How To Sell Your Website or Domain Name For a Good Price
by Dr. Kevin Nunley
There's gold in web site domain names. You probably saw
the headlines when business.com changed hands for $7.5
million. Wine.com went for big bucks, too. And who can
forget when AltaVista had to shuck out millions to buy
their name from the original owner?
On the other hand, you may have surfed some of the auction
sites to find perfectly good domains going for peanuts.
Even $25 seemed like a starting bid no one wanted to
touch.
So how do you cash in on the domain name trading craze?
Here are a few simple tips to get you on the right track to
E-real estate profits.
Finding Good Unclaimed Names
No doubt about it. It is harder these days to find killer
domain names that aren't taken. A recent survey showed
that of the 25,000 words we commonly use in the English
language, more than 93 percent are already registered as
domain names.
Fortunately, language experts have come up with some
fresh ideas we can use to uncover hidden gems. First look
for short, simple names that instantly tell what your business
is about. The dentist who got dentalhelp.com had the right
idea.
If you can't get the one word that describes you, add a
prefix or suffix onto it. eDental, DentalX, Dental123 are
easy to remember.
Some very smart businesses have created previously
unknown words based on the simple term that describes
them. For example, none of us have a problem
remembering Virtualis.com, even though it is a word that
previously didn't exist.
Try combining two words that could describe what a site
does. NameBoy.com specializes in helping people find
good website names. You can also hit pay dirt by creating a
nonsense name from easy-to-remember sounds.
What words and sounds are easy to remember? Experts say
people recall colors and food (RedPie.com is already
taken..I checked).
Those who know say all these possibilities will work better
than very long domain names, misspelled versions of words,
or several words strung together with hyphens. In tests,
people simply don't remember those names very well.
Build Value By Building Audience
These days most websites are valued by the number of
visitors they attract. One common yard stick is your
domain name is valued at $10 to $30 per hit per day. If
1,000 people land on your front page each day, your domain
could be worth $10,000 to $30,000.
Another optimistic way of looking at domain values is each
unique visitor you get over the course of a month is worth
$250. If the visitor clicks to a second page on your site, her
presence is worth $500. By this measure, a site getting only
10 hits per day could go for $15,000.
This strategy is a lot like the way traditional businesses have
always been sold. The more customers a store has, the
more it is worth to a buyer. That is a pretty solid way to
value domains. It is a model that is likely to be around for a
long time to come.
How can you quickly boost your site's visitors? Start by
focusing on the needs of a specific group. A site on
psychedelic short pants has a better chance of becoming a
hit than a site that hangs their hat on the very general topic
of pants.
A more specific, focused kind of site also does better with
search engines. Indeed, search engines will be your fastest
way of getting lots of eyeballs to your domain. Read the
expert tutorial on getting listed high on search engines at
WebMarketingNow.com.
Build Sales and Brand Awareness
No buyer can resist a domain that is pulling in whopping
sales and has a brand name seared into the minds of a
profitable target audience.
Generally a domain is worth the amount of sales it creates in
a year. If your site pulls down $60,000 this year, you could
get that much for your domain name. CPAs, especially
those working with publicly traded corporations, know all
kinds of ways to count a myriad of transactions (even
affiliate commissions) into cash flow stats.
Boost sales by offering low-cost products that can be mass
produced. If hot demand can be created, you can sell
thousands in no time. You can also rack up big annual sales
by offering a pricey service that appeals to a lot of people in
a specific industry. Higher prices are almost always the
quickest way to double, triple, and quadruple sales
Finally, work to establish your domain as a well-known
brand name. Much of Amazon.com's legendary operating
expense goes to making their not-so-common name a
household word. You can pull off brand name awareness at
a smaller level by keeping your ads consistently in important
places, putting your name on key websites, writing articles
that make you look like an expert, and participating in your
industry's major Internet discussion groups.
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Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice and copywriting
fast and at low cost. See all his promotion tips at http://DrNunley.com Reach Kevin at kevin@drnunley.com
or 801-253-4536.
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