discuss Incognito Domainer

[MapleDots]

Quite a while back I mentioned that I've put my domains to work and I have over 1000 domains forwarded to one of my online stores. So instead of parking income I'm harvesting the traffic and hopefully selling some items from my online store.

A few interesting things have happened during this time and it's not what you would expect. I'm selling more items than ever on the online store and I cannot say for sure if that is because of covid, or the increase in traffic, but that is another issue altogether.

What I really wanted to talk about with this post is kind of surprising...

Since I stopped forwarding my domains to a mapledots lander, and forward them masked (address remains in address bar) to my online store, the inquiries have shot up substantially. The clients basically email or call my business and ask for the person in charge.

The number one thing the email inquiry, or caller, says is "I notice you're not using the domain".

I say....
Ohhh, I forgot about that domain, I use it to drive traffic to my online store.

Client says...
Would you consider selling?

I say...
If the right offer came along but I'm really in no panic to sell.

Client says...
How much are you asking?

I say...
Never thought about it but it would have to be a genuine offer worth my while for me to consider selling.

Here is where it gets really interesting...

The dialogue is so civilized, there is nobody calling me a domain squatter, there is no name calling, nothing! It all seems sooo polite with me basically always repeating that it would have to be a significant offer worth my while for me to consider selling the domain.

Since I operate all of my businesses as a sole proprietorship I bill right through my online store and the end user has no idea that they ever did business with mapledots or a domainer.

I don't think I'll be going back to my previous way of selling domains anytime soon. I still use mapledots for my auction and marketplace activities, but for most inquiries I now use one of my regular business names.

Selling incognito is truly a refreshing way to sell domains. When the end user does not know they are dealing with a domainer the transaction is so much more pleasant.


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PLEASE DO NOT POST, OR DISCUSS, MY PERSONAL BUSINESS OR NAME IN THIS TOPIC.

Discuss the topic at hand without getting into the personal details of my business. - Thank You!

 

[Brands.International]

The "incognito domainer" is certainly a very interesting idea For some people, it might work well. But for this idea to work well one needs to be very, very, very patient.

Honestly @MapleDots you have great domain names, you invested a lot of time and money to make a nice portfolio. Your names are generic, and clean when it comes to things like TMs, etc. It is a very good portfolio.

So in your case, why be anonymous or incognito? I would do vice-versa if I would be you, start doing more social media, be more visible. This will also eliminate any shady or unpleasant interactions one might encounter, as shady people like to operate in dark. Once you are kind of visible/public/direct, this ceases.

The thing is, that except .com names you have a lot of great ccTLD names. But those are limited only to 1 country with less than 40 mil people. This means this is a limited end-user pool, compared to 7 bil end-user pool .com names have (and for this matter also generic new gTLDs have when I am at it).

A limited end-user pool means slow action (low liquidity), particularly in case you have high demands on your ROI. This leads me to the conclusion, that either you will be very patient (and simply sit on your names for the next 5-20 years, which would be the best approach in your case as you are still very young, IMO, and it is really an investment for your future, so why selling now), or, if you want some action now, go to social media, promote, and be proud on what you own.

This "incognito domainer" idea will probably lead to a lot of lowball offers (tricky domain investors will try their luck), which can lead to frustration in time. Your tricky idea will attract other tricky people, who will try to trick you... I guess it is best to be very truthful in what we are trying to achieve, sometimes simple truth is the most effective.

This is just IMO and I might be wrong, and no damage is done if you test the idea of "incognito domainer", which is certainly very interesting. GL

 

[MapleDots]

@Brands.International it's always nice to hear from you but showrooming does not work for me. It might with your generic new tld's but someone looking for a red domain is not going to shop my site and say I'll take the green one instead and maybe the nice orange one. I can add fancy logos, which I did for years, and try to say how my domains are better than the next guys but none of that matters in domaining.

In your case if someone wants my.city there is no use showing him my.other because he already know what he wants. The only person that benefits from showrooming is the domainer. He can brag about his shiny website with lots of colorful domains but to the end user that is irrelevant. He wants the domain he came for and that is it. By not telling him I am a domainer I increase my odds of contact. I have been experimenting with this back and forth a couple of years now and my stats are clear, I get more interaction when the client thinks they are dealing with an ordinary joe.

I have all my files and can re-launch my logo website in 10 minutes if I want. It looks great, it's super fancy but nobody calls. I feel great looking at the website and other domainers tell me they are jealous of all the nice logos. Problem is.... it still does not make for inquiries other than on the domain someone is interested in. If I intimidate him and he decides not to inquire because he thinks he will have to deal with a squatter then I miss the sale.

So lets face it, we can call ourselves whatever we want, domainer, a broker, a virtual property manager, but in the end the majority of the public will still call us squatters. It's a perception that is hard to overcome, I have figured out how. I simply don't tell them... period, nothing else.

 

[Bname.com]

Is it really that good?
Could it be a coincidence?
And what kind of products do you sell?
I've always wanted to do that

 

[MapleDots]

Is it really that good?
Could it be a coincidence?
And what kind of products do you sell?
I've always wanted to do that

No its not really that good, it's just better for me. It did not create a massive increase in sales because I did not discount my domains. It did however increase the number of inquiries so if that is what you want then try it for a while. It took me almost two years to come to this conclusion so I did not make the decision lightly. I switched back and forth a number of times to make sure the stats were accurate before posting this.

What the site is I forward to is not relevant to the topic because any business or personal site would do as long as it's not a domaining website.

 

[CraigD]

I have considered redirects (without masking) but had read years ago that it downgrades Google (Larry) Page Rank.

Can you tell us anything about your experience with effect on PR on the domain you are forwarding too?

 

[tonyk2000]

For domains I do not want to sell either temporary (60 days locks), permanently, or simply do not want to sell at this time (and so there is no sales lander or forsale banners or links), I often receive solicitations from domainagents. It means that some folks do not want to deal with owner(s) directly and prefer to hire a "broker", searching for one in G - ppc links. Of course domainagents are instantly ignored, since I would not sell anything via escrow dot com which service domainagents is still using. So, an incognito domainer should be prepared to deal with this escrow provider. The situation with .ca domains (which I think are involved in the original post) may be different though - local buyers/sellers and locally acepted payment methods, etc.

 

[eternaldomains]

1. The subdomain is irrelevant, it is only used to bulk forward 1000 domains with a keyclick. No subdomain is required for masking, you can mask each domain to any address you want in godaddy. I use a middle subdomain so I only have to change the subdomain forward and all 1000 domains change and point to where I want them to.

2. Again this is not possible because the subdomain is only used in godaddy, nobody ever sees it.

I use Costco Elavon Merchant Services to process my domain sales up to 10k.
After that I use certified funds and I have had really good luck with that.

In Canada we also have e-transfer and I will often use that to transfer domain funds and a lot of my friends on namepros will tell you we deal almost exclusively with e-transfers among ourselves because it is free to use.

More questions...

1 - Have you tried redirecting your names without masking for this experiment? Was thinking that since most end user companies don't redirect like this.

2 - (Payment process) I noticed these seem to be US/CA companies/banks, any idea if it's available for international users? I just tried signing up on Costco's (Elavon.net right?) but encountered unknown errors.

3 - GA. Not sure how to ask this one. I did try using GA off and on but last I remembered I was only able to see 1 step before a visitor hits my website. Using on DAN was a complete fail. And from your post, it looks like you can see like 2-3 steps before a visitor hits your online store. GA can't be used directly on the redirecting domains for sale right? Don't mind letting me know how to go about this, or point out a tutorial elsewhere? Or is it actually so simple that I've totally overlooked some of the buttons/functions? Until today GA feels like a maze to me.

4 - Another not so related - which hosting service you use? I always worry about uptime problems and it seems yours can handle like 1k-10k visitors a day? (assuming that you get at least 1-10 type-ins per domain per day)

5 - JavaScript - Is it ok for you to share it (minus the names of course)? Is it a simple redirect command or something else? Total noob on coding, but still got to learn for the near future.

6 - These days, do domain customers ever use the contact details from WHOIS when contacting you, or it's all/mostly through the contact page of the online store?

 

[MapleDots]

More questions...

1 - Have you tried redirecting your names without masking for this experiment? Was thinking that since most end user companies don't redirect like this.

2 - (Payment process) I noticed these seem to be US/CA companies/banks, any idea if it's available for international users? I just tried signing up on Costco's (Elavon.net right?) but encountered unknown errors.

3 - GA. Not sure how to ask this one. I did try using GA off and on but last I remembered I was only able to see 1 step before a visitor hits my website. Using on DAN was a complete fail. And from your post, it looks like you can see like 2-3 steps before a visitor hits your online store. GA can't be used directly on the redirecting domains for sale right? Don't mind letting me know how to go about this, or point out a tutorial elsewhere? Or is it actually so simple that I've totally overlooked some of the buttons/functions? Until today GA feels like a maze to me.

4 - Another not so related - which hosting service you use? I always worry about uptime problems and it seems yours can handle like 1k-10k visitors a day? (assuming that you get at least 1-10 type-ins per domain per day)

5 - JavaScript - Is it ok for you to share it (minus the names of course)? Is it a simple redirect command or something else? Total noob on coding, but still got to learn for the near future.

6 - These days, do domain customers ever use the contact details from WHOIS when contacting you, or it's all/mostly through the contact page of the online store?

1. No you need masking because masking is used to retain the domain address I'm selling in the address bar. It changes to my store domain when anything is clicked.

2. Sign up at your local costco, you can also do it online by visiting costco web and then clicking on services. You can sell internationally no issues.

3. I have Google Analytics on the store lander and again on the store itself. Once you analyse your data over several months you get a clear picture. I have custom apps in my store back end that make the google analytics simpler but that depends on the software you use to run the online store. My landing page is pure blogger and google analytics are baked in there as well.

4. I use blogger as my business website, I have zero branding and 100% uptime for no cost. I also wipe the blogger template and use a simple blank page to host mapledots. I had a pretty complex site there before I stripped it down. People don't know that you can use blogger for free hosting and you can do pretty much anything if you strip away the blogger template.

5. The easiest way to break out of frames is to add this into the header of your html, no special knowledge needed.

<base target='_top'/>

I actually just changed added this a few minutes ago because some people use noscript addons in their browser and this will work better than a java script in those circumstances.

6. I pay no attention to my whois, most of them are obscured anyways, I rely solely on clients taking the contact info off the webpage.

 

[UncleBrand]

@MapleDots thank you for sharing your unique experience

can you tell in number how much queries you got
and the sales you closed using this process

you can provide percentage numbers, if you don't want to let the cat out of the bag

keep up with the great work

 

[johnn]

Do you know that if you revealed a secret, a secret is not a secret anymore?

 

[NickB]

@Brands.International it's always nice to hear from you but showrooming does not work for me. It might with your generic new tld's but someone looking for a red domain is not going to shop my site and say I'll take the green one instead and maybe the nice orange one. I can add fancy logos, which I did for years, and try to say how my domains are better than the next guys but none of that matters in domaining.

In your case if someone wants my.city there is no use showing him my.other because he already know what he wants. The only person that benefits from showrooming is the domainer. He can brag about his shiny website with lots of colorful domains but to the end user that is irrelevant. He wants the domain he came for and that is it. By not telling him I am a domainer I increase my odds of contact. I have been experimenting with this back and forth a couple of years now and my stats are clear, I get more interaction when the client thinks they are dealing with an ordinary joe..

There's a fallacy (edit: or contradiction?) here if you care to look at it.........I have put it in bold

if someone wants a domain badly enough it will not not matter if your a domainer, a website owner, have a sales lander, no lander, not resolving or a picture of a smiley cat saying how are you......

If they want it they will engage with you or hit the BIN button.......

Engagement might increase but then it boils down to a persons sales acumen and closing technique rather than how the domain is presented (or not)........

 

[eternaldomains]

1. No you need masking because masking is used to retain the domain address I'm selling in the address bar. It changes to my store domain when anything is clicked.

2. Sign up at your local costco, you can also do it online by visiting costco web and then clicking on services. You can sell internationally no issues.

3. I have Google Analytics on the store lander and again on the store itself. Once you analyse your data over several months you get a clear picture. I have custom apps in my store back end that make the google analytics simpler but that depends on the software you use to run the online store. My landing page is pure blogger and google analytics are baked in there as well.

4. I use blogger as my business website, I have zero branding and 100% uptime for no cost. I also wipe the blogger template and use a simple blank page to host mapledots. I had a pretty complex site there before I stripped it down. People don't know that you can use blogger for free hosting and you can do pretty much anything if you strip away the blogger template.

5. The easiest way to break out of frames is to add this into the header of your html, no special knowledge needed.

<base target='_top'/>

I actually just changed added this a few minutes ago because some people use noscript addons in their browser and this will work better than a java script in those circumstances.

6. I pay no attention to my whois, most of them are obscured anyways, I rely solely on clients taking the contact info off the webpage.

Thanks a lot for answering the many questions I asked. They're very helpful.

Just 1 aspect left I think:

Blogger - a quick check on wiki says that there's no support for eCommerce (I'm aware that this might be a too generalized statement), so I suppose you use apps to integrate the Costco system? Or does Costco provide the codes (HTML etc) to embed into the website?

 

[MapleDots]

There's a fallacy (edit: or contradiction?) here if you care to look at it.........I have put it in bold

if someone wants a domain badly enough it will not not matter if your a domainer, a website owner, have a sales lander, no lander, not resolving or a picture of a smiley cat saying how are you......

If they want it they will engage with you or hit the BIN button.......

Engagement might increase but then it boils down to a persons sales acumen and closing technique rather than how the domain is presented (or not)........

Actually what I was trying to say is that if someone comes to the site for domainA.com, by showing him hundreds of other domains a domainer might actually be decreasing the odds of selling it.

Your point about the client purchasing it regardless of how is sold is not quite accurate. Many end users consider a number of domains before they make their final choice, one of the first things they look at is who owns it, and what is it used for. Then they go to their second choice and so on.

In my case a small business owns it and looks like it's not really utilized. That sets the tone and gets the end user to think there might be a chance in acquiring the domain. There is no intimidation from a domain squatter. I hate using that term but I am only using it because that is what the majority of the general public thinks of domain investors.

 

[NickB]

Actually what I was trying to say is that if someone comes to the site for domainA.com, by showing him hundreds of other domains a domainer might actually be decreasing the odds of selling it.

Your point about the client purchasing it regardless of how is sold is not quite accurate. Many end users consider a number of domains before they make their choice, one of the first things they look at is who owns it and what is it used for. Then they go to their second choice and so on.

In my case a small business owns it and looks like it's not really utilized. That sets the tone and gets the end user to think there might be a chance in acquiring the domain. There is no intimidation from a domain squatter. I hate using that term but I am only using it because that is what the majority of the general public thinks of domain investors.

Regarding a dedicated website showcasing all your domains - it shows you are in business of solely selling a commodity (domains), they either want that particular domain and buy it or see it is out of budget and then browse your inventory as you would in any any other shopping/buyer experience......if you have a wide selection of domains within a certain niche then this will benefit/increase your sales conversion, if you have loads of random domains then this will not be the case.....so it ends up on relying on someone's individual portfolio (and the size of it)

A motivated buyer will be looking at one particular domain, when they realise that domain is out of budget or have a personal view on the "morality" of buying from a reseller they then move on to option "B" which in most cases will be going down a tier in quality......meaning you still end up with the superior domain name and the opportunities that come from that.......

Regarding utilisation, I already said this is a positive and in my mind is is one of the main benefits in doing what your doing......

It boils down to how badly that person wants that domain, how you wrap it up becomes immaterial after a certain point.......

What I would find interesting is if people with large portfolios could share the percentage of deals that fall through because the potential end user realises they are a domain investor/business owner

 

[Youngly]

I also redirect some of my domains to my site but I have never had a sale. I think I will redirect some more and see. This sounds very nice.
I also feel you might be getting a lot of queries from domaines.

What kind of store do you have

 

[lock]

I actually did the same then changed my mind as found couldn't find out stats. A way better idea is to have your menu or lander for your business on the 1000 names. This way they click from one domain to next which is a bonus and you still get to use the customer as you intend. You also could have domain for sale information using the traffic.

 

[passini]

I think if an enduser wants a name most of the times he doesn't care too much who is selling...

Incognito, Afternic, Sedo or something else doesn't make difference to him.

He just wants to name his business like this and If he has the budget he will buy.

IMHO

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks for kicking off a really interesting discussion, @MapleDots . The idea that users might be more willing to purchase from someone who is not a domainer is definitely reasonable, and among other things suggest that we need to do work to change how the domain world is viewed. Imagine the same thing with real estate: most would be more willing to buy via a real estate agent than otherwise.
Bob

 

[TauseefKhan]

Just read your post, and earlier today I posted an article on my blog about being 'The stealth Domain Investor.' I think you're not alone - there are abundant domain buyers and sellers who remain incognito.

 

[Ostrados]

This is very unique and surprising tactic so thanks a lot for shating it.

My only concern is that you will may leaving a lot of money on the table, I visualize a domain sale as funnel in each step in it you will lose percentage of users before an end user reach final point to buy.

Like for exanple:

Landing page => for sale note => inquiry => negotiation => sale

The problem is that you removed the "for sale note" at this step most users will not proceed to the next step which is "inquiry", only small percentage of very keen end users will proceed.

Maybe it worked for you because of cvoid-19 situation? so I think the best thing to do is to try split A/B test, were you keep half of your domains here and half there.

If you already did A/B split test and confirm that it is working better for you, then it could be working for your specific portfolio, I never look at it but I guess it includes plenty of generic domains and one word domains? In other word this tactic may work for high quality domains, but may not work for a lower quality portfolios.