debate Have you ever created a website to sell a high value domain?

[SSM]

I'm not referring to low or even mid value domains, but ultra premium domains.

The way I see it, is that these type of domains will

A) get type in traffic, and
B) If a party is interested, they'll find a way of making contact regardless of which landing page is used.

I.e. it makes no difference if the domain is parked to Sedo, Dan, GoDaddy etc.

BUT... I'm curious to if anyone has ever gone to the effort of creating a website (rather than just a landing page) with the purpose of driving organic traffic to the domain with the hopes of attracting more attention to the fact the domain is for sale.

With an extensive background in SEO for 15yrs, I'm tempted by taking this route to sell a 7 figure domain. At the same time, I also know the search intent of the user will not be targeted and that majority of the traffic will be pointless. But there's the small chance that businesses within the same industry will discover the site through organic keywords, visit the site and see the domain itself is for sale.

So whilst I see the pros and cons, I'm actually curious if anyone has ever done this?

 

[Samer]

Mike.com leads to portfolio of ultra-premium domains for sale; including my favorite; Hope.com; which is a website run by Michael J. Saylor, the Bitcoin Evangelist, who sold the domain, Voice.com, for a record $30M.

 

[SSM]

Mike.com leads to portfolio of ultra-premium domains for sale; including my favorite; Hope.com; which is a website run by Michael J. Saylor, the Bitcoin Evangelist, who sold the domain, Voice.com, for a record $30M.

Thanks but hope.com doesn't clearly state that the domain is for sale. This is more like a domain that was being used, which now may be for sale. You'd only know this by looking on mike.com

I'm specifically referring to a website being developed on a domain, targeting relevant keywords so more people are aware that the name is for sale.

An example, would be if you typed aeroplane into google, and aeroplane.com came up. The site would instantly say this domain is for sale.

This is just an example and is obviously a domain owned by apple.com, but you get the idea.

 

[Samer]

Thanks but hope.com doesn't clearly state that the domain is for sale. This is more like a domain that was being used, which now may be for sale. You'd only know this by looking on mike.com

I'm specifically referring to a website being developed on a domain, targeting relevant keywords so more people are aware that the name is for sale.

An example, would be if you typed aeroplane into google, and aeroplane.com came up. The site would instantly say this domain is for sale.

This is just an example and is obviously a domain owned by apple.com, but you get the idea.

Fascinating. Following this thread!

 

[decades80]

Thanks but hope.com doesn't clearly state that the domain is for sale. This is more like a domain that was being used, which now may be for sale. You'd only know this by looking on mike.com

I'm specifically referring to a website being developed on a domain, targeting relevant keywords so more people are aware that the name is for sale.

An example, would be if you typed aeroplane into google, and aeroplane.com came up. The site would instantly say this domain is for sale.

This is just an example and is obviously a domain owned by apple.com, but you get the idea.

If the site was the first result on Google, that would mean for the high competitive keywords, that you invested millions or tens of millions in SEO alone. So advertising place instead of words: This domain may be for sale would give you much more revenue that the name itself is worth imo.

 

[SSM]

If the site was the first result on Google, that would mean for the high competitive keywords, that you invested millions or tens of millions in SEO alone. So advertising place instead of words: This domain may be for sale would give you much more revenue that the name itself is worth imo.

Nope, just time. By day, I run a successful agency and have years of experience in ranking highly competitive keywords.

If I did it, it would be to attract a sale. Not to gain revenue in advertising space.

With that being said, as mentioned - the downside would be I'd be targeting the wrong type of search intent although competitors would see the domain was for sale.

 

[decades80]

Nope, just time. By day, I run a successful agency and have years of experience in ranking highly competitive keywords.

If I did it, it would be to attract a sale. Not to gain revenue in advertising space.

With that being said, as mentioned - the downside would be I'd be targeting the wrong type of search intent although competitors would see the domain was for sale.

I honestly dont believe you could rank hotels.gg on first page on Google for term hotels for instance. Which keywords you put on the first page already?

 

[Lox]

Nope, just time. By day, I run a successful agency and have years of experience in ranking highly competitive keywords.

If I did it, it would be to attract a sale. Not to gain revenue in advertising space.

With that being said, as mentioned - the downside would be I'd be targeting the wrong type of search intent although competitors would see the domain was for sale.

Most of domains showing "for sale" can't stay on 1st SRP longer than 6 month.
Only if you run on "airplanes" something serious - edu or comm. Tested

Regards

 

[SSM]

I honestly dont believe you could rank hotels.gg on first page on Google for term hotels for instance. Which keywords you put on the first page already?

Blimey. If I had a .gg domain, I wouldn't bother putting the effort in.

However if I had hotels.com, (and it had no rankings obviously) I'm confident I could.

Question is, would it be worth it if the sole intention was to attract a buyer for the name...

 

[eyedomainous]

Yes, I create channel sites for some of my premium domains, like DroneTV.com, and it continues to attract attention, and offers, from others in the industry. Some of the offers were quite respectable, but as the $1.4M asking price targets the TV station market... I continue to respectfully decline lessor offers.

I'm transitioning to a sub-domain set-up [so all site links don't resolve yet.] where the sub-domain does biz and interested parties that visit the main domain discover it, and others, are for sale. I think posting the domain is for sale on the 'biz' site interferes with the 'sales pitch'.

As far as SEO goes, I'm glad to see both the sub-domain and/or the domain still rank the first page.

Rinse & repeat for ResellTV.com (Resell.com is $2M @ Godaddy), and 8 others in my premium network.

 

[SSM]

Yes, I create channel sites for some of my premium domains, like DroneTV.com, and it continues to attract attention, and offers, from others in the industry. Some of the offers were quite respectable, but as the $1.4M asking price targets the TV station market... I continue to respectfully decline lessor offers.

I'm transitioning to a sub-domain set-up [so all site links don't resolve yet.] where the sub-domain does biz and interested parties that visit the main domain discover it, and others, are for sale. I think posting the domain is for sale on the 'biz' site interferes with the 'sales pitch'.

As far as SEO goes, I'm glad to see both the sub-domain and/or the domain still rank the first page.

Rinse & repeat for ResellTV.com (Resell.com is $2M @ Godaddy), and 8 others in my premium network.

This is good to know. Thank you.

 

[Lox]

domain still rank the first page.

as long as you keep the connection w Rallins (content/words) and Brid

Regards

 

[decades80]

Yes, I create channel sites for some of my premium domains, like DroneTV.com, and it continues to attract attention, and offers, from others in the industry. Some of the offers were quite respectable, but as the $1.4M asking price targets the TV station market... I continue to respectfully decline lessor offers.

I'm transitioning to a sub-domain set-up [so all site links don't resolve yet.] where the sub-domain does biz and interested parties that visit the main domain discover it, and others, are for sale. I think posting the domain is for sale on the 'biz' site interferes with the 'sales pitch'.

As far as SEO goes, I'm glad to see both the sub-domain and/or the domain still rank the first page.

Rinse & repeat for ResellTV.com (Resell.com is $2M @ Godaddy), and 8 others in my premium network.

Thanks for letting us know. But is the drone TV search volume so competitive in reality, like insurance, bookings or cars? I can not even find a search volume tbh.

 

[decades80]

Blimey. If I had a .gg domain, I wouldn't bother putting the effort in.

However if I had hotels.com, (and it had no rankings obviously) I'm confident I could.

Question is, would it be worth it if the sole intention was to attract a buyer for the name...

Ok let me rephrase my question. If I search SEO + Agency on Google is your agency first to come up on the 1st page, or I have to scroll to 5th or 6th page on Google?

 

[eyedomainous]

Thanks for letting us know. But is the drone TV search volume so competitive in reality, like insurance, bookings or cars? I can not even find a search volume tbh.

Clearly, drone search volume corresponds to a high value, 'tech consumer', search volume, not a mass market consumer product search volume like insurance, bookings and cars.

 

[SSM]

Ok let me rephrase my question. If I search SEO + Agency on Google is your agency first to come up on the 1st page, or I have to scroll to 5th or 6th page on Google?

That's besides the point. We don't put that amount of time in to rank on page one for the term, as most of our work comes through referrals and the agency time is spent on improving organic performance for clients first and foremost.

Yes, we get organic traffic, but our focus is not ranking first for seo agency.

The same could be said for other keywords such as website design, eCommerce development and so forth.

Believe me. If we put in the amount of resources required to target those keywords for first page, we wouldn't have time to do any actual work.

With clients internationally, we're fortunate to not need to go to those lengths.

 

[eyedomainous]

as long as you keep the connection w Rallins (content/words) and Brid

Regards

The 'Rallins' domain connection to DroneTV is less than a month old, the Brid connection less than a year. DroneTV.com has been ranking on page one for around 8 years now.

 

[Lox]

The 'Rallins' domain connection to DroneTV is less than a month old, the Brid connection less than a year. DroneTV.com has been ranking on page one for around 8 years now.

Great to know! Awesome!

Regards

 

[poweredbyme]

I'm not referring to low or even mid value domains, but ultra premium domains.

The way I see it, is that these type of domains will

A) get type in traffic, and
B) If a party is interested, they'll find a way of making contact regardless of which landing page is used.

I.e. it makes no difference if the domain is parked to Sedo, Dan, GoDaddy etc.

BUT... I'm curious to if anyone has ever gone to the effort of creating a website (rather than just a landing page) with the purpose of driving organic traffic to the domain with the hopes of attracting more attention to the fact the domain is for sale.

With an extensive background in SEO for 15yrs, I'm tempted by taking this route to sell a 7 figure domain. At the same time, I also know the search intent of the user will not be targeted and that majority of the traffic will be pointless. But there's the small chance that businesses within the same industry will discover the site through organic keywords, visit the site and see the domain itself is for sale.

So whilst I see the pros and cons, I'm actually curious if anyone has ever done this?

Once you created a website, you would be selling a website, not domain. Even if the buyer is not interested in buying your website content you would be selling website. You may not care as long as you sell. But you would miss a fact: Pricing of domains and websites is different.

If you create websites on "ultra premium domains" you might lower domain value. The chances is high. If you think some exposure will help, create a page to say the domain is for sale and buy traffic or promote it yourself. Ultra premium domains usually don't need such efforts and those efforts may backfire as promotion would be seen like looking for a buyer desperately. Some buyers may think like that: if this was a ultra premium domain it wouldn't need promotion, either the domain is not premium or the domain is overpriced.

 

[SSM]

Once you created a website, you would be selling a website, not domain. Even if the buyer is not interested in buying your website content you would be selling website. You may not care as long as you sell. But you would miss a fact: Pricing of domains and websites is different.

If you create websites on "ultra premium domains" you might lower domain value. The chances is high. If you think some exposure will help, create a page to say the domain is for sale and buy traffic or promote it yourself. Ultra premium domains usually don't need such efforts and those efforts may backfire as promotion would be seen like looking for a buyer desperately. Some buyers may think like that: if this was a ultra premium domain it wouldn't need promotion, either the domain is not premium or the domain is overpriced.

Not necessarily true. Rotd has had domains for sale before from businesses that had gone out of business, but it was clear only the domain was for sale.

I do however see your point about possibly looking desperate.

 

[eyedomainous]

Once you created a website, you would be selling a website, not domain. Even if the buyer is not interested in buying your website content you would be selling website. You may not care as long as you sell. But you would miss a fact: Pricing of domains and websites is different.

If you create websites on "ultra premium domains" you might lower domain value. The chances is high. If you think some exposure will help, create a page to say the domain is for sale and buy traffic or promote it yourself. Ultra premium domains usually don't need such efforts and those efforts may backfire as promotion would be seen like looking for a buyer desperately. Some buyers may think like that: if this was a ultra premium domain it wouldn't need promotion, either the domain is not premium or the domain is overpriced.

Indexable content is the only distinction between parked, landing page and "website" domains.

Parked and landing pages are ecommerce websites. And, buyers of parked & landing page domains also get, and often keep, the website.

Indexable domains are search engine ranked. The higher the rank the greater the value to buyers, regardless of the (indexed) content.

I'm sorry, but the chances are not high an ultra premium domain, with an indexable website, would lose sales value -compared to the same domain parked (banned), or on a landing page.

Also, IMO, self-promoting a parked / landing page domain looks considerably more desperate than getting search engines to rank/promote your premium domain, organically aka free!

 

[poweredbyme]

Indexable content is the only distinction between parked, landing page and "website" domains.

Parked and landing pages are ecommerce websites. And, buyers of parked & landing page domains also get, and often keep, the website.

Indexable domains are search engine ranked. The higher the rank the greater the value to buyers, regardless of the (indexed) content.

I'm sorry, but the chances are not high an ultra premium domain, with an indexable website, would lose sales value -compared to the same domain parked (banned), or on a landing page.

Also, IMO, self-promoting a parked / landing page domain looks considerably more desperate than getting search engines to rank/promote your premium domain, organically aka free!

If you add indexable content to premium domains, the domain loses value unless it's sold with the existing content, in other words as a website.

SE rankings are based on page rather than domain. If buyer changes existing internal URL's and/or content, overall SE rankings drop more compared to domains with no content history. Because changes in URL's and/or content, change the status of the domain from a neutral domain with no content history to a spam domain with spam content. Don't think you could redirect old internal pages as a solution. Redirections don't help much. Domains with content history lose value unless they are sold with existing content, as websites. Domains with previously indexed content and backlink history have less value for buyers with intention to develop their own websites. They prefer to buy domains with no content and backlink history. That is more important for buyers who will use the domain for their existing products and customers.

 

[SSM]

If you add indexable content to premium domains, the domain loses value unless it's sold with the existing content, in other words as a website.

SE rankings are based on page rather than domain. If buyer changes existing internal URL's and/or content, overall SE rankings drop more compared to domains with no content history. Because changes in URL's and/or content, change the status of the domain from a neutral domain with no content history to a spam domain with spam content. Don't think you could redirect old internal pages as a solution. Redirections don't help much. Domains with content history lose value unless they are sold with existing content, as websites. Domains with previously indexed content and backlink history have less value for buyers with intention to develop their own websites. They prefer to buy domains with no content and backlink history. That is more important for buyers who will use the domain for their existing products and customers.

There's a lot in this response that is incorrect information however I'm not getting into this as it will turn into a topic about SEO rather than awareness.

 

[eyedomainous]

If you add indexable content to premium domains, the domain loses value unless it's sold with the existing content, in other words as a website.

Indexed domains often sell to competitors seeking to gain market share. Sometimes the buyer's goal is to "kill the site", and/or incorporate its innovative content. Either way a competitive premium domain, with content, cannot lose value to a non-competitive premium domain name, without website content... because it simply can't compete for market share it possess no threat in the search marketplace.

SE rankings are based on page rather than domain.

SE rankings are based on page content AND the domain's keywords.

If buyer changes existing internal URL's and/or content, overall SE rankings drop more compared to domains with no content history.

Domains with no content history have no SE rankings because they have no content history in the index.

Because changes in URL's and/or content, change the status of the domain from a neutral domain with no content history to a spam domain with spam content.

How does a URL with content become a "neutral domain"(?) with no content history?
How does a neutral domain with no content history become a spam domain with spam content?

Don't think you could redirect old internal pages as a solution. Redirections don't help much. Domains with content history lose value unless they are sold with existing content, as websites.

Subdomain redirects are indexed. And, as mentioned, my subdomain redirects improved site rankings.

Domains with previously indexed content and backlink history have less value for buyers with intention to develop their own websites. They prefer to buy domains with no content and backlink history. That is more important for buyers who will use the domain for their existing products and customers.

Because virtually all domains not in the index have been banned for being parked, or For Sale spam sites domainers often recite this 'no site history' fabrication instead of revealing the actual banned site reality.

 

[Corey]

not sure if this is what you mean, but...

a work in progress... is

GDBR.com

Cheers
Corey