You Should Make Landing Pages for your Domains

[DomaHub]

Link to original Medium article.

--

First of all, what is a landing page? The term has many meanings on the internet, but for domaining purposes it simply means:

A site for your domain name where visitors can make sales inquiries.

Sounds simple enough, but what’s so special about it? Is this an alternative to listing on secondary marketplaces (e.g. Sedo, Flippa, etc.)? Is it better than traditional parking?

Okay, okay — you’re skeptical. Let me help break it down for you.

Parking Revenue is Declining…
For the end-user at least. Look at this 2015 survey result from popular domain news source domainnamewire.

Credit to Andrew Allemann (www.domainnamewire.com)​

Yes, domain parking revenue used to be very lucrative for many domainers in the early days of the internet. Yes, it was a simple and easy way to make money from your domains. But, in today’s reality, parking tends to only bring in a couple of bucks a month.

There could be a few possible reasons for this such as fewer people typing in URL’s to unknown websites, people becoming less likely to click on advertising links, parking companies not giving you a fair share of the revenue, etc.

Regardless, parking revenue is on the decline for many domainers (and basically nonexistent for many others...). So where should you put your domains now?

Marketplaces Don’t Cover All Your Bases
There are dozens of domain name marketplaces where you can list and sell your domains to other people. Some marketplaces allow you to redirect your domain to its respective listing page. Or they may provide free and/or paid parking options while your domain is currently being listed. And some marketplaces provide neither.

You probably have a number of domains listed on marketplaces. You’re relying on the people who peruse these marketplaces to eventually find your domain and then purchase it.

But what about the people outside of these marketplaces? How will direct visitors know your domain is for sale — especially if your domain only shows parked ads or shows nothing at all?

Don’t Alienate Your Visitors
There are going to be a number of people who visit your website directly (i.e. by typing in the domain into their browser). Some of these people are going to be interested in buying it. How can we best persuade them to make an offer on the spot? Or at the very least, let them know the domain is for sale?

A typical Uniregistry parked domain. (with satire)​

The above image is an example of a typical parked domain’s site provided by Uniregistry. A single banner at the top that states the domain is for sale and provides a phone number. Clicking the banner directs you to another marketplace where you can submit an offer (quite redundant). The rest of the site is all advertisements.

If a potential buyer were to stumble onto this domain, would they know what to do? No, chances are they’ll bounce because the site looks like typical spam and you lose out on a potential sale opportunity or lead.

Let’s try to help visitors avoid seeing this little guy.​

Even worse, you have nothing on your domain and the user sees some kind of browser error or blank page.

AdBlock Is On the Rise
The number of users who use some form of adblock (software to detect and avoid ads on a page) is increasing. Let’s face it. Not many people like being targeted for advertisements.

Source — 2017 Adblock Rep​

When people arrive at your site and see advertisements or they see nothing because of adblock, they are more likely to just leave the page immediately.

Dedicated Landing Pages Bridge the Gap
Landing pages ensure that your visitors will see something better than just ads or errors when they land on your domain. Good landing pages will also make it immediately obvious to the visitor that your domain is for sale. An even better one has a visible price tag (buy-it-now price or minimum offer price) and a simple contact form to get in touch.

This way, visitors won’t get confused by strange advertisements and redirects, errors or blank pages, and they’ll have a easy way of contacting you.

But that’s not all! Landing page services and platforms also provide a variety of different stats and visuals you can show on your page. These things help visitors understand the domain better, potentially increasing the likelihood of a sale. Additionally, many of these services provide portfolio management and help you get set up across all of your domains in a short amount of time.

Don’t want to lose out on potential marketplace sales? Don’t worry, you can have a dedicated landing page and still list your domain on other marketplaces. This way, you can maximize your reach and alienate as few visitors as possible.

Conclusion and Follow-up
Our next post will cover the things that make a good landing page as well as things to avoid when creating one!

 

[DomaHub]

so now you wanna know how much ppc money goes in my wallet huh?

well, that's not for you to know

don't need my hard numbers, nor do i need to back up any claims

you make negative characterization about parking because it uses ads, but there is nothing spammy about the pages.
the landers provided by them look good enough to get the job done and the templates may have even been created by professional writers, even though they are provided to users "FREE" of charge

but no one has to justify their usage of ppc services for you or to you,
or to anybody else who doesn't use it.

the consensus you speak of, is only based on those who post.
and those who did post, do not represent the majority opinion of all domainers


imo....

No problem, Biggie . To each his own I suppose. Thank you for your valuable input to this topic.

And I am going to quote what I wrote earlier in the thread regarding the landing pages provided by these services--

There is a difference between the domain's listing page on the respective marketplace and the actual site that is shown when you visit the domain. We are specially talking about direct traffic to your domain. Not to your domain's listing on some secondary marketplace.

 

[namelancer]

the consensus you speak of, is only based on those who post.
and those who did post, do not represent the majority opinion of all domainers

With more comments dropping in, we might eventually reach a statistically valid sample size to support a default claim on this thread. But for now, there is more than enough evidence available, in the number of people using efty or undeveloped (among other services) as shining examples of perceived value of parking (links)-free sales/landing pages with regard to low-performing (revenue-wise) domains to demonstrate considerable consensus,

 

[MR Harrist]

I don't mind sending traffic to sedo "buy now" pages afterall I don't want some ppl refund my paypal! I do realize about 20% commision! I mean my traffic, my sales why sedo or other marketplace get the commission ? the answer simply because, to avoid headache! ,

our own landing page good! marketplace landing page suck so bad! though sedo by now pages, are not that bad sedo only lack about traffic stats! but I don't mind with that!

 

[promo]

@DomaHub

You keep referring to yourself as "we". Are you royal or is this a shared Namepros account?

 

[namelancer]

We all represent DomaHub as a company. We do often discuss responses together before we post them.

I'm sorry for being facetious, but the detective in my couldn't help noticing the 3 minute lapse separating your reply from @promo's question. May I ask if you have had a chance to confer with the rest of the group in such a short time-window ?

ps: kidding, of course!

 

[DomaHub]

I'm sorry for being facetious, but the detective in my couldn't help noticing the 3 minute lapse separating your reply from @promo's question. May I ask if you have had a chance to confer with the rest of the group in such a short time-window ?

ps: kidding, of course!

All DomaHub employees are allowed 1 personal post per month as part of their benefits package

 

[promo]

Haha, shared account. We have different members drop by and comment sometimes. Sorry for the confusion! (not royal..)

Well I do know shared accounts are prohibited in the TOS. I dont even think business accounts can be shared. Better check with staff.

 

[Eric Lyon]

Hello,

The following rules/terms of service apply to your question:

You agree to take full responsibility for all Content you submit to the Service. You agree to assume any losses and/or liabilities that result from your Content.

You agree to create only a single account. This includes banned accounts, accounts created on behalf of business entities, and any other account that may be created by a single entity. An exception is made for accounts with active Business Membership subscriptions that are in good standing, at the sole discretion of NamePros.

User accounts are for exclusive use by the individual or entity that created the account; they are not "owned" by anyone. You are responsible for your password, activity that occurs through your account, and you agree to not license, transfer, sell, or assign your user account without the NamePros Managing Director’s written approval. With the exception of people or businesses that are expressly authorized to create accounts on behalf of their employers or clients, NamePros prohibits the creation of an account for anyone other than yourself, and user accounts may not be used by multiple people.

Please take note of the following line in the terms I provided: "user accounts may not be used by multiple people".

I hope that helps,

 

[namelancer]

We cam rephrase the question by asking:

What tangible benefits are there to the parking links on domain landers that don't deliver on a promise of parking income by being either visited with a frequency of a transatlantic ship stranded on a desert island and/or insufficiently monetized due to low RPC, RPM or negligible click-through rates ?

What is it that's added to a landing page by virtue of having parking links that serve no vital purpose in generating parking revenue ?

What are then the eventual drawbacks of having utility-free parking links as seen in the context of marketing theories on factors aiding or detracting from presentability and eventual sellability of a given object (be it a domain or an umbrella) ?

 

[frank-germany]

geez. that was my only hope really to do like automated income. I really was gungho about it.

as parking was dead for sure.

I had planned to use WPR to created autogen RSS feed site like turn domains into mini Amazon or Walmart affiliate programs using those sites XML feeds.

and then maybe slapping some of those "content ads" like Taboola or OutBrain or RevContent to add more income to the mix.

would Google ban such sites? or blacklist a domain for this?

you waste your time

 

[frank-germany]

We cam rephrase the question by asking:

What tangible benefits are there to the parking links on domain landers that don't deliver on a promise of parking income by being either visited with a frequency of a transatlantic ship stranded on a desert island and/or insufficiently monetized due to low RPC, RPM or negligible click-through rates ?

What is it that's added to a landing page by virtue of having parking links that serve no vital purpose in generating parking revenue ?

What are then the eventual drawbacks of having utility-free parking links as seen in the context of marketing theories on factors aiding or detracting from presentability and eventual sellability of a given object (be it a domain or an umbrella) ?

I need to read that again....
hope to understand it one day

 

[WhoaDomain.com]

you waste your time

Thanks Frank. I will digest on that. believe me.

 

[toughdomains]

I was looking into something called IFTTT.com (IF That Then This) ( Don't ask me! I have no idea. It's some hipster crap creativity bs. lol)

anyways. using IFTTT you can create mashups of content of people you follow to create your own rss feed. imagine the possiblities for "Set it and forget it" at least in theory . lol might fall in line with your idea of creating a "Feed page"

we already created a feed page it was our first service we offered...we called it instant domain development.
IFTTT.com is a cool site sounds like it allows much more mashups than rss feeds.
is the final output an rss or xml feed?
One member told us about rssmix.com and they use that to mash up rss feeds on our developed pages.
Yes yes I know rss is from the 90's and was originally invented to be used with rss readers but its still a great protocol for fresh content delivery to a web page and the old saying goes if its not broke dont fix it.

services like this saved us the development of allowing multiple rss feeds. there are too many services out there that mix it up better than we can. to be honest domainers dont care about our instant domain development but its a big hit with SEO guys....my longest chats are about serving ads and SEO aspects of pages rather than appraisals and sales.

 

[namelancer]

@Adnan Shaikh, Please be patient ! That would be the subject of our next class lecture

 

[toughdomains]

domains simply listed in order they are entered and may never be sorted otherwise

unireg and epik both allow full sorting of all domains....if you are looking for simple domain managment.

 

[DomaHub]

@doma Hub, really helpful post but i would appreciate if you can also guide us to create landing page step by step

Check your inbox

 

[DomaHub]

I think @Willox Perez and @biggie said it best in an earlier post--I will quote them below.

A very important decision I had to make was keeping the domains parked and earning some type of money towards renewals or have a nice looking landing page to obtain more leads and this way increase my sales.

Since I didn't know what to choose I decided to just test it for 3 month with landing pages over at Uniregistry and I did see an increase in inbound leads which lead to more people to follow up with in order to close more sales. When I saw this I decided to stay with it and so far so good. I noticed Bodis had some nice landing pages as well that I thought about trying out since I liked how they kept track of the traffic stats vs with Uni.

For someone faced with making the same decision I simply say if the parking income you are earning is significant stay with it but if that is not the case give landing pages a shot and see how it goes for you.

- Will

i think what @Willox Perez says above, illustrates the point i was trying to emphasize.

not matter what the popular opinion is, in this thread,
the common sense route for those still earning parking income, is to stay with it.

if you're not making any money from ppc, then do what you gotta do, to keep you going.


Good Luck!

imo...

To sum up, if you are making money from parked domains (like I assume Biggie is) then stick with that. Otherwise, if you are not satisfied with the revenue from parked domains, then it may be time to explore other options, whether that's a sales page, Wordpress site, etc.

It's also important to know, not everyone has a large enough domain portfolio to earn something decent from parked revenue.

 

[DomaHub]

for a cost or a fee, i'm sure there are more options

but for free, where i don't have to spend no, mo, money....

is where, i like to be

Also just as a side note--DomaHub has a free option. You are more than welcome to try our landing pages Biggie

 

[biggie]

good post @namelancer

imo...

 

[cooljub]

Landing Pages are targeted at a type-in traffic (following observation on parking platforms of their performance) with a hope of encountering, among those who go through the lengths of writing a full domain name into a browser, either a lonely random visitor or a healthy percentage of elusive would-be buyers going on and about internet,exploring different domains out of curiosity, or for developmental or investment purposes, as well as the presumed, primary group of people seeking to find a content in the first place.

Alternating between diverse options, one should keep in mind that for every type-in there are at least hundred searches performed through a search engine (the exact number could be even higher), so there comes a point when developing a highly visited domain may be a more profitable proposition than ordinary parking (where high visit count doesn't not translate into high parking revenue).

Where does it leave landing pages ? Well, they are suited to segments within a very defined niche market populated with stats subject to the law of moderation, where the visitor count can't be too low, or else no one would find them by type-ins (unless they are linked to a well-visited domain shop or another high-traffic domain), nor can it be too high due to existence of better monetization alternatives in the form of parking and or development.

Based on anticipated demographics of visitors, the price range of a domain generally sold through parking pages could be expected to fall within what is known as the impulse-buy range by a novice shopper, representing an end user, among others (other demographics), and being somewhere in the 700 - 2500 usd spectrum.

Granted, a professional domain investor isn't going to be swayed by hefty graphics of an ultra modern-looking landing page, nor do we expect them to fall into purchasing complacency out of being star-struck by a blinding mixture of aesthetics and glamor dulling their common sense. None of this is expected to happen, because landing pages aren't created to be seen by their eyes only.

Phew!! Give me a while to let that soak in

 

[toughdomains]

Landing Pages are targeted at a type-in traffic (following observation on parking platforms of their performance) with a hope of encountering, among those who go through the lengths of writing a full domain name into a browser, either a lonely random visitor or a healthy percentage of elusive would-be buyers going on and about internet,exploring different domains out of curiosity, or for developmental or investment purposes, as well as the presumed, primary group of people seeking to find a content in the first place.

Alternating between diverse options, one should keep in mind that for every type-in there are at least hundred searches performed through a search engine (the exact number could be even higher), so there comes a point when developing a highly visited domain may be a more profitable proposition than ordinary parking (where high visit count doesn't not translate into high parking revenue).

Where does it leave landing pages ? Well, they are suited to segments within a very defined niche market populated with stats subject to the law of moderation, where the visitor count can't be too low, or else no one would find them by type-ins (unless they are linked to a well-visited domain shop or another high-traffic domain), nor can it be too high due to existence of better monetization alternatives in the form of parking and or development.

Based on anticipated demographics of visitors, the price range of a domain generally sold through parking pages could be expected to fall within what is known as the impulse-buy range by a novice shopper, representing an end user, among others (other demographics), and being somewhere in the 700 - 2500 usd spectrum.

Granted, a professional domain investor isn't going to be swayed by hefty graphics of an ultra modern-looking landing page, nor do we expect them to fall into purchasing complacency out of being star-struck by a blinding mixture of aesthetics and glamor dulling their common sense. None of this is expected to happen, because landing pages aren't created to be seen by their eyes only.

some great points if you have an intention to buy a name then all this holds 100% true.
But I have to admit. with all the new services out there and reviewing hundred or so personal stores I do come across a few names that I would have not bought unless I saw it listed out. the impulse buy. and typically domainers buy in categories (they buy 5 or 10 or 100 crypto names) so if you cant get or afford the name you want there may be a plan B name that you see at a great value. I have been swayed once or twice by the language and presentation of a name it helped me visualize the possibility of the name.

its very similar to staging in real estate. Most buyers need a push to pony up the for the asking price and you never know what that final push may be. So better to have it presented well in hopes to hit that harp string that makes them realize this is the name I want and nothing else. If landing pages didnt work then why would companies like sedo, afternic and godaddy invest so much time and money in desiging and redesigning a lander? hugedomains fabulous and even mike mann all have them. Brand bucket built an entire biz on adding a logo and presenation and their sales are in the hundreds of thousands.

I never used a landing page until last few years and my offer volume (on ~300 names) has gone from 3 or 4 offers a year to 3 or 4 offers a month with landers.

You could argue that people buy the house they want that fits the lifestyle of the family but if that were true there would not be an entire biz built around staging a home for the ideal layout to make the home look better.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rea...1.69i57j0l5.5395j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

since @biggie loves us so much I know he wont mind me using him as an example.
but who would you rather purchase from
http://www.urlpick.com/
or
http://www.namerockstar.com/

 

[DomaHub]

Can i just make landing page for my domain using free WordPress rather than paying monthly fee for just getting templates on efty and others?

You definitely can! There are plenty of resources online that can help you with getting that set up. Good luck!

 

[nomen]

I myself use Uni and Epik BIN & inquiry/make offer landers and don't see much benefit in making my own (except for more detailed stats). The time spent on managing those landers, price changes and what not is something to consider IMO. And with Uni landers you can automate a bunch of things with auto-responds. Not to mention you can direct your leads to a professional brokerage team if you so wish.

 

[mpls]

Nice clean pages. Do the names have to be registered at NameSilo or can domains from other registrars be sold there too?

Only domains registered at NS.

this thread has inspired me to running a landing page contest soon. stay tuned for more info. it would rate all the different aspects of a lander.


Can you add a logo to the sales page? do they support IDN? do they provide other payment methods other than NS escrow? do they offer contact info like phone or email?

You can create a custom background with your logo. Only logo is not possible, you can upload your image background.
About payments method, buyer can contact you via contact form and then close the deals with your preferred escrow system.
You can insert your custom text and you can place your email or phone # on it.

 

[Axel Inverted]

I have some evidence to what the OP might be talking about this. I am new at this but I have close to 3000 domains split across registrars. On GoDaddy, I tried their parking pages and most of my .coms are on Godaddy. Not a single inquiry.

On Uniregistry, none of them are parked, and I am getting regular inquiries, even though I have a whopping 3 searches for my domains on Uniregsitry and consist mainly of new extensions. People are searching for them somewhere else and typing them in, but the professional looking Uni landing page and direct contact and sales offer form makes it easier for people to ask, even if they have to go through the extra hoop Uniregistry makes you go through to contact.

In terms of traffic it's about the same between my GoDaddy names and my Uniregistry names, yet 0 inquiries from GoDaddy in 3 months and the traffic on my more popular names for the offer page in the auction is far lower than for the parked pages. Not to mention no clicks so it really is not worth keeping there. That means not a lot of people are taking the extra step to get to the auction landing page. Now it could be because most are just domain investors searching for the same thing and are just curious to see if there is a site there and don't care to really buy, but still, 0 inquiries on GoDaddy compared to Uni is enough of a reason for me to agree with the OP and definitely plan on changing this set up soon. Among those views there may have been some real customers who simply preferred to go with something similar because they got turned off by the ads or didn't know the domains are really for sale.

The ugly GoDaddy parking pages have a lot to do with this. And same for adblockers. I can't see anything on parked pages, including the "for sale" links or banners at the top when using adblockers. Just blank pages. Impossible for someone to even contact you unless you have a site or they go to who.is.

My only question is where can I find a good place to start with putting up a website and landers? I would definitely need an easy way to continue to monitor traffic per domain.