But you have made very valid points with reason behind them and they are contribution to this wonderful thread.

I will however focus on refining my methods of finding new domains and if i see a domain with good PR or search volume i will take that into consideration.

Thank you for your time.

 

[bgmv]

I also have no idea how to articulate MortgageCapFinancial and the name is being used for over 10 years by a mortgage company with a terrible website design and it has ownership of another 4 or 5 domains.
.

Shouldnt this tell you something? If they have a terribel site design and a domain that doesnt really make sense why does that make your domain valuable to someone, just because someone else out there has a domain that is three mashed up words that doesnt mean others will be interested.

 

[Volguuz]

Shouldnt this tell you something? If they have a terribel site design and a domain that doesnt really make sense why does that make your domain valuable to someone, just because someone else out there has a domain that is three mashed up words that doesnt mean others will be interested.

That is true Bgmv, but it doesn't say other wise as well, i'm only pointing that the niches are very big, and there are all sorts of people.

Bottom line i believe i can sell it, but i am sure that is not the best domain in the world.

By the way the Domain market is getting out of new words for the common extensions, and .tv seems to start showing up more, what are your opinions on new good extensions and how do they differ in price compared to the .com and .net?

 

[staffjam]

E-mailing End Users - But there is a problem!

I'm trying to contact various end users for a few of my names.
But there is a problem, they justa have [email protected], etc... and no details of who the big dog is.

I really don't want to put: Dear Sir, Hi, etc.. As this just shreiks Spam.

Any ideas what i can put that won't get the mail immediately deleted?

Please forward to Webmaster, Head of Business Development (this also screams spam to me as well.)

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[PMDN]

A suggestion:
if the decision maker(s) remains unknown is to be sure to put the name of the domain you believe would be of interest to the organization as the subject of the email.
If there is indeed interest, it may be forwarded to the correct person, the person who would make the decision to buy the domain, whatever the content of the email is.

 

[Kate]

Shouldnt this tell you something? If they have a terribel site design and a domain that doesnt really make sense why does that make your domain valuable to someone, just because someone else out there has a domain that is three mashed up words that doesnt mean others will be interested.

Well their site design is not bad by 1995 standards :hehe:
But it also means they don't take their online presence seriously. Maybe they don't do a lot of business through the Internet or they need to be educated. From my experience I would say it's going to be harder to educate them on the benefits of strong domains :gl:

 

[JoshuaPz]

Volguuz - If you own 5000 domains like Mortgage/Financials/com, you'll likely get about one inquiry per month.

If you own 5000 domains like Gambling/Intervention/com (an intuitive, high-market-cap service), you'll probably receive closer to 15-20 inquiries per month.

Yes, there are plenty of endusers out there who have, and will continue to, purchase nonsensical-sounding domain names. But why would you want to do anything except maximize your odds for your cash?

You can try justifying your strategy all you want, but your logic is unsound. A baseball team *might* win a game by taking an unconventional approach like attempting to bunt on every pitch, but what manager their right mind would smash their odds on the grindstone like this?

(FYI, I acquired Gambling/Intervention/com off an $8.99 GoDaddy backorder, which probably isn't much more than what you paid for Mortgage/Financials/com.)

 

[JoshuaPz]

If you're e-mailing a big corp., try one of these approaches:

* If they're big, chances are they've been around for a while. Use the DomainTools History Tool to look back at whois entries from the company's early days. Quite often, the admin. / registrant contacts will be specific individuals, and on occasion, high-level decision makers.

* Sign up for Jigsaw.com and search for names of high-ranking marketing or business development reps. Shoot one of them an e-mail and follow it up with a phone call several days later.

In the worst case scenario, just begin your e-mail with "Dear [Company Name] business development staff". See the temples in my sig. for some actual examples.

Good luck.

 

[garptrader]

Based on prior experience I wouldn't assume that just because a company has a poor domain, a branded non-generic. or .net/biz domain that they are interested in paying $XXX-$XXXX for a more descriptive alternative or .COM domain. If you can offer the decision maker a great domain at a fantastic price and convince them why this purchase would be great for their business, then this approach might work. Selling domains to end users is probably as much about persuasion and sales abilities as it is about acquiring good domains to sell.

 

[AzN]

If you're e-mailing a big corp., try one of these approaches:

* If they're big, chances are they've been around for a while. Use the DomainTools History Tool to look back at whois entries from the company's early days. Quite often, the admin. / registrant contacts will be specific individuals, and on occasion, high-level decision makers.

* Sign up for Jigsaw.com and search for names of high-ranking marketing or business development reps. Shoot one of them an e-mail and follow it up with a phone call several days later.

In the worst case scenario, just begin your e-mail with "Dear [Company Name] business development staff". See the temples in my sig. for some actual examples.

Good luck.

Thank you for the good idea, I will try that too

 

[staffjam]

Thanks for the advice guys.
I'm devinately going to try jigsaw.com - great idea.

 

[skulldude]

Help with endusers

Hi, this is my first post here and I have gained tons of information on domaining from these forums. So, thank you everyone for the great info.

I was hoping I could get some help as I am working on my first domain sale. I had emailed between about 40 to 50 end users on a lawyer domain that I have. I was thinking originally that I would try and get 500 dollars for it, but I have got a ton of interest from several lawyers. The first lawyer that I talked to said verbally he would give me 1000 without even thinking. He said he would formally put the offer through on sedo in the next couple days. But since then, I had 2 more lawyers contact me today on July 4 alone saying they wanted the domain. All this interest has come within the past 24 hours of emailing these people. Given the response I have gotten already I expect to have more lawyers contact me on Monday.

The domain is listed at sedo for "make an offer." Should I send it to the sedo auction when I get my first offer or should I just take offers from them verbally and then call them each back one by one and see if they want to increase their offers? What is the best way to handle this situation?

Thanks again

 

[businessjohn]

Find Generic Domains for your business at...

Generic Domains / Domain Names - Generic Domains

Your signature reminds me of one of my domains Generic Website, www.genericwebsite.com.

I'd like to monetize it more and find an end buyer. Do you have any suggestions?

 

[Domineiro]

People... I had a domain which i think i can make a good sell for a end-user. But a got a few questions:

1 - Which email you sent the offer. For the host email or one of those contacts that normally are in the website?
2 - In the email you explain why they should be the domain? (searches per month etc etc.)

 

[Volguuz]

People... I had a domain which i think i can make a good sell for a end-user. But a got a few questions:

1 - Which email you sent the offer. For the host email or one of those contacts that normally are in the website?
2 - In the email you explain why they should be the domain? (searches per month etc etc.)

Johnnnson i would recommend that you take some time and read through this whole thread, as both these questions and a lot more information regarding the "end-user" sales is explained in great detail.

1 - Regarding which email to contact it is a must that you can make your email reach the highest decision maker person on the company, if it is not possible then your next target should be the person who can redirect your pitch to whoever can decide whether your domain is a good investment for their business or not.

Usually i try to get as many as i can by checking the Whois info and getting the administrative contact, looking in their website for support, marketing or any other relevant email (usually i try to avoid "info@" emails) and then in the pitch request the email to be forwarded to the correct person.

One thing however that would be great is if you can on the whois info discover the name of the company or in their website and go to manta(dot)com to search for that company, usually it helps to filter through the list if you have the address of the company which also shows in the whois, and try to find there who is the CEO or the guy in charge is and if they have his email... it is rare but i've had cases where i could find it or found that the administrative email was from him.

Then make a good pitch or you can use some of the ones shared on this thread and send it to all the email addresses that you've gathered.

2 - Yes using the data you've acquired from researching your domain and pointing out its good aspects while highlighting how they could benefit the end user will play in your favor. But be honest and don't overestimate your prospects.


Hope you're successful and good luck.

 

[Gregg Hall]

You are quite right.
It's not easy to get #1 position.
And that's what I meant.

"There is higher chance to be #1 on Google for exact search term than other domain names."
Higher chance - I guess I should say "better chance".

It really depends on the competition. I have had numerous domains that have been number one in Google and many more that are on the first page with ZERO linking, promoting, etc. Finding the exact match .coms that get a good number of searches is difficult, other TLDs are easier to obtain but not as easy to rank. Google definitely seems to Favor .com then .net and .org

Also, DO NOT underestimate the power of a twitter user name for a high value domain you want to promote. Google gives Twitter a LOT of weight

G

 

[garptrader]

Finding available domains for searched-for phrases in .COM is extremely difficult. .NET is much easier and yet Google will rank exact match phrases for .net sites fairly well. I have one .net site while not a highly-searched phrase is number one in both Google and Yahoo. Another .net site is in the middle of page one of Google for a 33 thousand monthly search phrase. .TV does not rank as well in the US though I find some of my Spanish .TV sites do receive consistent organic traffic from other countries (I suppose search ranking varies by country). Also, with a one-word domain, a site tends to get a ranking benefit and consequently search traffic for many longer-tail terms.

 

[0500559543]

i have plan to sell some of my generic domains on FEATURED LISTING ($39) or CATEGORY SHOWCASE ($9) on SEDO, but is it worth it? have anyone tried it before?

 

[FPForum]

i have plan to sell some of my generic domains on FEATURED LISTING ($39) or CATEGORY SHOWCASE ($9) on SEDO, but is it worth it? have anyone tried it before?

I tried a feature listing once and got nothing from it..But, it could have just been my domain. Anyways, haven't done it again since.

 

[B.C.]

End Users

I posted this in another topic, but for those of you wanting to learn more about contacting end users, check out: How to Find End Users