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Lead Generation on Targeted Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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35

I know there are a lot of successful domain investors who are using their targeted domain names for lead gen, and I am thinking about trying it. Instead of selling a key domain name or spending time and effort building the site fully, I could reach out to one of the main companies in the field and work out a deal for the leads my site brings. Depending on the typical CPA, this could be very beneficial to both parties, and if successful, could actually lead to the domain sale.

The general premise is that I would take one of my exact match domain names where people are looking to buy an expensive product (probably a custom product or financial product), and I would do a one page website with general information about the product for SEO purposes and have a well-placed information request form.   For those who aren’t adept at web development, Wufoo is a website that allows people to create custom forms, and I think it would work well for this type of project.

What got me thinking about this was that for the bike tour in which I participated, the Ronald McDonald House provided its riders with custom “Team Ronald” technical bike shirts. I was thinking that the RMDH organizer probably did a Google search for “custom bike shirts” or something like that in order to find a company that made the shirts. If I owned CustomBikeShirts.com and they requested more information for 25 bike shirts (cost of around $2,000), it would be a nice commission check for just sending the lead to a shirt company.

One thing that I (and you) should consider is that there may be privacy issues with sharing personal and contact information, especially if it’s health, legal, or medical-related, so be sure to have a well-placed terms and conditions notice as well as a privacy policy. These are good to have in general, but if you are sharing or selling this information, it’s essential.

Perhaps some of the experts who are doing lead generation on their domain names can share some tips with those of us who are interested in trying!

Two Liquor Company Follies

Elliot Silver
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6

WeLoveWodka.com

When I go out with friends, I am generally a beer drinker, but if I am drinking liquor it’s usually a Ketel One and soda or Ketel and Red Bull. If I am having a “tropical” drink, it will usually be something with Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum.   I want to share what I think are a couple of liquor company domain name follies with you.

Captain Morgan is known for its Spiced Rum. They have other products of course, but if you ask for Captain and Coke, you’ll probably get a Spiced Rum.   Smartly, Diago, the maker of Captain Morgan products, owns SpicedRum.com, and when you visit SpicedRum.com, you’ll be forwarded to CaptainYourHalloween.com. I assume this was for a short term promotion, but they never changed it back. To make things worse, CaptainYourHalloween.com is a parked page.

I emailed the Chief Marketing Officer of Diageo back in January of 2009 to let him know of the issue.   We exchanged a few emails, and he put me in touch with the Director of Digital Marketing. It’s now over a year later, and the domain name still forwards to the same default parked page.   Someone is making money on it, and it’s probably not Diageo.

The second liquor “faux paux” (in my opinion) comes from a company called Wodka Vodka. The have a large billboard on the Henry Hudson Parkway in New York City with a call to action, encouraging drivers to visit WeLoveWodka.com.   As you can probably guess, WeLoveVodka.com is owned by another company. It wouldn’t be so bad if the W and V didn’t look so similar, but if you’re passing it at 50mph, chances are good that there will be a lot of people who visit the wrong domain name.

Two liquor companies using domain names poorly and should probably hire a domain consultant.

Pool Set to Auction Namaste.com

Elliot Silver
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18

Pool.comI just received an email from Pool.com announcing an exclusive auction for the domain name Namaste.com. The domain name has cultural significance, and for those who are unfamiliar with “Namaste,” here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Namaste, from external Sandhi between namaḥ and te) is a common spoken greeting or salutation used in India and Nepal. It has multi-religious or else common usage where it may simply mean “I bow to you.” The word is derived from Sanskrit namas, to bow, obeisance, reverential salutation, and te, “to you.”

When spoken to another person, it is commonly accompanied by a slight bow made with hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointed upwards, in front of the chest. This gesture, called Añjali Mudrā, can also be performed wordlessly and carries the same meaning.

This domain name will be sold by June 3, 2010, which is less than a week away. The auction starts at $16,000, and I think it will probably sell for much more than that number. If interested, you can bid on Namaste.com via Pool.com.

If you don’t already get Pool’s daily Hot List newsletter, you might consider signing up so you can be informed about auctions like this and upcoming popular daily auctions.

Let Me Try & Help You Sell a Newly Registered Domain Name to an End User

Elliot Silver
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128

A while back, someone emailed me to ask if I could be his mentor. I passed because that seemed like a lot of pressure and I didn’t feel qualified to be a mentor. A lot of people seem to have questions about selling domain names to end users, and while I would never say that I am an expert at it, I have had some success.

With that said, I want to try something unique. I want to work with someone who wants to learn how to sell a domain name to an end user. I will communicate with this person via email, and based on the person’s background and experience he (or she) and I will discuss some available domain names and determine one or two of the best and that person will register the domain names with the hopes of reselling one or both for $500 or less, which I have found to be a fair number.

I will then work with the person to help find potential buyers and craft an email that will hopefully lead to a successful sale. I obviously can’t promise that it will lead to a sale, but hopefully the person I work with will get a good understanding of how I evaluate domain names to buy for resale. The more diverse a person’s “real world” experience is, the better, since this could help with buying great niche domain names.

If this is something that is of interest to you, please post a comment in this article, and when I return from my trip on June 7th, I will create a list of people who are interested and use a random number generator to select the winner. I will also be happy to share the results with everyone – or better yet – the winner will write a guest post about the experience. I am headed out of town tomorrow, so comments may be slow to be approved but I will eventually see and approve them.

Disclaimer: The person will be responsible for buying the domain names and will keep 100% of the proceeds if the domain name sells. He/she will be responsible for completing the sale (payment and domain transfer). The person will be responsible for any issues or problems that come up related to the domain name(s). There is obviously no charge for my services for this opportunity. I will only act as an adviser on this project and can’t be held liable for anything associated with this.

Another End User Sale Detailed

Elliot Silver
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25

I am not going to share the names of the two domain sales I made this week to protect the privacy of the buyers, but they were both hand registered within the past 7 days, and they sold for $360 and $400. I have a third domain name, which is related to one of the two that sold, and I think that one is going to sell for a little bit less today.

I want to detail the domain sales process for one of the sales, as the second sale was was similar to the first (although it was made after just 2 emails).   For the first sale detailed below, as I was emailing companies based on a Google search of the product, I realized there was an alternate spelling to the product, so I registered that domain phrase too.   As of 11am this morning, I only sold one of these two names, but you’ll see more information below.

My initial email to around 30 companies and people in the business:

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I see that you sell custom xxxxxxxx, and my company is selling the domain name CustomXxxxxxx.com. The domain name is the exact match of the search term, and developing it could provide a SEO boost for your company in this market.

If you are interested in acquiring CustomXxxxxxx.com, please let me know. I am offering it to several xxxxxxxx companies in the next few days. Also, my company owns XXXXXXX.com and will be looking for partner opportunities in the near future, so if you have any ideas on how we could work together, please let me know.
———————

Half way through the 30 emails I sent, I added a line about the second domain name I bought, mentioning the fact that I own it as well and would sell it. I mentioned one of my domain names that I am looking to partner on, as it’s a very well known name in this particular business and I thought it would give me added credibility.

Out of the 30 or so emails, I received nine replies. Six asked for the price of the first name, one said she wasn’t interested but wanted to know the price, one said she didn’t sell this type of product any longer, and one asked for the price on the second name. I replied to the eight interested people with an email saying the names are $900 for both and it would go to the first person who replies. I didn’t get a positive response to this BIN offer (I got 3 “no thanks” types of replies).

Two days later, I sent out a second email with everyone Blind Carbon Copied:

———————
I am blind carbon copying the 9 people/companies who have shown an interest in CustomXxxxxxx.com and/or CustomYyyyyyyyy.com. I have opted to drop the price of the domain names to facilitate a quicker sale. Each domain name is just $360 to purchase. The domain names are registered at Moniker, a Florida-based domain registrar. If you would like both domain names, the price for the pair is $600, although I can’t sell the pair if someone agrees to buy one of the domain names first.

The first person to write back and say, “I will take it” will get the domain name. Payment may be made via Paypal.
———————

One lady replied within an hour and said that she would take the first name for $360, and the name was transferred within a day and payment was made nearly immediately. She opened a Moniker account and didn’t have any issues using them. In less than a week, the profit from the sale was $330 after Paypal fees and the cost of the domain name, and it literally took under 2 hours for all correspondence and research.

This morning, I received an email from the person who wanted to buy the second name, and he offered $500 for both (he also asked how much Moniker charges per year). I replied that I only had one of the names remaining, and I would sell it to him for $250 – and I gave him Moniker’s price. I also let him know I was going away tomorrow so I could hopefully close the deal before I leave. I will provide an update later.

So what did I learn from this and from other recent sales to end users?

  • Looks like sales under $500 are easier to make
  • Domain name should be the exact match .com of a high profit margin product (custom things are generally higher margin)
  • Almost all replies were from individuals or very small businesses
  • I previously mentioned that registering names at Godaddy made a sale easier because everyone knows Godaddy, but it worked fine with the names being at Moniker
  • Focus on one or two names at a time, sell those and repeat the process
  • You might not always get what you want for the names so be flexible in pricing
  • Don’t go for a “home run” with your price
  • Treat everything like a learning experience – test everything from emails to pricing
  • I still love finding new domain names and selling them. Yes, it’s thrilling to buy a $5k name and flip it for $10k, but when I bought the name I knew it was worth more than I was paying. Finding unregistered names that has value is more fun for me although I probably couldn’t run my business simply by doing this.
  • Not all valuable domain names are registered!

Compete Traffic Numbers & Fusible Report – LOL

Elliot Silver
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35

According to a post on the anonymously written* Fusible blog, “Elliot’s Blog experienced a big drop in traffic, going from over 46,000 unique visitors in March to under 21,000 visitors in April. Other blogs experienced significant falls in traffic – with Mike Berken’s popular TheDomains.com blog showing a difference of 20,000 visitors.”

As I was writing a reply in the comment section of the Fusible blog , my blog’s hosting/server manager wrote me an email:

“Here are the server stats if you want to dispute Fusible’s incorrect post saying you’ve gone down in your traffic:

April Total Visits To Your Blog – 64,684″

I also added that for my blog at least, Compete is way off… I checked in Google Analytics and Stat Counter, and the # of visitors in April was up a grand total of 226 visitors (according to Google) and up 951 visitors (according to Stat Counter), which is virtually identical and a negligible difference.

As you can see from the aforementioned traffic numbers directly from my server, Fusible is incorrect in stating that “the results aren’t that far off.” Likewise, Mike Berkens’ commented about the traffic report as well. In any case, I am just writing this to clarify my blog’s traffic stats, and as my advertisers know, I am happy to share my traffic numbers with them.

*BTW, I only say “anonymously written” because there is little information about the writers on the website (other than the fact that it’s a husband and wife team), and the blog’s domain name is privately registered.

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