This article if from lord Brar ..so make sure to sneak at his link below.

Author: Lord Brar

6 Feb

Please Note – This Post is Work in Progress and We Will Keep Adding More Tips and Ideas. Click Here to Get Regular Updates.

One of the joys of being a moderator at one of the most popular domaining forum — DNForum — is that you get swamped with private messages from people. One of the question which I get asked the most is How to Sell a Domain Name.

In this post I am going to talk about the strategies I use to sell a domain name or website. Let’s get started, shall we?

Two Important Things

There are a few things that I must tell you before we get started.

1. DO NOT buy any eBook — I have read most of the eBooks currently available in the market and they are mostly useless and provide obsolete information.

2. Subscribe to DomainingTips.com Newsletter — As the moderator of one of the biggest and most influential domaining forum (DNForum), I have access to some of the biggest players in the industry.

Subscription to the newsletter is absolutely free and you also get a free copy of my guide “8 Things You Must Know About Making Money From Domain Name”. Click here to subscribe. You will be glad that you did.

Selling a Domain Name – Know Your Market!

There are two kind of people who buy domain names — 1. Resellers and 2. End Users.

Resellers are the people who buy domains and sites with the sole purpose of reselling them. They are not interested in keeping their inventory forever and are, usually, not interested in developing the domain name.

End Users are the people who are interested in developing and running the domain. Unlike resellers, they plan to use the domain for development or promotion purposes and don’t plan to sell it as soon as they find a buyer. An end user can be an individual or a company.

Selling a Domain Name – What Actually Sells

A lot of times people will list a domain for sale and get discouraged when no one makes an offer or buys what they are selling. Most of the times it turns out that they were trying to sell to wrong people.

Let’s see what actually sells and who buys it.

1. Generic Domains. These are domains like hotels.com, cars.com, search.com, poker.com, loan.com, coupons.com etc.

The reason why these domains are valuable is because a lot of people will never use a search engine to find things but instead just type [keyword].com — which translates into highly targeted traffic.

End-Users pay big bucks for these type of names. Resellers are also willing to offer big bucks for them in hope of selling them for even bigger bucks.

2. Revenue Domains. These are the names which make revenue from parking traffic. If you have this kind of domain then resellers would totally jump at it and offer you 12-15 months of revenue for it.

3. Brandable Domains. These are the brandable names like NewYorkHotels.com or MiamiRealtors.com. The target for these types of domains is usually end users. Resellers don’t shell much money for them usually.

4. Developed Sites - There is yet another category which is domains with websites. They are much easier to sell as they usually have traffic and revenue attached to them by the virtue of their search engine rankings.

Resellers buy sites which don’t take much effort to run or promote. End users look for sites with long-term potential — which may even mean putting effort into running the site or promoting it.

Selling a Domain Name – Top 5 Ways to Sell Domains

Now you know the kind of domains which sell and who buys them, however, the bigger question is where to sell them. Let’s talk about various ways –

1. Domain Forums. Domain forums are the most popular way to sell domains. Places like DNForum (one of the biggest and most influential), SitePoint, WickedFire and NamePros (mostly newbies hangout here) are popular to sell domains. However, the people who hangout on these sites are mostly resellers and only a small proportion are end-users.

2. Online Auctions. There are lot of online auction sites like sedo.com where you can sell domains and you can even auction domains on forums like DNForum.com.

eBay also has a domain auction section, however, it is usually the newbies which make up the bulk of audience there and it is turnkey sites and cheap domains which sell best there. There have been a lot of reports of scams on eBay — therefore, I don’t recommend selling on eBay.

3. Domain Brokers. These are the people and companies who take a percentage cut — usually 15-20% of the final value — for selling your domain.

If you have a good domain which you hope to sell for bigger bucks and are ready to pay to brokerage, it is usually a good idea to involve brokers. They usually have lot of contacts and experience in selling domains. Think of them like real-estate agents except they focus on virtual real-estate.

4. Live Auctions. This is a newer trend where companies like Moniker.com are conducting live auctions for domains at various industry events. This is where a lot of end users and big guys hang out and where the big-buck deals take place.

Obviously, these companies are choosy about the domains that they include in the auction. However, you should never hesitate to submit your names for auction — you never know it may sell. Newsletter Subscribers will get regular updates about upcoming auctions and submission deadlines.

5. Everyone You Know. Tell everyone you already know — including your old customers and your friends — that you have a domain for sale. There is a chance that they themselves or someone they know may be interested in your domain. I have sold a whole lot of domains this way.

This was something which I never used to tell earlier, however, when I told it to some of my friends who had the same clients as me, I found that it didn’t make much of difference to my success rate. I found that success rate with this tactic depended on lot of factors which I regularly talk in the newsletter.

Selling a Domain Name – Final Word

I hope you found this guide useful. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me by email (lord [at] lordbrar.com), AIM (lordbrar) or MSN (lord [at] lordbrar.com). You can also check some more tips on How to Sell a Domain Name.

Author: Lord Brar

11 Apr

Ever since I made my Domaining Strategy post, I have been getting a lot of comments and questions from you all. First of all, thanks a lot for your comments and messages — that is exactly what keeps me motivated to write here.

Most of the questions which you have asked will be covered in upcoming posts about traffic, revenue, outsourcing, hosting etc. In this post, I am going to answer two important questions -

1. How to minimize your development costs?
2. How to Scale-Up this strategy?

This post will be one of the most important — if not the most — posts in the series as it describes the mindset you need to succeed in the game. These points are essentially derived from my own experience developing domains over the last 9 years — so yes, they are street-tested.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Tip #1 – Know Your Niches

This is perhaps the most important tip I can ever give you — Focus on niches you already have an interest in. This will make your life a lot easier, fun and profitable. To quote Diorex from WickedFire -

I dont think that unmarried college age guys are going to be rockstars at promoting a menopause product or even a baby shower list. Look to your life experiences for things you naturally know a little bit about. Sure you can learn, but why set yourself up for a longer more difficult road.

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I’d also quote Hugh MacLeod from his HughTrain Post –

Even though the niche you are interested in may not be as profitable as pay-day loans or credit-cards but it would be easier for you to know what people really want and dominate your niche. This would translate into much higher overall profits and you’d have fun doing what you love.

PS: I have some finance domains lying around which I just can’t get myself to research into and develop! If you have an interest in grabbing them cheap, give me a holler.

Tip #2 – Think Small. Seriously.

It is particularly important to remember that you cannot satisfy everyone at the same time. If you try to do that, you end up disappointing everyone.

So, don’t try to build general-purpose and “one size fits all” kind of sites. TO make such sites truly spectacular you’d need a lot of resources — which should not be your objective.

Let’s say that fitness is one of niches I operate in. To build a general fitness site covering topics for both men and women would be absolutely crazy on my part. If I focus on Men’s Health, that would be better and easier for me but it would be very broad subject and still require a LOT of resources to create good site in.

What I would do is that I’d split the niche into further niches — building abs, reducing fat, dieting, bulking up, upper-body exercises, stronger legs, sports training, cardio-exercises, aerobics etc. — and build separate sites for them. This would make it easier for me to build the site quickly, promote my sites more easily and get more targeted traffic.

Now, I am not saying that you cannot build sites on broader topics — I do it all the time. But, be prepared to put more resources and energy into them. I have a lot of broad-niche sites but I have even more sharp-niche sites.

Tip #3 – Use “Out-Of-Box” Solutions

Don’t re-invent the wheel. If there is some “out-of-box solution” available for what you want to do, use that — even if it means some lost functionality, you will be saving tons and tons of money and/or time that you would have to spend on programming and design.

Most of the times you will be able to find a free open-source solution, all you need to do is look hard enough.

For content management use WordPress or Joomla and use free or cheap templates to change the look. For forums you can use vBulletin or PhpBB. Photopost PHP or Coppermine get the job done for a photo gallery. vBulletin will also take care of your Social-Networking needs.

Use a site like HotScripts.com to find out the various available scripts. You could download and install the script on your server — most of the times Read-Me files are detailed enough.

If you are not comfortable doing it yourself, hire a freelancer — but read Tip #5 before you do. Also, don’t use any third party hosted services except widgets and analytics.

Basically, the whole objective here is to use the already existing free or cheap tools to build your website.

Tip #4 – Re-Invest into Your Domains.

Start milking revenue from your domains right away by using affiliate links, CPA links, Google AdSense et. al. Contrary to the popular belief, sites CAN make money from low but quality traffic.

To give example of one of my own sites, it got only 8 visitors from search engine and made $147 in affiliate commission.

So, optimize your site for revenue right from the start — even though you may get only small amount to traffic initially, but you don’t want to waste it.

Now, whatever money your site makes, re-invest at least 75% back into the domain. Promote the site, get professional content written, buy new software or get custom scripting done — but, reinvest the money to grow your site.

Remember – your site’s revenue is not your pay day but rather your pay day will be when your 25% becomes substantial or if you ever sell the site.

Tip #5 – Freelancers Will Screw You

Or at least 80% of them will produce crappy stuff or miss deadlines and you will lose money with them. But it not all gloom — you have to know and follow certain rules of thumb which I will be discussing in later posts. I will embed a link to the post here whenever I publish it.

Also, if you are subscribed to the newsletter, you will get a buzz as soon as I publish the post. So, if you are not already subscribed to the newsletter, it is a good time to subscribe now.

Tip #6 – Keep Close Financial Records

The idea is to keep a detailed record of how much you have invested in a domain and what sort of returns it is getting. I have found that keeping records will not only keep you updated of your current reality but will also keep you motivated to work harder.

With my own sites, I keep an excel file with weekly details of how much traffic did the site get and how much money did it make from various revenue channels. If both don’t increase consistently, I know I need to get moving to grow these figures.

Also, do it on a weekend and don’t spend too much time on keeping super-detailed stats tracking every figure under the sun — just a bird’s eye view of where your sites are going in terms of revenue and traffic. Your priority should be creating and promoting your sites.

Closing Thoughts

Now remember — these are just the rules-of-thumb and the list is no way exhaustive. Also, every situation is unique and you will learn the most by diving in and doing. So, start working, start making mistakes and start learning!

Stay tuned for other posts on the subject including – Stockdale Paradox, The “Big Fat Lie” Media Wants You to Believe, Building Websites, Choosing the Right Host, Traffic Secrets, Art of Recurring Profits and Revenue Maximization.