I operate my own “for sale” inquiry pages for my domain names via Embrace.com. I like that I can control my own landing page designs and have total, private control over my leads (I trust platforms like Efty and Dan.com have privacy features, but I also assume if someone acquires either business, they would also acquire data). There are several downsides to managing your own landing pages, and I want to share them with readers.
One of the hallmarks of direct marketing is testing everything. This was one of my biggest takeaways from graduate school. With my own landing pages, I have the ability to test everything. However, to actually do this, I either need to have a designer on staff to make changes regularly, or I need to spend quite a bit on freelance designers. This can get expensive for a smaller business.
Assuming I am willing to spend this money on landing page design changes, I also need to commit to tracking the tests. I need to understand if color changes, language changes, or other call to action changes make a difference, so I need to be able to understand how these changes impact my leads. This, in and of itself, is not super difficult. The biggest issue (for me) is with just about 1,000 domain names, there are not enough leads generated to know if the changes make any bit of difference. Making wholesale changes because I received a couple of extra leads one day is not the best idea.
Aside from the design perspective, there are technical details I need to manage, and those can get tricky. It is important to keep the website and plugins (depending on the CMS) updated as necessary. Once in a while, a plugin update breaks something on the website, and that requires attention from a developer who knows how to fix or address.
Finally, there are hosting issues, which is what made me think about this article. Yesterday, I went to check and ensure a domain name was forwarding correctly. The page did not load. A test of a couple of other domain names showed those were not loading either. Was this a temporary issue or something more serious? Was this impacting every visitor or just a subset? These questions are not super easy to answer and they may be impossible to know. Bottom line is that I need to figure that our or I won’t generate any leads.
While it’s nice to not have to pay a third party to manage landing pages and it’s nice to not have to pay a commission for sales, there is more responsibility for self-managed landing pages. Small issues can become bigger issues, and undetected downtime or a broken website can cause lost leads. There are advantages to managing my own landing pages, but there are some big disadvantages as well.
> Yesterday, I went to check and ensure a domain name was forwarding correctly. The page did not load.
There are plenty of services to monitor webpages and get notifications when they stop resolving. Free plans usually have limits on the number of monitored pages (e. g. 50 total with UptimeRobot), but you can utilize several services and thus solve this problem without any extra cost (or at least monitor your top domains).
If you have multiple pages operating from the same webserver, then you won’t even need that many monitors.
I use Montastic.
When I checked yesterday, there was no downtime for Embrace.com but my landing pages were not loading for me. It could have been some sort of IP blocking thing, something related to being logged in to the WP admin account, or something else totally unrelated. No clue!
Downtime or not, your site certainly has some issues. See the graph: this huge yellow “wait” delay is unacceptable.
https://tools.pingdom.com/#5b8e000f70400000
Owning your own page is the BEST option. You have more data and opportunity to profit in various ways. The control and available resource are practically unlimited.
Google analytics and search console give A LOT of information.
I don’t mean to self-promote (not much to brag about ATM anyways), but maybe inspire some to make their own site…
See the screenshot by clicking my name above. That is only A BIT of the analytics I gather in whole. The site is only a few months old and I did basically nothing to promote it. I can bring more traffic in a myriad of ways in the future.
Traffics can also be caused by bots/crawlers. Sometimes I search the IP of a suspicious visit on Google and see that it has already been listed on AbuseIPDB.
Guy moderate comments to suit his agenda like (most all other domaining blogs)…So who cares about what he writes? Comment section is a farce. Tired of moderated sites that don’t publish comments, WASTE OF TIME. NO WONDER their sites don’t have ppl talking! No one wants to wait all day for moderator to jack off.
What on earth are you talking about?
Your other comment was marked as “spam” by the Akismet WordPress plugin. As you can see in the screenshot below, I “un-spammed” it so it was approved. My guess is that Akismet thought the link in your url was spam and marked your comment as such. Just a guess because there was nothing within your comment that stands out to me as a reason for why Akismet would market it as spam. In general though, your comment should have automatically been approved since your name/email combination have already have an approved comment.
https://domaininvesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screen-Shot-2019-11-04-at-3.40.33-PM.png
Here are four other comments from your email address that all show up on my blog:
https://domaininvesting.com/embrace-the-extension-in-branding/#comment-85138
https://domaininvesting.com/embrace-the-extension-in-branding/#comment-85129
https://domaininvesting.com/embrace-the-extension-in-branding/#comment-85127
https://domaininvesting.com/could-a-pi-help-find-a-domain-registrant/#comment-84646
I am very liberal about comments on my blog and take offense to that insinuation.
Well thanks for your HONESTY, however, maybe I should of been WHITELISTED A LONG TIME AGO?
Seems the delay is your problem there, Askimnet, and it upset me, and it would upset other users too. Might look into allowing your ‘regulars’ to get their comments approved right away IMO.
I have it set so that comments from an email/name combo with a previously approved comment do not get marked as spam. I do not know what happened with your comment, but you can see that it was Akismet that marked it as spam, and I approved it manually. FWIW, there were only 4 spam comments in the folder and the other 3 were definitely spam.
Your attitude is pretty mean though, and makes running the blog less enjoyable. You made a false accusation about me and my comment approvals, which I immediately was able to address once I saw the issue. Had you had the decency to shoot me a quick note to let me know your comment did not appear, I would have found it right away.
If you knew how other blogs have .com PUMPERS instantly get approved, ACTUAL TROLLS. While I try debate, and those mods selectively approve my comments to make me look like an IDIOT, you’d understand more. It’s not fun being ‘GIMPED’ by moderators with a certain MO.
For example,
https://lifesavings.online/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/dnn1.png
HE NEVER PUBLISHED THAT COMMENT^ However, below he published this:
https://lifesavings.online/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/dnn2.png
I posted and was approved (after HOURS) MANY times on that blog too.
So see, I was actually EXPECTING you to DENY my first comment (held for moderation) while allowing me to seem RECKLESS!
I am constantly trying to HELP while others are free to spread lies and deception (not necessarily here, but ESPECIALLY a FEW other blogs), and im tired of it!
Those people are not me. I have been running this blog for 12+ years, and I do not think I would have the advertisers I have if I operated things in a way that alienated readers.
There are almost 85,000 comments here in that time.
Akismet is a universal anti-spam system for millions of WP blogs. You may get whitelisted on one site, but then your comment is not approved somewhere else and that makes you “suspicious” everywhere (even on the first site again). Solution: don’t comment where you don’t get approved repeatedly.
Also, I’m pretty sure you are more than capable to deliver your point in a cool, polite manner, without attacking anyone.
Moo, thank you. Elliot, im sorry for assuming. Although upset at what happened, I accept the reason.
I feel the reason is what Moo is saying is, my email and domain has been marked as ‘spam’ by those other blogs. I am a ‘spammer’ according to Askim.
Blogs HATE to hear a PRO-nTLD person post in their comment section. As I said, there are a few, I am not even allowed to post. So the .COM propaganda and nTLD bashing is EVERYWHERE, without anyone to stand up to them.
Let them get a dose of karma!
The challenges that come with developing, hosting and maintaining a custom solution like yours are especially demanding for portfolios with a large amount of traffic. The biggest upside is that you can have your landing pages exactly the way you like them, up to the smallest details, but on the flip side, like you said, you often end up paying a developer an/or designer on a regular basis for fixes and updates.
At Efty, users pay a small subscription fee to use the platform instead of a commision over sales and therefor they full have access to all available data (Name, Email, Phone number and IP address) of all leads and/or buyers. Having access to the buyers email address, IP and phone number is of major importance when doing research on a potential buyer and maximizing the dealsize while closing a sale.
We have a very clear governance on how Efty handles and protects data which you can read here: https://www.efty.com/governance/
Moo…
Do we know each other ??
What sites do you have.
You seem to know your stuff…
Jay
If I may ask…
What program / service / script are you using to gather all that data…??
Looks very useful…
~Patricia