Attracting The Attention Of End Users

[domsaleuk]

Hi

I am very soon going to launch a site to try and do something to bring more end user attention to domain names and the domain name industry - i.e. to get attention from marketing departments and the digital media world and I would be really interested to hear what the general views are from people on this board with respect to end user sales.

What do people think the problems are? How do people think they can be improved?

Any other input that could be helpful would be great to know

 

[websaway]

Hi

I am very soon going to launch a site to try and do something to bring more end user attention to domain names and the domain name industry - i.e. to get attention from marketing departments and the digital media world and I would be really interested to hear what the general views are from people on this board with respect to end user sales.

What do people think the problems are? How do people think they can be improved?

Any other input that could be helpful would be great to know

I hate to say this but I think the biggest problem is inferior names, I notice that most sellers want to dispose of there worst domains first and keep a nucleus of quality names for the future knowing prices will rise. So for the end user with so many names being pushed in front of them it results in confusion. The history is that the first names registered were the best ( one word products and services etc.) and then came exact descriptive products and services ( car insurance etc ) and finally anything that was a keyword ( my grannies old antique wardrobe etc ). The latter are the least valuable and the ones that everybody wants rid of.

 

[domsaleuk]

Yes - I see what you are saying. The site I am launching is going to be quite focused on that - one of the key elements at launch will be how marketers should really focus at looking at just premium names (i.e. one and two word strong generic terms on .com, .net or co.uk suffixes) and how there is marketing gold to be had here in the secondary domain market. I am also trying to get across the value of "age" and also how these new 1900 supposed suffixes are in my view a marketing disater waiting to happen and that they should not look at those or get caught in the hype - it is and only ever will be quality that counts. The only area I think I may fall out with domainers is on the stance I will take on hyphens as if hyphens are aged my view ( as a SEO specialist) is that they are as good as non hyphenated from a development perspective.

Thanks for the observation though - it is a really good point. I see what your saying as in there is a catch 22 in that a lot of domainers won't give up their gold as they want to hold onto it so it goes up in value but it won't go up in value until the buyers start buying. So that helps with one possible article to the domain community ... i.e. something has to give - if they want the marketers to come running they will need to have to put the gold on show as it were! as the only way to get the market moving to get the top notch prices is to open up the domain industry to the buyers.

 

[foz]

Educating people between squatting and property ownership would be helpful. A lot view selling a generic or descriptive domain name as squatting

 

[websaway]

Hi

I am very soon going to launch a site to try and do something to bring more end user attention to domain names and the domain name industry - i.e. to get attention from marketing departments and the digital media world and I would be really interested to hear what the general views are from people on this board with respect to end user sales.

What do people think the problems are? How do people think they can be improved?

Any other input that could be helpful would be great to know

Had a look at your site &

A question:

Why are so few of your names priced ?

 

[accelerator]

I've had a quick go at explaining the benefits of a generic domain. If you're going to put some serious effort in, some detailed case studies which use figures to illustrate return might help. Find the success stories related to buying a generic and write about them.

Rgds

 

[domsaleuk]

Educating people between squatting and property ownership would be helpful. A lot view selling a generic or descriptive domain name as squatting

Hi - agreed and hopefully I will be doing this on launch and going forward as it is one of the things I focus on heavily in the writing. If I understand what you mean correctly then what you are essentially saying is try and remove the stigma of cybersquatting or " sqauatting" generally and get across the fact that domainers actually bought premium land because they had the foresight to do so and that land like any land in a good location carries a price !

 

[domsaleuk]

Had a look at your site &

A question:

Why are so few of your names priced ?

Hi – although this has some information on it, this is not the domain news site by the way as you probably realised - that will be coming soon. In answer to your question it is because domains are very hard to price and we don't want to limit enquiries. We do however have an idea of asking prices for all the names that has been compiled by taking all sorts of things into consideration such as keyword quality, sector value, age, suffix , traffic, development potential etc but domains are still a bit like pieces of art. The site has only very recently launched and if it doesn't work well this way we may add in more prices a little later down the line - in the meantime we are looking for offers and then we will genuinely tell people if they are close or way off from our price expectations

 

[domsaleuk]

I've had a quick go at explaining the benefits of a generic domain. If you're going to put some serious effort in, some detailed case studies which use figures to illustrate return might help. Find the success stories related to buying a generic and write about them.

Rgds

Thanks - that is a good point .I am planning to put the effort in as (a) I think there is a great need for it in order to open the market up (b) I am an SEO / marketing specialist with many years experience and so hopefully my background and contacts may enable the site to get some interest from the marketing/ media world. It may not work but at least I can try. I will take your comments on board - they are useful and I agree with you.

Once the site is launched I hope to bring more awareness of it to this forum and then maybe people can help by sending links of anything they see that is worthwhile us adding as an article or links that may be worth linking to (i.e. the overview on your site). The way I see this is that the domain community needs to pull together in order for us to get more awareness and any way we can do that would be good.

 

[websaway]

Hi – although this has some information on it, this is not the domain news site by the way as you probably realised - that will be coming soon. In answer to your question it is because domains are very hard to price and we don't want to limit enquiries. We do however have an idea of asking prices for all the names that has been compiled by taking all sorts of things into consideration such as keyword quality, sector value, age, suffix , traffic, development potential etc but domains are still a bit like pieces of art. The site has only very recently launched and if it doesn't work well this way we may add in more prices a little later down the line - in the meantime we are looking for offers and then we will genuinely tell people if they are close or way off from our price expectations

You see I think that if you are going to put yourself out there and market domains you have to put prices on them and forget about under or overpricing. If you don't put a price on your domains then how can anyone else. Most of the names on your site are S.E.O names, which granted are hard to value but, if you take vitamin-tablets.co.uk for example that one can and should have a firm price on it. In my opinion too many domains are marketed at "make an offer" prices this is not likely to do what you want to do and educate prospective buyers. Most good quality end users don't have time to mess around within somebody else's marketing strategy.

 

[accelerator]

What is the primary aim of your site? Is it to sell your own names?

Rgds

 

[domsaleuk]

You see I think that if you are going to put yourself out there and market domains you have to put prices on them and forget about under or overpricing. If you don't put a price on your domains then how can anyone else. Most of the names on your site are S.E.O names, which granted are hard to value but, if you take vitamin-tablets.co.uk for example that one can and should have a firm price on it. In my opinion too many domains are marketed at "make an offer" prices this is not likely to do what you want to do and educate prospective buyers. Most good quality end users don't have time to mess around within somebody else's marketing strategy.

I do see your point and it something that we questioned before we launched this site. Most of the names are not SEO related by the way (although admittedly there are a lot of them) I will give some thought to this pricing issue as I can see where you are coming from and maybe we will change the way we are doing it.

The domain news site will however not be about the names I am selling - although there will be a link to these obviously, but the purpose of the domain news site is to get the value of generic domains and more of awareness of them out there to the UK media / marketing marketplace with a view to try and do something to increase awareness and change the perception of "squatting" that someone mentioned in a previous post.

 

[domsaleuk]

What is the primary aim of your site? Is it to sell your own names?

Rgds

The primary aim of the current site - domain-list.co.uk is to sell names. The primary aim of the domain news site (to be launched next week) is to provide information and generate awareness of domain names within the right buyer circles - i.e. media and marketing. This news site will just have a link to domain-list.co.uk (would be silly not to) but the primary purpose of the news site is to make an impact and some inroads within media / marketing circles.

 

[accelerator]

Are you familiar with domainsherpa.com? That is a very good site raising the profile of domaining.

Rgds

 

[domsaleuk]

Are you familiar with domainsherpa.com? That is a very good site raising the profile of domaining.

Rgds

Hi - thanks Yes it is a great site as is DNjournal but they are all too American, although you can get loads of great info from them. The Americans are so far ahead of us in understanding the strength of generic domains it is ridiculous. The thing is that the UK ad agencies, marketing departments etc will be led by UK information in my view. They will know the USA is ahead of the game but they will react when the buzz starts happening in London and the only way to get into their minds is by getting "their own" - e.g. media planners, buyers and the like and their publications - e.g marketing week. etc to pick up on it and in my opinion the only way to do that is to bridge the gap with information about the domain industry written in their language and that is what I hope to go some way to try and achieve - "try" being the operative word I guess.

 

[sdsinc]

I am quite cynical in my views of domains

We are in 2012, the Internet has matured a lot yet few people understand the power of domain names. Yes, there is an awareness problem. But nobody is going to educate people, unless there is an immediate and direct gain, which I doubt. Providing education for free doesn't pay the bills.
I know it doesn't help, but I have come to perceive the world of end users as a 'lost cause'.

I have found that only a tiny majority of worth owning and as a domainer you have to concentrate on the cream, on the names that get unsolicited offers on a regular basis from end users who get 'it'. There is always enough demand for premium names.
That being said, you can boost sales of tier 2/3 domains by being proactive and reaching out to end users but at some point it could become more an occupation than an investment.

I also think that domainers overestimate the potential of the market, it's a tiny market and the demand cannot absorb the demand. Domainers have the best intentions and they are ahead of their times but it does us no favor when the rest of the world is stuck in 20th century thinking. Maybe we are the misfit

BTW businesses are 'advised' by their webdesigners and SEO teams who for some bizarre reason are especially clueless about domain names. If their client is going to contemplate the possible upgrade of an existing domain name you can bet their first reaction would be "Don't give money to that squatter, I will reg the hyphenated .net version and make it fly through SEO"

Now here is something I like, short and to the point:
http://domainnamesales.com/domains-101

Dnjournal sometimes features success stories, we need more such stories like "small business owner increases turnover tenfold over the course of one year after ditching his previous lousy, un-credible, un-brandable, un-memorable domain name".

 

[foz]

Now here is something I like, short and to the point:
http://domainnamesales.com/domains-101

And even Frank has failed to mention UK. .uk being one of the largest ccTLD extensions out there.

Someone reading that will be .com focused. The virtues of ccTLD's will have passed them by.

 

[mojoco]

Now here is something I like, short and to the point:
http://domainnamesales.com/domains-101

Thanks for the link.

Would be very useful if a similar infographic was created that was uk focused.

 

[domsaleuk]

Hi

You appear to be quite disheartened by the industry as a whole and I can understand why and whilst I agree with some of your points - some of them I do not agree with at all.

The point I totally disagree with is where you have said it is a "tiny market" - In my view this could not be further from the truth. It is an enormous market in my opinion. However the reason I started this thread and the reason I am about to launch a site focused on it is because I do not believe that the potential purchasers are aware of what is available to them and in many respects I think that this is partly because many sellers do not fully understand the market and the things that are likely to drive the decision making processes of the potential buyers (sorry but I am afraid I believe that to be true!)

It is clear that there is a very large gap between sellers and buyers but once that gap starts to be bridged my thoughts are that you may see a snowball effect. Anything domainers can do to help bridge the gap has to be a good thing and talking about it between us all as much as we can has to surely be the first step.

The link you showed is good and we do need more things like this but somehow not only do we need to create things like this we need to get them in front of the people that count in whatever way we can.

I am quite cynical in my views of domains

We are in 2012, the Internet has matured a lot yet few people understand the power of domain names. Yes, there is an awareness problem. But nobody is going to educate people, unless there is an immediate and direct gain, which I doubt. Providing education for free doesn't pay the bills.
I know it doesn't help, but I have come to perceive the world of end users as a 'lost cause'.

I have found that only a tiny majority of worth owning and as a domainer you have to concentrate on the cream, on the names that get unsolicited offers on a regular basis from end users who get 'it'. There is always enough demand for premium names.
That being said, you can boost sales of tier 2/3 domains by being proactive and reaching out to end users but at some point it could become more an occupation than an investment.

I also think that domainers overestimate the potential of the market, it's a tiny market and the demand cannot absorb the demand. Domainers have the best intentions and they are ahead of their times but it does us no favor when the rest of the world is stuck in 20th century thinking. Maybe we are the misfit

BTW businesses are 'advised' by their webdesigners and SEO teams who for some bizarre reason are especially clueless about domain names. If their client is going to contemplate the possible upgrade of an existing domain name you can bet their first reaction would be "Don't give money to that squatter, I will reg the hyphenated .net version and make it fly through SEO"

Now here is something I like, short and to the point:
http://domainnamesales.com/domains-101

Dnjournal sometimes features success stories, we need more such stories like "small business owner increases turnover tenfold over the course of one year after ditching his previous lousy, un-credible, un-brandable, un-memorable domain name".

 

[Brassneck]

Best of luck with this. Something that would help - and I thought it was something that the likes of Sedo could have managed with their UK office - is some positive stories in the mainstream printed press, e.g. business pages of Sunday papers, Economist, trade magazines. All I have ever seen is stories about dubious practices / cyber-squatting which over the years has probably made end-user sale prospects for all but the top names worse rather than better. End-user enquiries for my (average but useable generic) domains are at an all-time low.

Stephen.