strategy My outbound this month

[abstractdomainer]

Happened to try outbound after like months, properly. By properly, I mean, reaching out to the right leads instead of 100s of random leads to get a sale. There were a mix of extensions, length of domains and the number was also good.
Here is more about the outbound and the results:

1) Geo-domains
I had close to 6 geo-domains that I purchased for cheap for $7 or so, per domain. Mostly, there were 2 niches with 3 domains each. I was very sure that I am closing one sale for sure, tonight. I opened YellowPages, types the name of the city (200,000+ population, and a pretty popular niche, even at this time). One of the domains had 19 characters and some others were between 10 and 19.
Reached out to 10 best leads for each of these domains. Took me close to 30 minutes of research to find the domains. Another 10 minutes to register it and then 30 minutes per domain (close to 3 minutes per lead to find the contact and reach out).
Number of domains - 6
Niches: 3
Mails/contact form per domain - 10
Total time investment - 220 minutes
Number of replies - 7
6 said, not interested. 1 agreed for a sale of around $199 and then never replied back.

Followed up with the leads after 3 days, Wednesdays mostly, around 12 pm.
4 replied not interested.

2) .CO domain
Outbound for 30 .CO domains. Most were either 1-word domains, 2-word domains, or brandables.
Mail/domain - 3
Reply received - 5
Time invested - 360 minutes (approx 6 hours)
2 not interested.
1 asked "Explain why your name is better than mine." I explained. It looks like he was not convinced.
1 offered $100 for a domain I wanted $699. Then I thought, since it may expire, let me get rid of it. Said yes. The buyer said can't buy.

3) Brandable domain
Had a few brandable domains in .ORG with a lot of leads. I outbound for 1 of them. Reached out to close to 15 leads for this one.
1 replied that not interested. Only interested in .COM version of the domain.

So that's my experience with outbound after a month. Close to 10 hours of investment with 0 sales. I believe the names were average and I have sold such names earlier. My question is:

1) Has the market changed for outbound or is it the COVID thing?
2) How has your experience been with outbound lately?

Share your comments!

 

[damance]

Number of domains - 32 (in last 40 days) EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Number of replies - 23
Sales: 0
Asking prices: ($100 - $288)


1. How much?
2. Not interested.
3. No thanks.
4. What are you asking for it?
5. UNSUBSCRIBE
6. At this time I am not interested, but thank you very much for following up.
7. Thinking this is a scam
8. Thank you for the offer. No, Thank you. Unsubscribe
9. its useless to me
10.No thank you.
11. Hello No thank you Regards
12. Unsubscribe
13. Thank you but unless it’s a good deal I won’t be a buyer.
14. unsubscribe
15. unsubscribe
16. What is the price?
17. We are not interested at this time
18. Unsubscribe
19. Pete Please look into this if this is something I should consider.
20. Not interest Ben
21.unsubscribe
22. unsubscribe
23. Many thanks for your email and offer. It's a great name! I will stick with my own domain name at this stage but thank you anyway

few months ago:

Number of domains - 33 EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Sales: 6
ClarkAttorney $249
UnderbrushClearing $200
PrintingAndDesigning $388
TexarkanaLawyer $100
PropertyManagementVisalia $100
TreeTrimmingOrlando $200

 

[bmugford]

I don't think outbound (of marginal domains) has really been that amazing of a model in recent years, even in good times.

I think it can only really work on a massive (blatant spamming) scale.

Selling domains is not easy. It is even harder proactively.

Brad

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Selling domains proactively is difficult. The little success that I have experienced is attributable to the traffic generated by the domains rather than the domains themselves.

Say I find an expired domain name in the yellowpages of a company that has gone out of business, I test the traffic for 4-5 days. Assuming that the domain generates 150 visitors a day, what I offer my prospects is 4,500 high quality leads a month (55k/year) wrapped up in a domain name. That changes the conversation.

Most business owners don't understand domains...but they do understand leads, clients and customers.

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Correct. But if it happens to sell, for that lead, it was a fair mail, isn't it?
And to find that lead for which this is fair, if you do a targeted email, ain't you reaching out to the prospects?

I will let you in on a little secret. If you do your outbound through the newsletter of a niche forum, you will get much better responses/results. For instance, if you are selling real estate domains, send an ad out through a real estate forum newsletter. It is not free, but the ROI is much better. The obvious reason being that the information is being delivered to them by a trusted source.

 

[bmugford]

What about even if the domains don't generate traffic? What would be the conversation then? Can you still, like, pitch in terms of the brand value that will bring in more leads and hence, higher conversion?

The thing you could fall back on is an objectively higher quality domain.

For instance if you are trying to sell a domain to a plumber in Austin, AustinPlumbing.com is a lot better than PlumbingServicesInAustin.com or something like that.

The problem is clear upgrades are rarely available as hand registrations and cost serious money to acquire on the aftermarket.

If you are hand registering domains, it is unlikely to be a massive upgrade for an end user at this point. There are around 140M .COM registered.

The pickings are going to be extremely slim.

Brad

 

[Jv1999]

Yeah, outbounding is domain investing on hard-mode.

Show attachment 153847

I did this last year trying to sell names for $250-$450. Did super targeted outbounds on names where existing businesses would get a significant upgrade with the proposed name, and it was like 2-3 sales out of 100 contacted. This is in line with what marketers teach, that at any given time there are only 3% of the potential buyers who are "active" and want to buy right now. So on average, you'll at best get around 3 sales out of 100.

Show attachment 153848

https://stickybranding.com/3-rule-engage-customers-before-they-need-your-services/

This was my experience too, with my stats closer to 4% or 5%. Granted, that's only for first-time emails. I didn't really follow-through with follow-ups and re-sends to opens. When I did that, I had probably 2x more sails but at the $100 to $299 region.

There's a lot of factors involved. For example, if you're new to it, your email won't be auto-spam with email providers. But the more you do it, the more your email gets sent to the spam box...

In fact... I had an interested buyer contact me almost a year later saying he didn't see my email because it was in SPAM and then almost made a $500 offer. I could only wonder how many successful buyers just didn't see my email because it was sent to spam.

At the end of the days too, the guilt will eat at you.. that you're spamming people. Yes, it's in-line with the CANN-SPAM act.. but morally, it's not lol. Law and morals never truly mix.

But consider this -- I outbounded an exo tower domain that I bought for $300ish and there were no bites even when I brought the price down to $545 or something. And that's including re-emails to the whole list whether or not the opened.

And then suddenly, recently I got an offer out of the blue from GoDaddy brokerage services (which means the buyer paid $79 or $72 just to find me) to acquire it and their initial offer was $1,500. So yeah............................................................ outbound is good only if you know what you're doing and really send out a formal-looking email that doesn't get flagged as spam.

But I believe the true key is to get your domain in front of interested buyers that would make inbound inquiries. The only way to do that is to do what the mass media has been doing... buying ads.

 

[Indianad]

Happened to try outbound after like months, properly. By properly, I mean, reaching out to the right leads instead of 100s of random leads to get a sale. There were a mix of extensions, length of domains and the number was also good.
Here is more about the outbound and the results:

Share your comments!

@abstractdomainer Congratulations on your effort. I know, effort doesn't always pay the bills or win the prize, however, with persistent effort on whichever platform...eventually will pay off.

I'm a newbie so I cannot offer any wisdom on your choice of methods. However, what I can state is that your determination and persistence is a key to your success. With all of the "no's" that you are receiving...the "yes" is not far ahead!!

Again..congratulations on your effort and your success that's near!!

Best,
Indianad

 

[bmugford]

I don't see how contacting 100 potential buyers can be called spam if you sent an email to each i don't see a problem with it but if you choose to keep on emailing people that don't reply to you then that is spam it would make more sense to send out 100emails to 100 people than 10emails to 3 people don't you think so ?

Spam is generally bulk + unsolicited emails.

There are different levels of spam though. I will get some people pitching domains then 4 or 5 followup emails looking for updates. That is no doubt spam.

If people don't respond, move on, and quit annoying them with further emails.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

Even the clear upgrades are very difficult to sell outbound. I have a few of those that I get some low-ball inbound offers for. I got zero responses from outbound. It depends on the population size and business culture in that area.

I agree. It is hard to even sell good domains.

I get endless $XX and low $XXX offers for domains that would sell for 4 and 5 figures reseller.

Brad

 

[noneisnone]

I will let you in on a little secret. If you do your outbound through the newsletter of a niche forum, you will get much better responses/results. For instance, if you are selling real estate domains, send an ad out through a real estate forum newsletter. It is not free, but the ROI is much better. The obvious reason being that the information is being delivered to them by a trusted source.

more information please this is so interesting

 

[NameBuyer.com]

How was your stats? When you say 3%, you mean there are 3 buyers for every 100 buyers contacted, am I right here?
Also, a second question is, what is the sale percentage - say you buy 100 domains and contact 100 prospects for each of these. What kind of conversion rates are we seeing then?

Third thing, where do you get 100 leads from?

This was about 35-40 domains, and contacting 2-3 highly targeted people for each domain.

If you are contacting 100 people per domain, that would be definite spamming at the expense of other people. I would avoid anything like this.

So the number of people contacted was around 100 and I had 2 sales upfront, and 1 I had to reply back and forth with for a month before he completed the purchase.

It was hours of work manually looking up all the contacts. For the pizza domain this meant figuring out who the owner was and determining the best way to contact him/her.


I'm not advocating doing this in any way. For me, I think it worked out to $20 per hour. That is after I already had the domains. You are contacting your best prospects for those names and putting yourself in a weaker negotiating position. Not only that, but you are taking your chances of that prospect approaching you when it is "their big idea" next year and setting it on fire, or at best highly discounting your final price.

When I started it, I thought "hey, I've got 7,000 domains, what if I can spend 5 hours and make an extra $1,000 per week. Didn't work like that. You'll likely be grinding....HARD.

 

[NameBuyer.com]

But people say that majority of their sales comes from follow ups.

Following up with people that contact you is a great way to get or close sales. Following up with people that express some level of interest is also a good way to close sales. If you are a real estate agent, following up with past clients is a great way to keep a steady stream of business.

But, I think the notion that most sales come from persistent outbound type of follow ups is an urban legend from the Zig Ziglar days in the 1980s. His books are great and everyone should listen to his audio book "The Secrets of Closing the Sale", but I think this part of the data he used was incorrect.

Take a look at the excerpt from the site below.

source:
https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/15/...everyone-cites-are-actually-completely-false/


You can test this by asking yourself, how many of your purchases were made after someone cold contacted you 8+ times? I can think of maybe 1 at most. Sales are usually made because you had a need and the product filled that need.

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Looks like that is the truth. I ended up spending quite a lot of time. And opportunity cost is high. For anyone who doesn't get the right response.


What about even if the domains don't generate traffic? What would be the conversation then? Can you still, like, pitch in terms of the brand value that will bring in more leads and hence, higher conversion?

The thing you could fall back on is an objectively higher quality domain.

For instance if you are trying to sell a domain to a plumber in Austin, AustinPlumbing.com is a lot better than PlumbingServicesInAustin.com or something like that.

The problem is clear upgrades are rarely available as hand registrations and cost serious money to acquire on the aftermarket.

If you are hand registering domains, it is unlikely to be a massive upgrade for an end user at this point. There are around 140M .COM registered.

The pickings are going to be extremely slim.

Brad

Even the clear upgrades are very difficult to sell outbound. I have a few of those that I get some low-ball inbound offers for. I got zero responses from outbound. It depends on the population size and business culture in that area.

I have city+pharmacy.com, city+mall.com, city+health.com and city+clinic.com that I haven't been able to sell outbound. About 8 states have towns with that name, but they are all small towns.

 

[Rich]

Number of domains - 32 (in last 40 days) EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Number of replies - 23
Sales: 0
Asking prices: ($100 - $288)


1. How much?
2. Not interested.
3. No thanks.
4. What are you asking for it?
5. UNSUBSCRIBE
6. At this time I am not interested, but thank you very much for following up.
7. Thinking this is a scam
8. Thank you for the offer. No, Thank you. Unsubscribe
9. its useless to me
10.No thank you.
11. Hello No thank you Regards
12. Unsubscribe
13. Thank you but unless it’s a good deal I won’t be a buyer.
14. unsubscribe
15. unsubscribe
16. What is the price?
17. We are not interested at this time
18. Unsubscribe
19. Pete Please look into this if this is something I should consider.
20. Not interest Ben
21.unsubscribe
22. unsubscribe
23. Many thanks for your email and offer. It's a great name! I will stick with my own domain name at this stage but thank you anyway

few months ago:

Number of domains - 33 EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Sales: 6
ClarkAttorney $249
UnderbrushClearing $200
PrintingAndDesigning $388
TexarkanaLawyer $100
PropertyManagementVisalia $100
TreeTrimmingOrlando $200

I dig the tree names, plenty of money in that industry.
I'm not sure if it would sell more names but you may save yourself time outbounding with a price for the domain.

 

[noneisnone]

Yesterday i decided to try it for the first time seriously speaking
i sent out over 300 emails for the sale of 5 different domains waiting on replies will let you know if i get any sales Worst part of it is acquiring the emails

 

[abstractdomainer]

I don't think outbound (of marginal domains) has really been that amazing of a model in recent years, even in good times.

I think it can only really work on a massive (blatant spamming) scale.

Selling domains is not easy. It is even harder proactively.

Brad

Looks like that is the truth. I ended up spending quite a lot of time. And opportunity cost is high. For anyone who doesn't get the right response.

Selling domains proactively is difficult. The little success that I have experienced is attributable to the traffic generated by the domains rather than the domains themselves.

Say I find an expired domain name in the yellowpages of a company that has gone out of business, I test the traffic for 4-5 days. Assuming that the domain generates 150 visitors a day, what I offer my prospects is 4,500 high quality leads a month (55k/year) wrapped up in a domain name. That changes the conversation.

Most business owners don't understand domains...but they do understand leads, clients and customers.

What about even if the domains don't generate traffic? What would be the conversation then? Can you still, like, pitch in terms of the brand value that will bring in more leads and hence, higher conversion?

 

[abstractdomainer]

I agree. It is hard to even sell good domains.

I get endless $XX and low $XXX offers for domains that would sell for 4 and 5 figures reseller.

Brad

Did I forget to mention:
I got a $5 offer for a domain I had said in the mail, that names like these sell for $1,199.

Number of domains - 32 (in last 40 days) EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Number of replies - 23
Sales: 0
Asking prices: ($100 - $288)


1. How much?
2. Not interested.
3. No thanks.
4. What are you asking for it?
5. UNSUBSCRIBE
6. At this time I am not interested, but thank you very much for following up.
7. Thinking this is a scam
8. Thank you for the offer. No, Thank you. Unsubscribe
9. its useless to me
10.No thank you.
11. Hello No thank you Regards
12. Unsubscribe
13. Thank you but unless it’s a good deal I won’t be a buyer.
14. unsubscribe
15. unsubscribe
16. What is the price?
17. We are not interested at this time
18. Unsubscribe
19. Pete Please look into this if this is something I should consider.
20. Not interest Ben
21.unsubscribe
22. unsubscribe
23. Many thanks for your email and offer. It's a great name! I will stick with my own domain name at this stage but thank you anyway

few months ago:

Number of domains - 33 EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Sales: 6
ClarkAttorney $249
UnderbrushClearing $200
PrintingAndDesigning $388
TexarkanaLawyer $100
PropertyManagementVisalia $100
TreeTrimmingOrlando $200

Amazing! Keep it going! Pretty decent. How much time did it take to do this - as it done over a week or a month or what?
How many follow ups and at what intervals?

I dig the tree names, plenty of money in that industry.
I'm not sure if it would sell more names but you may save yourself time outbounding with a price for the domain.

Tree names? What is it?

 

[Rich]

Did I forget to mention:
I got a $5 offer for a domain I had said in the mail, that names like these sell for $1,199.
Noticed the tree trimming and underbrush clearing domains are part of vegetation management and I can relate.

Amazing! Keep it going! Pretty decent. How much time did it take to do this - as it done over a week or a month or what?
How many follow ups and at what intervals?


Tree names? What is it?

Noticed the tree trimming and underbrush clearing names are part of vegetation management and I can relate.

 

[BrandAptly.com]

Follow up does wonders for some people. Not sure how much, but it does.

To confess, I never attempt a follow up when I don't get a response to my first email. You may be right that it can work wonders. I often just assume that the person simply wasn't interested. I haven't yet figured out how to evoke interest in a domain from a prospect without backing the pitch with data.

I also think regular outbounds might even be harder now seeing that a lot of small business are clutching onto their purses.

 

[karmaco]

Number of domains - 32 (in last 40 days) EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Number of replies - 23
Sales: 0
Asking prices: ($100 - $288)


1. How much?
2. Not interested.
3. No thanks.
4. What are you asking for it?
5. UNSUBSCRIBE
6. At this time I am not interested, but thank you very much for following up.
7. Thinking this is a scam
8. Thank you for the offer. No, Thank you. Unsubscribe
9. its useless to me
10.No thank you.
11. Hello No thank you Regards
12. Unsubscribe
13. Thank you but unless it’s a good deal I won’t be a buyer.
14. unsubscribe
15. unsubscribe
16. What is the price?
17. We are not interested at this time
18. Unsubscribe
19. Pete Please look into this if this is something I should consider.
20. Not interest Ben
21.unsubscribe
22. unsubscribe
23. Many thanks for your email and offer. It's a great name! I will stick with my own domain name at this stage but thank you anyway

few months ago:

Number of domains - 33 EMD and GEO domains
Mails/contact form per domain: 20-55 + follow ups to all
Sales: 6
ClarkAttorney $249
UnderbrushClearing $200
PrintingAndDesigning $388
TexarkanaLawyer $100
PropertyManagementVisalia $100
TreeTrimmingOrlando $200

All those unsubscribes tell you what people really think about unsolicited email marketing

 

[abstractdomainer]

All those unsubscribes tell you what people really think about unsolicited email marketing

Correct. But if it happens to sell, for that lead, it was a fair mail, isn't it?
And to find that lead for which this is fair, if you do a targeted email, ain't you reaching out to the prospects?

 

[noneisnone]

i always try to reach out for potential buyers never had someone respond to me i just send out one email and if i don't get a reply i don't send another

 

[BrandAptly.com]

How do you check the traffic of a domain name? Any tool?

You will have to buy the domain first. Then you do a 301 redirect to your website using a link that gives click counts. I use a plugin called Linker on a wordpress installation. If you like the traffic, you keep the domain. If not, you get you get a refund. You have 5 days with Godaddy.

 

[noneisnone]

But people say that majority of their sales comes from follow ups.

Ya you get the refund for the domain (which would be what, say $50-$100).
But what about the money you just spent on the newsletter advertising? Isn't that a lot?
I am thinking that we are looking at close to $200-$300 for this newsletter space - Am I wrong here?

it feels like you are spamming people after a while i don't think it is a follow up when you send couple of emails to someone that is not responding to you if they said i will think about it or maybe then sure after a couple of days why not see if they have made a decision but just sending emails to someone that ignored you the first time just feels pushy and spammy