Occupy.com Launches in Time for May Day Protests

Elliot Silver
-
25

In October of 2011, Occupy.com was put up for sale by its owner, and it was brokered by New York based domain name and IP attorney  Karen J. Bernstein. I put up a poll at the time asking the value of the domain name, and about 30% of those who responded thought it was worth less than $10,000, although I am quite sure the price was much higher.  While the Occupy.com domain name had value due to its descriptive nature, the Occupy movement certainly increased its value tremendously.

At the beginning of this year, it was reported that Occupy.com had sold for an undisclosed sum. According to an article on MRC.org  a few weeks ago, “Filmmaker David Sauvage co-founded Occupy.com with film producer Larry Taubman after they purchased the domain “for a large confidential sum” to give voice to Occupy activists.”

As the Occupy movement prepares for its May 1st day of action across the United States, it appears that Occupy.com has launched as a home base online for the Occupy movement. The “Alpha” version of Occupy.com contains quite a bit of information about the movement and its events. The site appears to have launched in early April.

It will be interesting to watch the Occupy.com website evolve.

How Facebook Can Help You Learn Who Inquired About Your Domain Name

Elliot Silver
-
6

We all get emails from people who don’t use their full name or don’t provide enough information for us to identify who the buyer is. Although you may not necessarily price a domain name based on who is buying it (many people do, some don’t care and have a set price no matter who is inquiring), it is wise to at least see who is inquiring or making an offer on one of your assets.

The first thing I generally do is to search Google for the person’s name and email address to see if I can pinpoint who they are. Although some people disguise their identities, I have found that most serious buyers that inquire about my names don’t generally do this. Perhaps it’s because I don’t generally passively await offers for most of my higher end names, but that’s what I have found.

One trick I use to find out the identity of a buyer is to search Facebook for the person’s email address. If the email address is connected to a Facebook account, that account will be listed. Although many people keep their information private, you can almost always see the person’s real name, and you can often see where the person is from and possibly what they do.

This information should help you identify the potential buyer, and you can try to learn why they want a particular domain name. You can use this information to either price your domain name or negotiate with them accordingly (if they have a trademark for example).

Thanks to NameBio for sharing this tip with me a while ago.

Sell a Domain Name via Trade Organization Email Blast

Elliot Silver
-
10

If you own a “category killer” domain name, chances are good that there’s one or more trade organizations that represent companies and people that “do” what your domain name means or sell the product that is your domain name. Many of these organizations offer email blasts for advertisers, and this could be a good way to sell a domain name.

I exchanged emails with one trade organization yesterday, which has somewhere around 25,000 member email addresses. The group is willing to do an advertising email blast to its membership for $3,000, and it also offers to feature the advertiser in its monthly bulletin at no additional cost.

While spending $3,000 to sell a domain name is a LOT of money and something I wouldn’t do unless absolutely confident in selling it, putting the name in front of 25,000 prospects is a huge opportunity, especially if the name encompasses an entire industry. I don’t know if each email address is associated with separate companies or if some companies have many members in the organization, but that’s a lot of potential buyers.

There are a few things you might want to ask before moving forward with something like this:

  • Email open rates
  • # of individual companies represented in the email list
  • References from previous advertisers to request feedback
  • Discount off the rack rate

You might want to ask about is whether the organization would do the email blast for free in exchange for a percentage of the sale if you sell the domain name. If you sell a $50,000 domain name, they could make $5,000 with a 10% commission vs. $3,000 for the email blast cost. Of course, it costs you more in the end if you sell the name, but you don’t have to pay the money up front. You can also factor the commission into your asking price.

One other thing you might want to do is ask the trade group if they will write the email to its members so it has more authority than if you were to write the pitch yourself. Having a trade organization’s CEO telling its members that your domain name is a great deal will be more  authoritative  than your doing it yourself.

Read About Sales Before They’re Reported

Elliot Silver
-
8

The domain name industry is an imperfect market, but I believe approximate values can be determined based on comparable sales (comps). That’s how it’s done with physical real estate, and while it may be more difficult with domain names, one can get an idea of valuation based on comps.

Every week, Ron Jackson at DNJournal reports weekly sales information from a variety of sources like Sedo, Afternic, Snapnames, NameJet, and other independently verified sources. Likewise, NameBio and DNSalePrice record historical domain sales, and both sites have databases full of domain sales.

When DNJournal posts its weekly sales chart, I quickly scour the list to see what sold and for how much. While scanning the sales, I think about domain names I’ve seen for sale that could be considered comps, and I also think about alternative domain names (ie singular or plural names) that might have a similar valuation. I search sites like Sedo and Afternic for simular names, and I also privately inquire about names of interest.

I know that other domain investors are doing the exact same thing, so time is of the essence with this, and it always feels like a race to read Ron’s DNJ report so I can start searching for names of interest.

There are a couple of faster ways that you can learn about domain sales before they’re reported and I want to share them with you.

  • Sedo has its RSS feed with recent sales. You can learn what sold at Sedo days before the sales are publicly reported. On occasion, they will report a sale and a buyer or seller will request that it not be reported, so if you catch it early, you may be one of the few people to take notice.
  • You can search NameJet and Snapnames for auctions that have bids. If you aren’t the first bidder and don’t bid as high as the leading bidder, you likely won’t win the auction (can’t be entirely sure in case someone drops out). If you are participating in the auction and don’t win, it will show up under your auction history, giving you the sales price before it’s public.

From my perspective, the second method is more accurate because that’s more of a market value than a private sale price may be as there may not have been competitive bidding for the name. However, the first value may be more indicative of end user value.

Another Tip to Find a Domain Buyer

Elliot Silver
-
12

I’ve probably mentioned this tip before, but even if I did, I think it’s value is well worth another post.

When you acquire or own a category defining keyword domain name that you want to sell, you should do a Google search for that domain name and have a look at all of the companies that use your domain name as a part of their url. Many of those companies may wish to either shorten their url or “own the keyword” domain name for the authority that it brings.

I’ll give you an example to show you precisely what I mean.

Let’s say you own BikeTours.com and want to sell it. I’d visit Google and do a search for the term “BikeTours.com.” Notice that I added quotes around the domain name to make sure the results are most accurate. After performing that search, I see that the following companies use BikeTours.com in their domain names:

  • Bike-Tours.com
  • BikeTours.com.au
  • Tuscany-BikeTours.com
  • FatTireBikeTours.com
  • CTBikeTours.com
  • BikeTours.com.ar
  • BogotaBikeTours.com
  • PedalBikeTours.com

There seems to be dozens of companies and websites that use the term in their url, and I would bet most would want to own the descriptive BikeTours.com domain name if they could. I’ve used this method to sell domain names before, and it could help you, too.

How to Find an End User Contact

Elliot Silver
-
10

Yesterday I wrote a post with some advice on addressing end users. I think a personal email goes a long way, and it’s far superior to a bulk email or an email that has a generic greeting. Someone asked me how I find the name and email address of a potential buyer, and it’s a good question. Here are some suggestions, and I welcome your additional suggestions as well.

  • Management page on a website. For small to medium sized businesses, contacting the president or CEO of a company is a good way to open  discussion  about a domain sale. You may also want to email or cc the person in charge of marketing or business development. For large or very large companies, I don’t recommend emailing the CEO since it will likely get filtered by an administrative assistant and not make it through. Management pages often have the email addresses of the executives, so that’s a bonus.
  • Contacts page. This is probably the most obvious way to get in touch with someone at a company. Use the contact form or contact email address on the website. For added effectiveness, address the email “Dear John” or “Hi Jim” to the President of the company or someone in marketing. If it’s a larger company, something like “Dear Mr. Smith” would probably be best since there will likely be more than one person with the name, and a more formal greeting may be appropriate in getting your email forwarded to the right party.
  • Whois look up. The technology decision maker or executive is often the contact on the Whois. If you are unsure of whether the Whois contact is the correct person to contact, do a Google search for that person’s name to see where he or she ranks at the company. This will also tell you whether the person works for the company or is a web developer who will likely delete your email.
  • LinkedIn. You can use a site like LinkedIn to find the name of the contact at a company. If you have connections in common, you can try to get an introduction, or you might be able to contact the person using other means, like Facebook. You can also guess the person’s email address, trying something like john.smith@company.com or a variety of other options. I like to try and find a random person’s email address in a press release or something else to see how the company uses email addresses and try to send an email to the owner or marketing contact that way.
  • Press release archive contact. Look at a company’s old press releases to see if the president’s contact information is listed. Sometimes it’s a press agent, which doesn’t usually result in good leads for me. However, if the person is labeled as a marketing manager, you might have luck with the domain name decision maker.

I am sure there are many other ways to get in touch with the right person at a company. Please share your ideas on ways to contact a decision maker.

1...190191192...254Page 191 of 254