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discuss What happens when you point 1000+ domains to an online store?

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What happens when you point 1000+ domains to an online store?


I had a situation arise in the past little while that have made me rethink of what I'm doing with my domains. Having over 1000 domains pointing idly at my landers, parked pages, or for sale pages really does not make me any money. Parking is for the pits and sales will happen regardless of where the domain points. Buyers will still find me if they really want the domain.

As most of you know by now, I run a number of businesses and some of them are successful online stores. This gave me an idea and I thought, what would happen to sales if I pointed 1000+ domains to one of my online stores?

To start with I have to say it's a pretty popular store and is fast approaching 2 million in annual sales.
Secondly one has to keep in mind that my domains are 80% .ca which are targeted to my home market.

So what happened after a little bit of experimentation?

Sales have shot through the roof, we cannot keep up with sending packages. In the first week alone we had almost a 40% increase in sales. If that is all I get from this experiment then it will translate to an $800,000 increase in sales by the end of one year. That is assuming the increase is static at 40%, I expect it to climb exponentially over the next year.

So ask me about parking again?

The best money maker I have found for my domains is to put them into actual use. Funny thing about that phrase, I was actually threatened by someone that one of my domains was not in use for commerce so I had no legitimate claim to it.

HeHe, what a good idea that was.... use it in commerce, who would have thought :xf.laugh:

PS. It also helps that I own a number of Canadian Cities in .com as well and they seem to drive quite a bit of traffic to the store.

The domains just forward to my online store so anyone wanting the domain sees it is in use but will also realize it can be purchased because it's only used as a forwarder. It's kind of a win win situation with the ultimate in parking revenue.

I should get threatened with a UDRP more often, it gives me great ideas :ROFL:


PS. ALL MEMBERS I POLITELY ASK YOU TO NOT POST ANY OF MY DOMAIN NAMES IN THIS TOPIC.
 
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What happens when you point 1000+ domains to an online store?


I had a situation arise in the past little while that have made me rethink of what I'm doing with my domains. Having over 1000 domains pointing idly at my landers, parked pages, or for sale pages really does not make me any money. Parking is for the pits and sales will happen regardless of where the domain points. Buyers will still find me if they really want the domain.

As most of you know by now, I run a number of businesses and some of them are successful online stores. This gave me an idea and I thought, what would happen to sales if I pointed 1000+ domains to one of my online stores?

To start with I have to say it's a pretty popular store and is fast approaching 2 million in annual sales.
Secondly one has to keep in mind that my domains are 80% .ca which are targeted to my home market.

So what happened after a little bit of experimentation?

Sales have shot through the roof, we cannot keep up with sending packages. In the first week alone we had almost a 40% increase in sales. If that is all I get from this experiment then it will translate to an $800,000 increase in sales by the end of one year. That is assuming the increase is static at 40%, I expect it to climb exponentially over the next year.

So ask me about parking again?

The best money maker I have found for my domains is to put them into actual use. Funny thing about that phrase, I was actually threatened by someone that one of my domains was not in use for commerce so I had no legitimate claim to it.

HeHe, what a good idea that was.... use it in commerce, who would have thought :xf.laugh:

PS. It also helps that I own a number of Canadian Cities in .com as well and they seem to drive quite a bit of traffic to the store.

The domains just forward to my online store so anyone wanting the domain sees it is in use but will also realize it can be purchased because it's only used as a forwarder. It's kind of a win win situation with the ultimate in parking revenue.

I should get threatened with a UDRP more often, it gives me great ideas :ROFL:


PS. ALL MEMBERS I POLITELY ASK YOU TO NOT POST ANY OF MY DOMAIN NAMES IN THIS TOPIC.

Thanks for the interesting thread @MapleDots . I recently also started to experiment with this, I have redirected few of my high-traffic domain names to my personal marketplace.

Will see if it would have any effect in terms of sales, though.

One thing which everyone needs to remember is following: if any of your domain names has even slightest chance to be UDRPd, you should really park it on neutral lander with no ads, and not use it as a redirect to either your business, or to your personal domain marketplace. This is because it can give ammunition to party which brings UDRP, as they can claim that you are using their "bla bla bla"*** to direct traffic to your personal business, and therefore you are using/violating/missusing their "bla bla bla" for your personal gain.

***replace "bla bla bla" with 20 pages of threating legal text, and you will get the idea more clearly :)
 
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If a majority of these domains were or are hosted at different ip's then there is an added bonus of SEO link juice via 1000 backlinks to your main site?

And if you pick up some high rank expired domains. Even the complete gibberish ones but for some strange reason has 10,000 backlinks.

Now you have PBN. Or least the start of one.
 
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At first glance this seems absolutely brilliant, @MapleDots!

With traditional parking lacking significant monetization for many, it definitely is another model.

Ideally one can achieve both use plus visibility of name as for sale.

While not many are in your position of also owning an online store, it seems to me there might be a business opportunity matching those with names to those who want names pointed at their site.

This is the most exciting new idea I've seen in awhile! Thank you so much!

Bob
 
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Have you posted any links or the domain names to your stores here before?




2 Million "dollars"?

What is the store?

I'll send you a link, it's not a huge secret though because right now all my domains point there.

Again please do not post my domain names.
 
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If anyone gets a bad gateway message just refresh the screen, the servers seem to be a bit overloaded and that will sometimes give that message for a split second, a quick refresh will fix that.
 
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The domains just forward to my online store so anyone wanting the domain sees it is in use but will also realize it can be purchased because it's only used as a forwarder.
Do you feel absolutely sure about this? My fear would be someone who might have interest would not bother following up.
Bob
 
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Do you feel absolutely sure about this? My fear would be someone who might have interest would not bother following up.
Bob
That was exactly my though now .. when I see domain are used for redirect, I always assume they are NOT for sale :)

Some of my high - traffic domain names are also used as redirect as I mentioned earlier, but they land at home page of my personal domain marketplace .. so it is obvious instantly they are for sale...
 
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Do you feel absolutely sure about this? My fear would be someone who might have interest would not bother following up.
Bob

I recently bought a domain that was used as a forwarder, I emailed and said I notice you are not using the domain to its full potential, would you be interested in selling it. It is the full name of one of my brands and it cost me 5k to purchase. The owner said the offer was fair for a .ca and he let me have it.

So I'm not too worried about that, besides the profit from the increase of sales will make up for the occasional lost sale.
 
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That was exactly my though now .. when I see domain are used for redirect, I always assume they are NOT for sale :)

Some of my high - traffic domain names are also used as redirect as I mentioned earlier, but they land at home page of my personal domain marketplace .. so it is obvious instantly they are for sale...


I might also experiment with a masked redirect and put something in the title which would appear on the tab that could indicate a for sale domain. That would be the best of both worlds, in use making money and saying something like....

MapleDots in the tab and then when you go to MapleDots you know it's for sale.

Have not decided any of that yet, I want to run this a few months first to get a better feel for traffic increase. I have google analytics embedded so that will also tell me a lot.
 
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I recently bought a domain that was used as a forwarder, I emailed and said I notice you are not using the domain to its full potential, would you be interested in selling it. It is the full name of one of my brands and it cost me 5k to purchase. The owner said the offer was fair for a .ca and he let me have it.

So I'm not too worried about that, besides the profit from the increase of sales will make up for the occasional lost sale.
I think you are one of few people who are thinking in this mode ... if a domain is used as a forwarder, I personally simply assume it is not for sale :)
 
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Btw, what is the monthly traffic you are getting on some of your highest traffic .ca domain names? :)
 
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Btw, what is the monthly traffic you are getting on some of your highest traffic .ca domain names? :)

If you knew how many one word .ca domains I own you would not ask that.

Traffic is huge because I own some of the absolute best one word domains for my home country.

I sent a few to @Vito, I think he will vouch for that statement
 
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I think you are one of few people who are thinking in this mode ... if a domain is used as a forwarder, I personally simply assume it is not for sale :)

That is only because you don't have the cash to spare, a significant company will figure out pretty fast that the domain is for sale. Money always talks, make an offer with cash in hand and you would be surprised what you can do.

I bought a two and three letter .ca and both owners said they would never sell..... that is until I put cold hard cash in their hands. :xf.laugh:
 
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Do you feel absolutely sure about this? My fear would be someone who might have interest would not bother following up.
Bob

I was thinking of the same thing, but if 1000+ domains brings in an extra $800k+ and the over head cost per year is under $15k ( Domain renew ).

Then who cares about the follow ups.

Great Test @MapleDots 👌🏽
 
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I was thinking of the same thing, but if 1000+ domains brings in an extra $800k+ and the over head cost per year is under $15k ( Domain renew ).

Then who cares about the follow ups.

Great Test @MapleDots 👌🏽

You hit it perfectly, I have soooooooo much money in domains sitting there and I already have a number of busy online stores. This is the best way I could think of to pay my renewals each year and actually run a profit from it. Any sales that come from the domains sales are absolute gravy at that point.

Try doing that with a parked page :xf.eek:
 
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Do you feel that the sales at your store went up because of people who ended up there by chance and bought, either immediately or later, or do you think sales went up because Google sees your store is now linked by a bunch of domains, although many at one or a few IPs I guess? (or not) and that has caused you go get way more traffic to the store from search? Is there an easy way to test that, even approximately? I would guess it is more the latter, but might be very wrong.

Bob

PS Edit/addition: If it is mainly the Google search impact, then the question is would you get a good part of the benefit from say 20 or 50 pointed domains that you would from 1000. If so, that would be a model where say a domainer with 20 in some niche could offer a store in that niche pointing for a certain period of time in return for some amount per year that is more than renewal costs, but could still be worthwhile advertising wise.
 
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Do you feel that the sales at your store went up because of people who ended up there by chance and bought, either immediately or later, or do you think sales went up because Google sees your store is now linked by a bunch of domains, although many at one or a few IPs I guess? (or not) and that has caused you go get way more traffic to the store from search? Is there an easy way to test that, even approximately? I would guess it is more the latter, but might be very wrong.

Bob


My store is a marketing powerhouse, it forces you to enter an email address to see pricing and then you get marketed to. The emails will inform you about the products and how they are used. Normally it takes a few emails for a percentage of the recipients order. It's all about the numbers, the more your sign up, the higher the sales.

I've been running online stores for a long time now and I just set up an western warehouse to do one side of the country while mine does the eastern side, so I know a little bit about marketing.
 
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it forces you to enter an email address to see pricing and then you get marketed to.
Thanks for that information. But I am still not sure, are these people who were first taken (and then I now understand sign up email) to your site direct from the redirect, or does your store now have a higher Google rating so it is that way you are getting 40% more traffic.
Bob
 
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I think we have all forwarded our domains especially the good traffic domains at one time or another, but mostly to our domain sales pages as @lolwarrior mentioned earlier.

The issue I initially saw was what I messaged you about, which as soon as I came back to the thread I see @Bob Hawkes mentioned. Whether or not it would drive potential domain buyers away? I could have answered that myself. I recently purchased a domain I was chasing for months. It was forwarded to a site that had nothing to do with the domain I purchased from the owner. Eventually, I got his attention and purchased the domain name. It was a domain I really wanted though.

The thing I believe would be bad though is any domain impulse buys. But when you think about it, most impulse buys are not that expensive. Most of my immediate sales this year from buyers just clicking on my BIN, have been between $1500 and 5k so, in reality, since your sales are netting 6 digits then it is a moot point.

Congrats on your success and I hope it keeps working out for ya!
 
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Thanks for that information. But I am still not sure, are these people who were first taken (and then I now understand sign up email) to your site direct from the redirect, or does your store now have a higher Google rating so it is that way you are getting 40% more traffic.
Bob

It's a combination of all that, google rating, email marketing from the sign ups, pure by chance type ins.

Like I said, it was an experiment for me and it is not going to be the same for everyone. I only sell in Canada and most of the domains I pointed were all geared to the Canadian Market so I naturally get huge type in traffic.

I have been watching my Google Analytics for years and a few off my domains get hundreds of type ins per day. Now they actually go to a store front.

So picture a generic high profile domain, you see a developed business there, it will attract attention.
Now multiply that by hundreds of domains (many of them being very high profile one word domains).

Get the point ? :xf.wink:
 
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I think we have all forwarded our domains especially the good traffic domains at one time or another, but mostly to our domain sales pages as @lolwarrior mentioned earlier.

The issue I initially saw was what I messaged you about, which as soon as I came back to the thread I see @Bob Hawkes mentioned. Whether or not it would drive potential domain buyers away? I could have answered that myself. I recently purchased a domain I was chasing for months. It was forwarded to a site that had nothing to do with the domain I purchased from the owner. Eventually, I got his attention and purchased the domain name. It was a domain I really wanted though.

The thing I believe would be bad though is any domain impulse buys. But when you think about it, most impulse buys are not that expensive. Most of my immediate sales this year from buyers just clicking on my BIN, have been between $1500 and 5k so, in reality, since your sales are netting 6 digits then it is a moot point.

Congrats on your success and I hope it keeps working out for ya!


Exactly, I mentioned this earlier, I bought a forwarding domain recently, I wanted it, I offered cash and I got it.
We all know forwarders are temporary and if we try hard they can be bought.
 
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My store is a marketing powerhouse

I also run a couple websites and an online-shop.
May I ask which software you are using for your shop ?

Many thanks!
 
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What happens when you point 1000+ domains to an online store?

Why did it take you so long to figure this out. :)

I think it's a very good idea, as long as you have generic domains.

As far as selling domains go, why would you want to sell any domains that are bringing so much more sales for your store, not only you shouldn't be selling any of your generic domains, but you might even be better off by adding to your portfolio if its making your sales grow in your stores.

By the way how much does your whole portfolio generate in terms of traffic. ( if you don't mind saying)

PS: I think it's okay to redirect so many domains Only to your own site not to other people's (though I might be wrong). Also I believe you should only do permanent forwarding ( without masking) so you won't get any security warnings (need to check on this with your registrar).

IMO
 
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