discuss New ways to sell domains?

[Arpit131]

Hello guys..
Let's discuss new ways to sell domain names.

It's been quite sometime since we happened to brainstorm on this particular things.

Last I heard, someone was using Twitter ads to sell their domain names and it was working for them!

Let's discuss some more on this..
Think of the craziest ways and share it here. Who knows, something worthwhile comes up maybe!!

The idea is to think out of the box! Go crazy!
Share the best way you could think of

 

[EmpireNames.com]

I do mainly linkedin paid ads twitter paid ads and outbounding mails
I m now discussing about doing advertisement in newspapers , magazines , and flyers distribution in commercial offices but only for premium domains...
This will be just try lets see results.
Fb ads are worst
Also i m going to start adwords soon
I hope these ideas will work ...
Wish me luck

 

[cabotower]

 

[Satyajit Adhikary]

Follow the founder/CEO of your target company to his regular bar, club or restaurant.
Make sure you wear the domain name printed Tshirt.

You can print 'Make offer' or the BIN price at the backside.

Wait for him to get drunk and then introduce yourself.

 

[BrandCougar]

I have not yet done it but it is an idea I have been thinking about for a year and a half. Something short enough to be viewed and engaging might well get your domain in front of eyes that would otherwise never see it.

Bob

Hi Bob -

One word you mentioned says it all - "engaging"

In sales... people buy emotionally and justify intellectually.

All these "brandable" sites use (quantum) sales techniques... meaning they advertise their site but do not spend or promote any one specific product that they have as inventory on their site.

They say "come give me a 30% commission and I will make a sales landing page for you" (aka- Shelf Space is what we call it in the retail industry)..

All the advertisements for the Old Spice branded deodorant do not promote the Proctor & Gamble website in their ads, rather the other way around, P & G promotes their BRAND of deodorant called "Old Spice".. They develop their target audience by developing an emotional tie to the brand - what is known as a "brand identity" or "brand character".

In my opinion... the "brandable" sites of today have it bass-ackwards!!

Sorry for the rant, but there are too many sites promoting their ability to sell "brandable" domains, that have it backwards.

A SLP (Sales Landing Page) is NOT a proactive content piece that proactively reaches out to a target audience - it is nothing more than a bed for the domain to lie on and wait patiently to be sold. The most passive and antiquated thinking I've ever seen!!!!!!! Shame on us for accepting this as "the standard" approach for selling these products.

What this industry needs... is an enema!

-Cougar

 

[maxtra]

Stand on the street corner and hawk your names

 

[ThatNameGuy]

I believe I've read somewhere that a member was looking to promote and try to sell names from a booth or something at golf tournaments and such.
Curious how that worked out. @ThatNameGuy care to share?

I believe I've read somewhere that a member was looking to promote and try to sell names from a booth or something at golf tournaments and such.
Curious how that worked out. @ThatNameGuy care to share?

NameSplice...glad you asked. I'd planned to have a booth at the worlds largest amateur handicap golf tournament in Myrtle Beach, SC last August, but it turned out my nephew was getting married that week, and Donuts (the registry for .Golf) was transitioning, and couldn't co-sponsor/partner with me. A good friend played in the tournament and said I really should have been there I even planned to have a LPGA pro and another golf pro work the booth with me, and a representative from Donuts. I do plan on going this year for the 36th annual tournament where over 3.000 male and female golfers from around the world will be there. I also looked at it as an opportunity to introduce the domain industry, not only to golfers but bankers, lawyers, doctors, business owners, teachers etc.that play in the tournament.

I also intend to display "industry specific" domains at trade shows in the homes, realty and mortgage industry where I own a couple hundred domains that relate to those industries. A registry in my hometown owns Homes(.)com and the new gTLD .homes. Originally I was hoping to work with them to help promote domains in general, but it appears now they're going to want to work with me

Finally, i'd like to create a briefcase domain display where a domain agent, like a real estate agent, can sell domains on a street corner in Manhattan I've actually created a .com domain that's perfect for selling domain displays. It would be perfect to take it to meet-ups, Chamber of Commerce meetings, colleges, or even Startup incubators.

While it would be nice to sell domains on the spot, at least enough to cover expenses, the real value will come from the contacts and interest we're able to generate for the domain industry

 

[Bob Hawkes]

so when an idea is great - it might get results

if it's brilliant - it might get results fast

Well said @frank-germany. While I totally think it is appropriate and healthy to talk about plans, like @ThatNameGuy does with all his enthusiasm, you remind us that even good ideas sometimes don't work out, and most do not yield results fast.

I wonder if it might look back at what has worked in this industry, and that might help us find new ways moving forward. Here would be my list.

• Brandable Marketplaces. I think these worked by providing a new model that filled a real need for startups. If you look at numbers, that alone is a good revenue source for many domainers too. So why did these work? The existing general marketplaces with 10 million + names were not working effectively for finding names, and the curation feature gave a manageable catalog to browse. You can argue they take too much commission, but the numbers do support that even with that on average they are more profitable for domainers.
• Integrated One Stop Shops. I think the big registrars make most of their money, and why they get most of their customers, is because I can go to a company like GD and register a domain name, add things like security, get web hosting, have an easy start web creation tool, etc. This is not necessarily positive for domainers, but I think has a lesson re what the user base is looking for.
• Advertising. I think most would agree that GD dominate at least to a fair degree because of their overwhelming advertising presence.

So what would you add, and what lessons does it have? I think there may be new ways to advertise and certainly new ways to promote, like the trade show route that @ThatNameGuy promoted. I also feel that the market badly could use new marketplaces that had the curated feature of the brandable ones but that are not restricted to .com (for most part) and are not aimed only at business owners.

I think that Dofo may be industry changing as an easy way to see what is available across multiple marketplaces and with a search engine that is far superior to the big players.

What do end users ultimately want?

1. An efficient and attractive way to see mainly what they might want with a minimum of noise.
2. Enough competition and evidence that they are getting good or at least reasonable value.
3. Trust in the process of acquiring a name.
4. Fast transfer of the name.
5. Ease in going from having the name to putting it to use.
6. Pre, during and follow-up service along the lines of what the real estate (or at least exemplary parts of it) industry offer.

Bob

 

[BrandCougar]

@Riz M. -

Thanks for your post.

Please let us know your results - more specifically your Cost-to-Return rate.

Since we are dealing with digital assets, it is common for us to think "online" is the most likely avenue to get results - but if you find that "old school" print advertising works - that would be a surprise by many of us. And definitely something I (we) would be interesting in hearing about the technique used and Cost-to-Return results.

Thanks,

-Cougar

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I am curious...

Has anyone tried posting YouTube videos to help sell a specific domain. I am not talking about "Hey - make millions selling domains" type videos.

I am talking about a specific video post that is directly pitching / promoting / advertising a specific domain.

If so, please post here (or DM me) the link to the piece as I'd be interested in what sales dialogue (sales script) was used and what sort of traffic, lead gen, or sales resulted from the effort.

Thanks,

-Cougar

I have not yet done it but it is an idea I have been thinking about for a year and a half. Something short enough to be viewed and engaging might well get your domain in front of eyes that would otherwise never see it.

Bob

 

[NickB]

I am curious...

Has anyone tried posting YouTube videos to help sell a specific domain. I am not talking about "Hey - make millions selling domains" type videos.

I am talking about a specific video post that is directly pitching / promoting / advertising a specific domain.

If so, please post here (or DM me) the link to the piece as I'd be interested in what sales dialogue (sales script) was used and what sort of traffic, lead gen, or sales resulted from the effort.

Thanks,

-Cougar

I am really curious about this....

The future of search is voice, video, immersive content and telepathy so if you are looking to promote an asset, how do you this for millennial's, generation z or Gen Alpha (little way away yet!)

We are currently in a decision making wave of Baby Boomers & Xennials BUT the next gen of leaders are here and they interact differently with the world

Content, Engagement and Positioning will be/are crucial and how you go about this will have a massive impact on sales/revenue in every industry including domaining.....

I love the idea of positioning yourself as a thought leader within an industry - original content, sharing ideas, collaboration, peer to peer networking with decision makers etc etc (buzz word city!) This can be done within any industry and could create a lot of engagement imo

Position yourself, Share, connect, engage and spread the word!

Good thread......

 

[DanBingham]

I am curious...

Has anyone tried posting YouTube videos to help sell a specific domain. I am not talking about "Hey - make millions selling domains" type videos.

I am talking about a specific video post that is directly pitching / promoting / advertising a specific domain.

If so, please post here (or DM me) the link to the piece as I'd be interested in what sales dialogue (sales script) was used and what sort of traffic, lead gen, or sales resulted from the effort.

Thanks,

-Cougar

Yes, I've tried it, although this was me playing around a little - see below:

More videos on my channel -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2ovx88aEJm2UvPE0aVFmgQ

 

[PeakDots]

I want to sell my domain name is smartexpress.in

Although the thread is about selling names, I don't think this is what they mean

 

[maxtra]

Show attachment 112642

Need money for domains

Please help

 

[poweredbyme]

Has anyone tried an approach of offering the domain name with a startup website? I am not sure of the costs involved with being a reselling webhost service, but I think to many tiny businesses the idea of buying a domain with even a very basic few pages up and going quickly would encourage them to get their own domain.

I personally don't want to get into the website creation business (partly because I would be terrible at it ) but I wondered if people have either offered both services, or partnered with someone who did.

Bob

I do it for 10+ years. It takes 3+ years for domain to get good SE rankings and most of the time I fail, at least on G. It's very difficult even for experienced webmasters like me. Once you made a profitable website from a domain, you would not want to sell even if you receive offers. Nobody would sell a gold mine unless the offer is exceptional.

If you develop domains, you would be called a webmaster rather than a domainer. Because you would need fully developed, established websites. 1-2 page landing pages have less chance than fully developed domains, more chance than parking pages with no real content. It's something in between. "Startup website" is probably more than 1-2 page. It may help to sell the domain faster but for less $. Poorly developed website ("startup website") may drop the value of its domain. It's like gamble. Website buyers and domain buyers want different things. If the website fails, it may be worth less than its domain value. That's why some valuable domain drops.

Web hosting cost is almost zero compared to domain renewal costs. Because a hosting account can host multiple domains. The biggest cost is the time needed to learn how to manage a website. It requires to invest 3+ years. For comparison, there are 50x things to learn compared to domaining. You would need to love to learn about websites, servers, SEO, online marketing, etc, and more importantly would need lots of time to invest with no revenue. It would be similar to become a college student one more time. Hosting cost is nothing.

 

[Daniel Lorentsen]

I've tried a lot of things, but the only way that has really worked for me is just simple old landing pages. It sounds so boring but when it works it works, so I'm sticking to it. Rather spend my time looking for good domains and then letting them sell themselves

 

[skyz21]

I've used yelp to connect with business owners who had similar names to the domain I was selling. Came close to closing, but not in the end. Could be helpful for some. Also a great tool is scrapebox, use it to find relevant blogs & forums for your niche and then go add value to their comments with a link back to your domain. This may yield some results if done right.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

I tend to agree with the simple view @Daniel Lorentsen expressed that the most important single thing to sell domains that someone may readily guess (i.e. generic single words and two or three word likely expressions) is to have an active and effective lander. I am surprised how often this seems not to be done - either no active lander or some sort of parking page that hide that the domain name is in fact available.

For brandable domain names I would argue that you probably need to be on one of the brandable marketplaces, because that is where people go to look for that sort of domain name.

Roughly speaking domain names are used for three main things and can be considered the following types:

1. branding/company name
2. descriptive name for product being offered
3. campaign specific or product specific marketing

Now clearly they can overlap - like Hotels.com is both 1 and 2, and sometimes a marketing campaign will cover both 2 and 3.

I think that the industry needs a new kind of marketplace that does not deal with brandable names (no made up words) but rather caters to category 2. For example I could tell them that my product is golf clubs and they would show me various phrases available in various extensions that fit that product closely. Now services like Dofo may make such a marketplace unnecessary, as they consolidate search, but I still see a need for a product in that.

The campaign specific is even less general and harder to imagine an effective selling strategy. I think ultimately here is where a real estate professional model makes sense. An organization comes to a phrase specialist with a request like "I want to run a marketing campaign for xyz" The professional comes back with a list of phrases that are available for consideration. Some sort of network listing professionals with phrase expertise in different areas might be helpful. This whole area is still in its infancy.

Bob

 

[Southtexas81]

Pay escorts ( aka. Hookers ) in NYC and Las Vegas to advertise your name to their high end clients

 

[BrandCougar]

@DefinitelyDomains

THANK YOU!

That is the type of example I was looking for - something that provides us a sense of what has been tried.

The piece looked professional. Well done!

A few questions come to mind...

1) What sort of response did you receive? via Email? or via YouTube comments? Other?

2) Curious - what was your specific "Call to Action" in the piece to help drive an inquiry?

3) Who was your target market? What demographic? What skill set? What need definition?

4) What tools did you use to develop the piece?


Please share or feel free to contact me via DM.

Thanks,

-Cougar


ps: Thanks for sharing your video channel. Your "AerialEarth.com" video provided more of a Call-to-Action with the bold white email (subtle call to action). One other thought... yes I am a bit interested in what you have provided - what questions did you ask in the piece to help QUALIFY prospective buyers? NATM - Need? Authorization? Timeframe? Money? (buyer qualifying type of questions)

Your "AllAboutAutos.com" poked a couple qualifying questions on the screen. Well done! Nicely layered into the upbeat music and casual video. This one had the best audience "engagement" and call-to-action.

You have developed a great base to build on. The more you can qualify your prospects and direct them to contact you, the better.

 

[BrandCougar]

@DefinitelyDomains -

I like the upbeat tone of you videos.

My feedback...

What I saw was a (4) phase piece.

1) Intro - a clear statement that it is a domain you are selling and its name.
2) Curtain Drop - which outlines a "value proposition" - but one that only domain resellers might see as value.
3) Call to Action - via a simple bold question - YES!
4) Contact Info - a passive request for an action "to email you".

I would suggest a few changes that better TARGET your intended prospect.

1) Intro - good with what you have (tho given the domain name, I would use more of an "AllAboutAutos" classier theme as your domain is "RentASupercar" (more prestigious and less cartoonish).
2) Curtain Drop - make it about the buyer (not a domainer views) - ask a question more tailored to a high-end car rental vendor - "Is your inventory sitting or being driven?" or even more bold "Do you make money while your cars are parked?" or "Are you making interest payments while your cars sit idle?" Try to hit some kind of nerve with the viewer - stick a knife in it and wiggle it 'til it makes them upset! Touch a nerve, then solve that problem.
3) Call to Action - what you had was simple, bold, and to the point - the word "Interested?" is a lead-in to a call to action.
4) Contact / "The Close" - something that entices them to do something.... other than watch the video 2-3 times... for example "Contact us today to discuss how we can help you drive traffic to your site?" or (and I know I'm old school, but "Call Today! 111-222-1234" Your lead gen rate is 3X if you provide a phone # above your email address. The goal of that initial conversation is to QUALIFY the PROSPECT. It is not to toss out a price.

I think you have something interesting going on with your video approach. I once heard that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine behind Google's search box. And I think video is a terrific way to poke an emotional response (it is a mini-TV model) an inexpensive advertising venue if you can find a way to harness it.

Thanks again for sharing your video model. I am curious, what software are you using to develop these snippets?

-Cougar

ps: Please don't get me wrong - your initial venture into this is quite interesting - and the initial video pieces your created are quite professional looking - especially the "AllAboutAutos.com" one. That's really got a draw to it - calm, relaxing, (get me out of this damn cubical) type feeling to it. Spot on terrific!

@DefinitelyDomains -

Below is a perfect example of what I was talking about earlier.

I hope the example is helpful...

-Cougar

ps: The only embarrassing thing is they spelled the name incorrectly in the title "InvestYield". Oops!

 

[Ostrados]

Most of these marketing methods are like throwing darts in the dark.

The most promising method I read about in NP (I am not sure if it is mentioned in this thread because I didn't read all the posts) is using paid ads in LinkedIn with very specific targeting, where you target business owners of companies with 100+ employees, that are within a niche related to your domain, and show your AD with BIN price on it to minimize clicks from users that cannot afford the domain. This method is only effective for high value domains that worth re-branding from buyer point of view, and worth advertising costs from seller point of view. I didn't try this method yet but it is in my mind and I will certainly give it a shot.

That being said above method is only effective for companies that may do re-branding, which could be small percentage of potential customers for you domain. The larger percentage of potential end users are startups that are still looking for a name, the best way to reach those potential customers is through brandables marketplaces such as BB & SquadHelp. Reaching those customers outside of these well known marketplaces is very hard, I don't know about any effective method for doing that, other than shooting in the dark methods.

 

[golan]

The most promising method I read about in NP (I am not sure if it is mentioned in this thread because I didn't read all the posts) is using paid ads in LinkedIn with very specific targeting

And the credits go to @Riz M.

 

[Lord Antares]

I suspect no one will share something that's good.

 

[HotKey]

@BrandCougar

One of the best I've seen (videos) is from the owner/broker/marketer or whoever of:
p r e s i d e n t . c o m

If need a solid example, imo this one is a home run, for a "home made" video. As it should be, for his asking price.

**

As per new ways to sell domains... try talking to people. Like person to person. Personal engagement, a handshake, a smile or a nod, are reactions that come naturally rather than planned, and can influence the outcome of the conversation in a positive manner, and nothing beats word-of-mouth. It creates a trust factor because people can associate a real face to it (on the downside, if you're a regular to the spot, you'll hear about it if things don't work out).

Out of the box idea? How about hide in a cardboard box downtown, wait for the execs going to lunch, then suddenly jump out with a bunch of tiny pieces of paper spraying everywhere with your domain name and phone number on it.. kinda like those "babysitter available" plastered on telephone poles..