Many domainers want the best of both worlds. They want to park their domains for PPC revenue and also hope end users will see that their domain is for sale. Unfortunately, potential end users who aren’t familiar with the domain industry will often overlook the small notices that a domain is for sale on a parking page.
If your domain is not a one-word .com or a two-word .com or a popular phrase, it probably receives minimal type-in traffic. If you’re not making your renewal fee back every year (most are making much less than that) from parking the domain, it makes more financial sense in the long run to focus on maximizing the chances of banking the sale to the end user who’s scoping out your domain. If you’re a major league baseball player batting .180, you better be hitting home runs and driving in runs or you’ll be demoted to Triple A in no time.
This means forwarding/redirecting these domains straight to their sale page at your broker instead of to a parking landing page. This is the URL format of these sale pages with many of the domain brokerages after you list with them:
http://www.aftermarket.com/domain/[domain.com]
http://www.afternic.com/domain/[domain.com]
http://www.cax.com/[domain.com]
https://www.domainagents.com/[domain.com]
http://www.domainnamesales.com/domain/[domain.com]
http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=[domain.com]
None of these brokerages have exclusivity, so you can list your domain with all of them. If you’re going the sales page route you just have to decide on which broker to forward it to. I see these as the strengths of each broker’s sale landing page:
– Aftermarket: Displays the most detailed statistics on the domain. You can put both “Buy It Now” and “Make Offer” functionality on the sale page at the same time.
– Afternic: They promote their phone number front and center on the sales page. This increases the chances of the end user calling their brokers who can close the sale. You can also put both “Buy It Now” and “Make Offer” functionality on the sale page at the same time.
– Cax (full disclosure: I forward my domains to their Cax sale pages): Supports rent-to-own/leasing agreements with all of the figures listed on the initial landing page. Description of the domain can be customized by the seller.
– Domain Agents: Great for those who get a lot of lowball offers on their premium domains. A potential buyer must pay $19.95 to send the owner their offer. The broker then ensures the domain owner reads the offer and
responds to them. This way you know the buyer is serious about their interest in the domain.
– Domain Name Sales: Attractive backgrounds. Displays vital metrics for the domain which can increase the chances of a sale. Promotes their brokers’ phone number and immediately captures the buyer’s social media information for possible follow-up.
– Sedo: One of the most recognizable/trusted domain brokerage brand among end users.
Parking revenue is an afterthought for the majority of domainers. My strategy is to focus on what does pay the bills: domain sales.
This post was written by domainer Matthew Crowder. His domains are listed over at BuyNamez.com.
July 9th, 2013 at 12:34 am
One good question, will it good idea to list a domain name to all 6 domain brokerage sale websites?
I assume It will take more time to manage the domain on each brokerage sites eg updating to each of listings on pricing, description, adding and deleting domain names when neccessasy etc.
What do you normally do? Just list on 2 to 3 sites? or all of them? The more sites you list , the more task to manage and keep consistancy in listings, especially when managing thousand of domain names……
July 9th, 2013 at 7:21 am
Great write up. I agree, domain sales is probably the best bet most of the time. Parking can still generate nice income if you find the right domain to buy.
July 9th, 2013 at 8:27 am
Timely piece – I’m just in the process of switching all my domains to for-sale pages.
That’s a nice list of advantages of each provider’s page. Of course, before deciding where to forward visitors, you should weigh other factors, such as the effectiveness of the site’s brokers (if any) in closing deals; the commission each site receives; and whether you can add an affiliate link to your forwarding URLs so you get part of that commission back.
July 9th, 2013 at 10:57 am
Great article. Thanks for mentioning the different sites.
July 9th, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Great question about listing on all at the same time. I do list with as many as possible (Domain Agents is only for if you forward your domain to them). If you have a lot and find yourself changing your prices often you’re probably best listing all with the broker you forward to and just your best domains with the rest to save some headaches.
July 9th, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Great info! We knew about most of the domain brokerages, and decided to additionally list at AfterMarket.com
Thanks!
July 9th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Thanks for listing DomainAgents.
I’d also like to point out that we split the $19.95 with the domain owner, so you’ll get $10 if someone buys a credit, makes an offer, and you respond to it.
July 10th, 2013 at 12:14 pm
I like also to know (like RAYY) if you have all your domains to all of those sites…
It’s time consuming but if it’s worth it, I will give the all a try…
July 11th, 2013 at 10:17 am
Hi, thank you for this info. Here are my two cents, if you have domains in other languages you can target the landing page to specific language. For example, some of my domains are in Spanish, and in SEDO I can redirect to the sale page switching to “es” if I specify this parameter in the query string: language=en and here is a real example for a domain Conferencia dot TV http://www.sedo.com/search/details.php4?domain=conferencia.tv&language=es which will open in a Spanish landing apge.
Also, many registrars (ResellerClub, Godaddy, etc.) have a service to redirect the entire domain to a custom URL, but in order to make this work the NS should be configured correctly to the registrar itself.