strategy This is how I price my hand-registered domain names

[infosec3]

This is how I price my hand-registered domain names

Some people ask how I manage to sell so many hand-registered domain names. Before I answer that question, it would be convenient to answer this one: How many hand-registered names do I sell per every ten names I register? Generally, I sell between three and four names out of ten within the first two weeks of registration, but result vary depending on the month and hours dedicated to end-user search. So, if I buy ten names, about three of those will sell within two weeks. Some may sell later. Some others will never sell.

Everything considered, the business is consistently profitable, because hand-registration is not that expensive. The two key factors are registering the right names and pricing them correctly. As my sales report indicate, I focus on low value geo names or names that refer to a specific product or service within a given city, state or region. After doing this for some time, I have now a clear idea of which keywords sell quickly and which don’t, as well as which cities might mean hot sales.

My focus on this post is not keywords, but pricing. This is a pattern I have seen often enough in domain investors who attempt to sell hand-registered names. A domain investor registers a few decent names (ex. MiamiGoldBuyer.com, PhoenixDoors.com, etc.) and then contacts potential buyers attempting to sell each name for $1,500. He receives either a negative response or no response at all and then the domain investor arrives at the conclusion that this doesn’t work.

Have in mind that in my perspective the two names listed above are decent in the sense that you can easily flip them for a few hundred dollars. Forget keyword search, forget age, and forget CPC. Those rules do not apply to this particular game. The fact is that both MiamiGoldBuyer.com and PhoenixDoors.com have a list of small business owners who would like to own them. That is all that matters.

But, going back to prices. The key to flipping hand-registered geo names quickly is to price them in a way that it would be hard for end-users to reject. In other words, to speak the language of small business owners when it comes to pricing. Let me illustrate it this way. Now that I am also into numeric names, if you try to sell 76888.com to me for $5000, there is no way I could buy that name from you. However, if you ask for $100, that is an offer I can’t reject. So, I will buy it immediately.

The point is that when it comes to pricing, there is a melting point. You have to present the hand-registered names at a price that becomes hard to reject in the eye of end-users. You must find the balance between profit and expedited sales. In my opinion, for the two examples I gave (MiamiGoldBuyer.com and PhoenixDoors.com), the balanced and appropriate price tag is $250-$500.

Again, this is if you really want sales to happen. If you plan to sit on the names and ask for $1500, that is fine. But I doubt you will sell them before renewing them for a few years. And, most certainly, they will never sell. So the question is $400 now or $1500 never.

 

[cdnbigd]

... provided that the site owner does SEO to have it ranked.

I have WrexhamHotels.com and it's ranked nowhere in Google.

That's right. Sometimes they rank on their own and other times it's some light seo that gets them ranked.

 

[JamesCrew]

... provided that the site owner does SEO to have it ranked.

I have WrexhamHotels.com and it's ranked nowhere in Google.

Exactly. Basic SEO is essential and not to mention the competition that specific EMD has on it.

And for Google, moderate SEO is required to even rank an EMD with low competition.

 

[NetworkPearl]

That's right. Sometimes they rank on their own and other times it's some light seo that gets them ranked.

Thanks! How do you know which service+city.com to go for ?

 

[paul79]

i think the main difference between a sale and no sale in this case is the email you send & how good/persuasive that is to the buyer. i have to be frank here - don't ask me to provide a template as i haven't any success with it as yet so am in no position to be advising on it sorry. i think a good point was made that if you are contacting an existing business with a domain name already how do you convince them to buy yours when they don't really need it or weren't looking for a new one?

 

[pablohc86]

i think the main difference between a sale and no sale in this case is the email you send & how good/persuasive that is to the buyer. i have to be frank here - don't ask me to provide a template as i haven't any success with it as yet so am in no position to be advising on it sorry. i think a good point was made that if you are contacting an existing business with a domain name already how do you convince them to buy yours when they don't really need it or weren't looking for a new one?

I think they would prefer yours only if they could gain some benefits.
From what I think it seem that Google monthly average search Numer is not so determining because also names with no searches sells.
I've seen also that infosec sold a
GEOdogwalking.com with a "small" US or CA city while BostonDogWalking.com is still free to reg and there are lot of businesses in Boston that could need it.
I think to remember the city were Calgary, I said small because it is smaller than Boston.
He surely made a great research to understand which cities to target for a certain business.

 

[paul79]

so within the email itself you would recommend breaking it down quite specifically in terms of reasons to buy? i.e i think this domain would be good for you beacuse it has xxx monthly searches on google, is a .com so more popular extension (if applicable), pagerank of xxx etc...?

 

[pablohc86]

so within the email itself you would recommend breaking it down quite specifically in terms of reasons to buy? i.e i think this domain would be good for you beacuse it has xxx monthly searches on google, is a .com so more popular extension (if applicable), pagerank of xxx etc...?

Sincerely I don't like so much to tell to a business owner how he should conduct his business.
I think that the must part is provide him information to trust you. People do not buy anything nowadays if they do not trust who they are talking with.
After they trust you, you can write two lines about the domain benefits.
He will make his research to confirm what you say..
At least IMO

 

[NetworkPearl]

That is correct.

City+Product
City+Service
State+Product
State+Service
Service+City
Product+City

Etc.

would hyphens destroy the value? like Calgary-Loans.com?

 

[paul79]

thanks for the info pablo - sounds good to me and ties up with info other members have passed on previously. its so hard to get the tone right when you contact a potential customer so you don't offend them. if you come across too pushy or know all most business owners will be less than impressed but then you need to do enough to make the sale. so hard ha ha!

 

[KK Domains]

So I was wondering, based on your experience is there a difference in success rate/price in single v. plural domains.
E.G., GEO+shop.com vs. GEO+shops.com, plumber/plumbers, etc.

 

[paul79]

funny enough i asked the same question a bit ago re the plural v single on a different thread. the genral consenuse was that singular would prob be slightly better if trying to sell to an end user as ppl are more likely to want to call their business xxxxplumber.com . the plural is ok still but is more likely to be if someone is trying to set up a directory type site generally

 

[cdnbigd]

Wow! Great discussion under way here.

Yes, I was trying to ask infosec to provide examples of how it went with certain domains like CalgaryDogWalking.com but from the last message, I guess he's out of the picture.

I noticed BostonDogWalking was registered far before the Calgary one back in 2008 and for 8 years so it's not available. At the same time though, there's no website built on the domain.

Trust & persuasion are two key points to keep in mind when doing any sales. With small business owners, even more so. They want to feel comfortable with you and the idea that this domain will be of added benefit to their business. If they don't know too much about the online world, rankings, their online competition and presence or SEO, they will see it as just someone trying to sell them a 2nd "website", which of course they do not need.

Personally, I do throw in a few key points in my outgoing emails. I explain very briefly in bullet points that this domain will have people seeing them as trust & authority in that specific field. It's a very easy to remember name, could bring type-in traffic, the search volume (if it's high enough) and that they can just redirect the name to their existing site.

With EMD's, the small biz owner will mainly just need to create a Google My Business page, claim & verify the listing, ask his/her customers for a handful of reviews and at times that's more than enough to claim the top 3 positions.

 

[cdnbigd]

Oh and as for hyphens, like any domain name out there... much better without the hyphens.

For singular vs plural, I agree... plural always just sounds like a directory site, not a site for a small business. If I see VancouverDentist.com, I'd know it's for 1 dental practice and being that there can be only 1 vancouverdentist.com, I'd assume they're the best in the city. If I see VancouverDentists.com, I'd only go there if I want a listing of all the dentists in the city.

 

[NetworkPearl]

Oh and as for hyphens, like any domain name out there... much better without the hyphens.

For singular vs plural, I agree... plural always just sounds like a directory site, not a site for a small business. If I see VancouverDentist.com, I'd know it's for 1 dental practice and being that there can be only 1 vancouverdentist.com, I'd assume they're the best in the city. If I see, I'd only go there if I want a listing of all the dentists in the city.

Well I have read on some websites, that hyphens don't affect SEO but brand name only.

So if CalgaryDogsWalking,com is registered , I can go for Calgary-Dogs-Walking.com?

Also how to persuade a small business owner to buy a domain such as
TorontoMassage . Com which , lets suppose has very low search volume ?

 

[cdnbigd]

Well I have read on some websites, that hyphens don't affect SEO but brand name only.

So if CalgaryDogsWalking,com is registered , I can go for Calgary-Dogs-Walking.com?

Also how to persuade a small business owner to buy a domain such as
TorontoMassage . Com which , lets suppose has very low search volume ?

Yes, you could go for that name with hyphens. Hyphens really are just separators to help search engines and people differentiate the words. In some cases it's a good thing to have when you really need to separate the words such as:
expertsexchange.com vs. experts-exchange.com. You wouldn't want people thinking your site is Expert Sex Change would you? Okay, that depends..

Many people have tried to con google in the past with tossing hyphens in brand name .com's (go-ogle.com, face-book.com) and because of this, Google does have a bit of a red flag when viewing domains with hyphens since their now associated with spammy tactics.

Also, many people will forget to place a hyphen in your name when they remember to look you up when they get home. Because of this, you'll lose that auto repair job to the competitor who has the same domain without the hyphen.

In domaining, for the most part, you always want something very easy to remember. A name with 2 or 3 hyphens is not easy to remember.

Hope that helped in a way. Damn, maybe I should start posting on NP too. lol

 

[NetworkPearl]

Yes, you could go for that name with hyphens. Hyphens really are just separators to help search engines and people differentiate the words. In some cases it's a good thing to have when you really need to separate the words such as:
expertsexchange.com vs. experts-exchange.com. You wouldn't want people thinking your site is Expert Sex Change would you? Okay, that depends..

Many people have tried to con google in the past with tossing hyphens in brand name .com's (go-ogle.com, face-book.com) and because of this, Google does have a bit of a red flag when viewing domains with hyphens since their now associated with spammy tactics.

Also, many people will forget to place a hyphen in your name when they remember to look you up when they get home. Because of this, you'll lose that auto repair job to the competitor who has the same domain without the hyphen.

In domaining, for the most part, you always want something very easy to remember. A name with 2 or 3 hyphens is not easy to remember.

Hope that helped in a way. Damn, maybe I should start posting on NP too. lol

Thanks, you always help! Haha.

 

[Landov]

If you discovered a very profitable business, why would you sell it in a movie for 50$ for hundreds others to take it over?

 

[cdnbigd]

If you discovered a very profitable business, why would you sell it in a movie for 50$ for hundreds others to take it over?

Not sure I understand. I try to sell all my geo+service domains for $250 - $450 and I only reach out to end users.

 

[Galleshem]

Not sure I understand. I try to sell all my geo+service domains for $250 - $450 and I only reach out to end users.

He forwarded his question to Infosec.

 

[cdnbigd]

He forwarded his question to Infosec.

Oh, thanks @Galleshem. I didn't see him mentioning infosec and infosec I think already mentioned he wasn't coming back to this thread.

 

[Banezer]

Been a week closely using infosec's strategy, some for geo, other more general ones too and including a realistic price in the email definitely increased the answers back.

Zfbot.com = very quick results of domains registered with your keywords

Google = search with "quotation marks" around your keywords, then remove the quotation marks and search again (this gives you direct and indirect results for potential clients.

Whois.godaddy.com = most up to date whois info

Whoisology.com = fairly accurate, also shows other names that person owns using that email (after certain searches per day it's payable unless you're in the US and you register)

Sidekick plug-in = see who opened your email more than once, helps to know if there's some potential brewing

Have sold 3 this week and counting.

My strategy per day is search for 30 mins to 1 hour, find 5-6 names I see definite value (usually short & sweet) and send emails using the strategy above, so far at least 1-2 is selling per 6-7 names, some might next week or so who knows.

Always always always follow up, most of my sales are done after following up 1-3 times

please what do you mean when you said always fellow up?

can you give an example from your sale?

thank

 

[greggb]

I don't doubt that this guy knows what he's talking about, but he's obviously trying to sell something to the members here. It sounds to me like his game depends on being a good salesman. Good for him if he is, but beware that he might be trying to sell something to you now.

 

[cdnbigd]

I don't doubt that this guy knows what he's talking about, but he's obviously trying to sell something to the members here. It sounds to me like his game depends on being a good salesman. Good for him if he is, but beware that he might be trying to sell something to you now.

By "this guy", I assume you mean infosec? If so, you're correct. You can see plenty of his threads and posts on NP with him trying to sell his geo domain video.

I'm still around since I like sharing information, helping others when I can and learning from more experienced domainers. I still think we should all be learning together & helping each other on here. (without a "what's in it for me" attitude)

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Hi,

I think I am going to leave it here. I have already shared too much on a public thread. Feel free to PM and we might continue the discussion. I might come back to the thread, but I will stop for now.

Thanks

Perfectly understandable. I/we do appreciate the information you have given so thank you!

 

[cdnbigd]

Perfectly understandable. I/we do appreciate the information you have given so thank you!

No worries. Just wanted to be clear that it's not me who's trying to cut the information sharing short and selling something. It's the guy who started the thread. lol