How To Sell Your Website or Domain Name For Big Money
- 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.
Kevin Nunley provides marketing advice
and copy writing for businesses and organizations. Read all
his money-saving marketing tips at http://DrNunley.com. Reach him at
kevin@drnunley.com or (801)253-4536.
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