I haven’t done much outbound marketing to sell my domain names recently. I’ve done it on occasion, but it’s less frequent these days. The reasons I don’t do much of it is a combination of not wanting to seem like I need to sell a domain name and not having a ton of success with selling via outbound.
Perhaps I haven’t had much success with outbound marketing because I am mostly choosing domain names that have had less inbound interest. Without these attributes, there’s probably less intrinsic interest in these domain names. I have also typically chosen domain names I am okay selling for less money since most people tend to try to negotiate a better deal if they respond to an outbound email.
One thing I’ve noticed is that my outbound efforts don’t tend to close deals immediately, but I have sold a number of them weeks or months after sending out my email. Some of these deals were closed where they are listed for sale rather than negotiated directly with me. Unfortunately, this means I need to pay a full marketplace commission, but it is what it is.
When I was doing outbound more regularly, I would typically send these emails as a last-ditch effort to sell a domain name I was planning to let expire. My thinking was pretty simple in that I could reach out to targeted prospects and offer the domain name at a price lower than what was listed on the landing page. If it worked, it was some extra income on an asset that was just sitting there with no interest. If it didn’t, I was going to let the domain name expire anyway, so it was worth making one last effort.
With some of these deals closing after time passed, it gives pause to that. Instead of outbounding with a month to go before a domain name is going to expire, perhaps it’s better to make that effort earlier in the domain name lifecycle.
