Some Sunday Updates

Elliot Silver
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10

Hope you’re having a nice Sunday. I am off for a long bike ride today… just a couple weeks until my 5 Boro Bike Tour, and my wife and I are just a few hundred dollars away from our goal for the Ronald McDonald House.

Lowell.com was finally relaunched a few days ago, and a number of bugs have been fixed and/or are being fixed. One thing I did to find errors was put out a request on Twitter and Facebook. I got quite a lot of feedback from people who are interested in the site (including the information that my current logo was liked and another logo wasn’t favored). In addition, a number of people have signed up to post articles.

Here is some information about the new Lowell.com website so you can be inspired or be helped with your own development projects:

  • People can sign up and post articles, events, and/or comments. This will add content to the site and hopefully increase traffic and pageviews. It’s also helpful to people in the community who are now more easily able to promote their news and events to an audience of over 10,000 visitors per month.
  • My developer used a plugin called “The Events Calendar” which is fantastic! The only issue I am having now is that events seem to fall off the home page before they start. I’ve checked the server clock and WordPress clock on site, and all are working fine. This is something I need to fix.
  • I also need to fix the Yet Another Related Post Plugin, as it’s not showing up on Pages.
  • Advertisers will be able to sign up for business listings in the same way dog walkers can on DogWalker.com. Listings will automatically renew in a year, and their Paypal account will auto-pay in a year. This is so I don’t need a representative in the area.
  • Banners, hotel listings, and restaurant listings will all be manually managed by me. The Lowell Courtyard by Marriott. has agreed to continue with a monthly banner, and the Radisson Hotel signed up last week, so things are off to a pretty good start (no, I didn’t offer them a discount rate or freebie to get them on site).
  • I am using Adsense in the top banner spot and one of the side banners, although these can easily be replaced by local advertisers if/when they are interested. The Adsense banners are earning somewhere around $5/day right now despite the fact that traffic has gone done in the last few weeks.
  • This is obvious, but make sure you test your newly developed websites with all commonly used Internet browsers. Make sure you test all parts of the site, especially if you use different plugins.
  • One of the nicest thing about this site is that I can now basically replicate the platform on Newburyport.com for relatively little expense since I paid for the foundation with Lowell.com’s development. Since Newburyport is about 45 minutes from Lowell and is a tourist locale in the summer, I think these two sites will work well together. The only issue is the time commitment required to run another site like this… I might finally have to relent and hire someone full time to work with me.
  • I ran into some major issues with hosting, the htaccess file, and assorted other related bugs. Ultimately, things worked out after quite a bit of time troubleshooting with Liquid Web and my developer, but it was still a challenge none the less. I think this is probably the biggest hurdle I faced since I am not really knowledgeable about these technical issues.
  • As with most of my other development projects, I used Six One Five Design for the development work. Mike is still working on a few things, but I think it’s nearly finished.

Free Domain Sales Agreement?

Elliot Silver
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3

I’ve seen a few posts on domain forums where people are asking for a free boiler plate domain sales agreement to use. In my opinion, if you feel you need to use a sales agreement in the first place, you should probably contact a domain attorney or other local IP lawyer and pay for one. It’s likely the cost will be less than you think since most will be able to customize a standard agreement based on your needs.

So why do I think you should have a custom agreement drafted? The primary reason is that different countries and even states have different regulations when it comes to contracts and possibly even the parameters of your sale. In addition, your sale may have special circumstances (using Escrow.com, paying via wire transfer, Paypal payment) or it may have other non-standard issues that need to be considered.

If you use a boiler plate agreement and run into troubles, it would probably be fairly easy for an opposing lawyer to pick that apart, which could cause complications for you. If you have an issue with an agreement that you purchased from a lawyer, you should at least have support from that lawyer to help fend off any dispute.

At least in my opinion, if you are concerned enough about a domain sale that you want to use a sales agreement/contract (I recommend using one unless there’s a good reason not to use one), you should pay the few hundred dollars to have it created for you and specially tailored for your company’s needs. It would be a shame to have a false sense of security to save a couple hundred dollars.

Things to Look for When Finding End User Buyers

Elliot Silver
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18

I’ve discussed at length methods I’ve used to sell domain names to end users. Sometimes my efforts are successful and pay off, and other times, they do not. Here are a few things I’ve learned which may help you the next time you try and sell a great domain name to an end user buyer:

Many competing companies: In industries where there is a lot of competition, having a good domain name can make a company stand out from its peers. Whether it’s because of the SEO or because the company wants to “own the brand,” there will always be at least one company that wants the category defining domain name, even if the category is somewhat small. As long as there are many competitors, at least one company will want your exact match keyword .com domain name.

Small and large companies within target: I have found that there should be a good mix of small and large companies in a vertical to best sell a non-ultra premium, but category defining, domain name.   It’s difficult to get to the decision maker with a huge corporation, but it’s quicker with smaller companies – especially when it comes to decision making.   Boiled down, it would be tough to sell a soda domain name when you are only pitching Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper…etc rather than an industry with a mix of companies.

Generic domain names are owned by companies: One thing I noticed when I made the successful end user sale I wrote about was that many of these companies didn’t use their brand names in their website urls. They used descriptive terms such as their area + their industry. When I saw that and had an industry keyword, I knew at least one company would want it, and I was right.

Companies selling that product or service: If you have the exact match domain name of a product or service, it’s likely one of the companies would want to buy it. Although a lot of companies aren’t completely knowledgeable about SEO and/or Internet marketing, many will recognize that this particular type of name would have value to them. It’s your job to convince them of this.

High profit margin on product or service: Similar to above, if that product or service is profitable, it’s more likely they will be interested in the domain name. If a company makes $1 profit per customer and they don’t sell many of these products (and it isn’t considered a loss leader) they probably won’t (or can’t afford to) spend a lot of money for the related domain name. If a new customer will net them big bucks, they can and will be able to justify a higher expenditure.

Own the same domain name in another extension: If a company owns the exact same domain name as you, just in a subpar extension (.net, .info maybe .org), it’s likely they would have wanted the .com if they could have bought it. Maybe the .com wasn’t for sale and the company didn’t know how to inquire about it or maybe they couldn’t afford the .com in the aftermarket when they bought the other extension. Whatever the case is, you know they like this term, and will probably want the .com. Just be cautious if the other extension is developed and there is a potential that the term isn’t generic enough. They may use your solicitation email as a sign of bad faith in a UDRP proceeding.

What else do you look for when selling domain names to end users?

Using Page Titles to Find Good Domains

Elliot Silver
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4

While I think it’s always smart to register domain names in an industry in which you are familiar, there are plenty of times where this isn’t feasible or sensible. When you aren’t entirely familiar with a particular industry, looking at some of the page titles in industry specific websites can give you good ideas about what types of names would have value.

If a company dedicates a page on its website to a specific topic or service, or if it mentions the term in the title of it’s home page, I would bet that it’s likely that the .com domain name of that exact match term will be of interest to them or someone else in their industry.

Let’s use the search term “soccer cleats” to illustrate my point. Here’s a look at some of the page title keyword phrases I found in Google when I search for soccer cleats:

  • Soccer Cleats
  • Soccer Jerseys
  • Soccer Gear
  • Soccer Equipment
  • Soccer Balls
  • Indoor Soccer Shoes
  • Soccer Goals
  • Youth Soccer
  • Soccer Footwear

In my opinion, if you owned the .com of any of these key phrases, it would be likely one or more of the leading soccer sales companies (either those listed in the top of the results or those advertising) would be interested in buying the domain name from you. Some of the .com names would be more valuable than others, but if you found one for sale for a few thousand dollars, you could probably flip it for more.

Searching like this has been done by people like myself for a while, and many of the strong keyword names have been registered for a number of years. However, there are plenty of terms that can still be bought and flipped for great prices. Doing research like this is important because there are plenty of companies who would LOVE to own names like these, but they wouldn’t know how to get them.

If you do the legwork, which includes domain research, acquisition negotiations, and buyer research, you could end up making some great deals.

Make $50,000 With One End User Sale Per Week on Newly Registered Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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55

Don’t worry… despite the title of this post, I am not going to try and sell you some magical e-book on how you can make $50,000 a year in extra income. I am going to tell you about something I am trying on my own, and I will update the post in a few weeks to let you know how it is going.

I blogged about an end user sale that I made a couple of weeks ago. The domain name wasn’t newly registered, but I did pick it up on the drop for a few hundred dollars and sold it for much more. In the comment section, I also wrote about another end user sale that I made last week with a newly registered domain name following the same strategy as the sale outlined in the post.

On Friday April 2, I hand registered ExecutiveHeadshots.com, and on the following Monday, I sent off about 20+/- emails to companies listed in Google for that keyword. I received 4 replies with interest seeking the pricing, and I came to a sales agreement with a buyer after negotiating for a couple of days.

The name is currently in escrow with Escrow.com, and unfortunately the buyer chose to mail a check to Escrow.com rather than pay via Paypal, so the sale won’t close for a week or two while the check clears. However, I turned an $8.00 registration into a very strong sale (although I won’t reveal the price as mentioned before).

With two successful end user sales in a month, I started thinking about ways to blow this out and make some real money. If I am able to register one GOOD domain name that a company would want either to re-brand or to help with SEO each week for a year, and I sold it within a week for $1,000 +/-, I could make $50,000 in extra income a year.

It’s probably not going to be as easy as it sounds, but I am going to give it a try. I registered a domain name on Friday and started pitching it to end users today, with one reply already. Once I have some results, I will post them, but I wanted to let you know what I plan to do ahead of time.

One piece of advice I can offer now is that actual product (not brands) or service domain names will be much better than descriptive domain names in most cases. For example, AwesomeHeadshots.com would not be a good alternative to ExecutiveHeadshots.com, as many photographers use “Executive Headshots” in their meta description and page titles since they cater to people looking for executive headshots, despite the fact that they may want awesome headshots 🙂

Who The Hell Are You?

Elliot Silver
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2

When you’re getting ready to launch a website, it’s important to keep in mind that your site’s visitors and readers are going to want to know who you are and what your background is, especially if you own the category defining brand. When I first launched my geodomain websites, my About Us pages lacked detail, and a few people emailed me telling me they wouldn’t discuss advertising until they knew exactly who I am and what my objectives are/were.

People crave knowledge and information, and they want to know from where the information is coming. When Frank Schilling started his Seven Mile Blog, he was giving great domain and business advice, and he was also dissecting the news that impacted domain investors. The primary reason Frank Schilling’s blog became very popular so quickly was because of who Frank is and what Frank has done for the industry.

Whether you are developing a site about real estate, cars, the stock market, or even domain names, it’s only fair that you tell the readers exactly who you are and why you are an expert they should trust. Not only does this provide a level of comfort to your readers, but it helps provide a connection between you and your readers, encouraging them to become more engaged with your website.

The more engaged your readers are with you, the more likely it is that advertisers will pay top dollar for your available advertising space.

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