It took a lot of testing and finally I have 2 sites converting Amazon sales, from organic traffic. I wish I had more, now that I know the way, it should be easier.
The Beginning: PerkinsMarine was acquired on an Ebay auction. It was the domain of a closed business. I guess my original intention was to wait the original owner come back looking for it. Since the name clearly said marine, I installed Wordpress and populated the site with Reviewazon posting boat and fishing accessories. Since it was an existing site, Google eventually promoted it to PR1 and eventually sales started happening. 5 sales so far. To make things even nicer, I started selling back links on the site. 1 sale so far.
I also believe I had a lot of luck not only on the page rank promotion but also on the nice, which is very specific and not a lot of people understands about boats AND web design.
What next? My time and resources a limited. I have close to 20 sites running wordpress, some content some shops. I am really considering in starting a blog post brokerage business since I understand so much about, have tons of google vouchers, since I know how to program, investment is relatively small. but, I will look for those expired domains now and then!
Chef Patrick started flipping houses. Once the market was overcrowded he decided to leave for Domain flipping, back then, virtually unexplored.
- There are a lot of similarities on both markets.
The very first step to sell the domain for a higher price from what you originally pay, is to believe that the domain is worth more. No one can do that for the domain, only the owner.
Then you can justify the price hike, buying or creating backlinks, creating revenue, pumping the page rank or installing quality content.
So here are a few suggestions.
Write about the domain you are selling and justify why the price you are asking is fair. Search volume, price of similar domains, income generated are a few ideas to start with. Once the ad is ready, read and re read, since a buyer will call based on that information and if you know it, the conversation will click and a sale may happen.
Repeat to your self that you will only sell for that price or above. You may go as far as imagining what will you do with the profit. If it noble, helps it happening.
And above all: Consistency. It has to be practiced…it is all in the mind.
NEW1 – 10% off whatever GoDaddy.com
promo10 – 10% off GoDaddy.com
gdbb776 10% off code
command10 10% off any order GoDaddy.com
cjccoupon – 10% off Coupon
gdz225a 30% off .com renewals
gdbba1550 15% off $50+ order GoDaddy.com
gdbb687 20% Off $65+ Purchase GoDaddy.com
fbgdhome20 20% off $75+ Purchase GoDaddy.com
gdbb363 10% off Any Order GoDaddy.com
Domain Outlets I use: I have been peddling domains mainly in three outlets:
Ebay
GoDaddy
Sedo
While ebay had the most results to this day because of its flexibility in what I want to say, and payment is bolting fast, I had a very nice sale on goDaddy last week, and transaction so far has been very smooth. pillsfor.me, bought on ebay for 84 cents sold on goDaddy for a cool $30 sounds nice but I have a few domains I paid $20 and no one is paying a dime, so is not that great.
The “proceeds” are ready. Today I go an email from goDaddy, stating that the “proceeds” of the sale is with them and I may push the domain to the buyer’s account. In other words they are brokering the deal, making sure I was paid, and the buyer receiving his domain.
My first Godaddy Auction Sale
Fees. They charge between 10% or $10 – whatever is higher for the sale, and they are entitled, since the platform for the auctions is quite complete and stable, and payment takes a while until arrival, but the fact that we know for a fact that there will be no defaults and that I paid $5 membership, without any insertion fees for the whole year, makes it a great investment.
BTW – I call them all the time and they always answer the phone and solve the problem. I hope to do it more times. Many thanks to goDaddy.
I just invested $79 (full price) for the legendary ReveiwAzon plugin, and it did impress a lot. I am also now renting another host, aside go daddy, paying 5 times the price, but will get some dedicated IP addresses for my domains.
I created a site http://perkinsmarine.com/ solely on the plugin and left some 3 months of scheduled post to keep google happy. It may have sounded the alarm the fact that a out of the blue site now has 200 posts, overnight, but if it posts daily may get some result. The equation is very attractive.
I will have one more service to peddle to clients
I already posted the domain with the site populated for sale on goDaddy auctions
The site may reap some sales indeed, who knows
I may also sell links on Fiverr
And of course, testing, I will learn a lot.
I see these guys telling stories on the warrior forums and I question if it is not just crowded out there. The expectation requires some positive thinking, yet as I explained it is easy to pay off.
I have been doing some experiences with the Caffeinated Content Plugin and had some very interesting results. I am able to populate the site in a few hours. Even though it generates the posts, they still demand some editing.
Caffeinated Content
I have done it with 3 or four sites, all on sale on Ebay.
Not Indexed by Google. The content did not get indexed by google and I wonder if there is a way to make it indexed. I tried adding the Duplicate Bye Bye plugin but it seems noneffective. But the sites look rich, they may end up selling. It is a no loss situation, but I am in this business to make money.
Content Sources. The Plugin picks content from 3 sources
Yahoo Answers
You Tube
Articles Database
And YouTube allows to post their content on our websites, so in essence, it should be pretty legal. It makes me wonder if they have something similar for pictures and if that would give a selling edge to my websites. Most likely this will be my next experiment.
I have been spending a few dollars on buying expired domains names. I did look for some domains that were aged and had some chance to be bought back from the owner but I don’t like the business model that much. There is nothing wrong with that. Rather go for Page Rank and Indexed pages when possible. Since I try to keep my acquisitions to a minimum, after all I can always unload the domain on ebay for a low price, and that guarantees my investment. I found this video clip somewhat useful on buying expired domains.
I also found a few sites that give out details expiring domain names for free, better than paid services. I did consider the register compass, fresh drop, but I found their rates VERY expensive, since again I wish to protect my self. DropDay has good fees, and I did a very good try, for 10 days, but again, I was able to get better prices using free services.
My Goal. My goal is to have an inventory of domains that can once in a while be sold for a respectable profit. It is still a micro enterprise, yet, my income is made of very small streams. after I am self employed. And I know that the key for more income is to increase the number of small streams.
A few additional notes.
I only use GoDaddy. The domain registration, technical support are very reliable, and the transfer is FREE, Here in Israel the transfer for a .CO.IL goes for around $80 a complete ripoff, and as you may expect, can take days.
I in general trade .COMS. As I said, I want some liquidity. I did a couple of good deals with .NET and recently bought a .ORG but liquidity is with .COM
I am selling on ebay. I get my payment right away, and yes or no, there are buyers there, I also post on SEDO and GODADDY auctions, but no luck there until now.
I am a believer in RAIN this means that I cannot control when it will come but I must have some seeds on the soil for it when it happens. I am posting my domains for sale, individually, after all, I have 1 year registration, which gives me plenty of time, and as an added bonus I am throwing some templates to see if it can warm up the sales.
Hunting for Domains with PR. I am hunting for domains with PR. The easiest way I found happened to be the most expensive. That is flippa. PR4 Domains there goes for $600 dollars if you are lucky to find. I am a big believer on you get what you pay for as a general rule. Recommended by a WSO I bought, I tried Freshdrops.net (trial did not pay) but was very disappointed. They do list a few PR4 domains but they were not good enough and many times on obscure registrars I really don’t want to deal with. With a site called http://www.dotnamedrops.com/ which I am yet to find how they make money since it was free I found a couple of PR4 domains I could back order with GoDaddy.com .
They could not guarantee much. It turns out that “Backordering” with GoDaddy.com is not only a bit complex but also very vague. First they don’t guarantee anything. Even though the domain expired, and there was an auction, after expiration, that no one bid on the domain, they still cannot guarantee the domain is yours.
Here is a “simplified” graph on how backordering works:
Godaddy Backorder Process
Small Experiment and a Safe Investment. As an investment rule, I place 1 backorder to see how it goes, after all, it automatically renews the www.GoDaddy.com auction membership which has a $5 value. I did buy a few domains there last year, so that covers part of the investment. As for the rest, they will credit me for another backorder if this one fails, and even if I don’t ever get my money back, at least I know one more aspect of the trade.
Craig List has intense traffic and a sweet Google Page Rank of 7 while there are doubts is the links count for page ranking is very simple to see that these guys rank and not only you get a lot of exposure for you ad, you can also get a lot of TRAFFIC. My Google analytics and Google Webmaster shows craig’s list traffic. If you are looking on how to insert a link on craig’s list here is how:
Animoto is a free service created by media professionals, that have movie templates for commercials, greetings and the like. I found out about that on a SENuke tutorial, and to my surprise, so far, it has been very useful.
Time Saving. My average labor time for edited video is 1 hour per edited minute. Depending on I want to do, an Animoto clip takes around 5 minutes.
Backlinks. Google loves video sharing sites backlinks. This means once the video is ready I upload it to YouTube and a couple other sites with a link back to one of my sites. It does help my page rank.
Advertisement. It is said that statistically, ads with a video has an average of 6 times more performance than pictures only. Since the clip is free, there is not much to miss.
Not everything is easy. Animoto allows 30 seconds clips only. Want more? please pay. They nag a lot. Almost every single screen comes with a “subscribe” proposal, very annoying. And as you may have guessed templates, although cool have limited selection.
There is a paid version. The paid version is not cheap either. I don’t mind paying but for $249, I rather keep editing my video clips.
It took a lot of testing and finally I have 2 sites converting Amazon sales, from organic traffic. I wish I had more, now that I know the way, it should be easier.
