Setting Up Your Own Domain Sales Platform

Got another guest article today from an online friend of mine who is based in the Netherlands. His name is Ed de Jong, and his business Pixor Media specializes in WordPress projects.

Ed started in the cyber world by dabbling with affiliate marketing in 2006. This got him on the path of domaining, recognizing that strong domains can help build strong businesses. He describes his business model as “helping various type of clients achieve their online goals by improving on or building new processes that are required to get ahead in 2016 and beyond”.

To this end, he created the Domain Sales Theme for domainers. Whilst I don’t at this stage use it myself, it is something that I’m quite interested in. So I’m happy to allow him to give it a plug here! 🙂

For the record, as with all of my guest posts, I am NOT receiving any payment, commission or affiliate income should any of my readers decide to give it a go.

Your Own Domain Sales Platform – Ed de Jong

These days revenues from domain parking for PPC is not worthwhile for the majority of us, fortunately domain sales is a business where there is still money to be made.

If you have a portfolio of domains, big or small, and have used the various domain marketplaces to promote your domains, you have most likely been wondering at times if you could set something up yourself to handle domain parking and managing the sales process of your domains.

Because if PPC parking is out of the picture, then you don’t need a 3rd party for a PPC feed for your domains.

All you would need is a good solution to park your domains for the purpose of fielding inquiries and offers and managing your own sales right?

At least that was my perception when I realized I needed to do something different.

And something different I did, my name is Ed de Jong and I’ve released a commercial WordPress theme that makes it possible for anyone to set up their own domain sales platform.

The advantages of your own solution:

1: Not paying a hefty commission on a domain sale, a commission that is really undeserved in general.
2: Having the knowledge who inquires or makes an offer on your domain, domain market places usually hide this info from you.
3: Freedom to communicate how you see fit with the potential buyer.
4: A potential buyer is not going to be deferred to another option if a broker feels they can’t sell your domain.
5: You have full control over the design and text used on a landing page.

I wanted a way to easily park my domains and setting up a domain for sale template where potential buyers could view information related to the domain. As well as being able to proceed further with the necessary action to get things in motion for the purchase of the domain.

Hosting your own landing pages would be the first hurdle to overcome, creating a new addon domain and uploading files every time I need to add a new domain would be very time consuming and maintenance would be a nightmare.

Knowing WordPress is very much capable to handle templates and information that will need to be displayed for a site visitor, I wanted to explore the possibilities to utilize WordPress to create a theme more versatile than anything else for this purpose made with WordPress currently available.

And fortunately, the signs where there this could be done with WordPress, so it was time to move forward …

Bit by bit and piece by piece the Domain Sales Theme was created to where it has evolved to today.

Going Beyond The Bare Minimum

It started out as a simple idea, but gradually every time a new feature idea came to mind it was either too essential or interesting to ignore.

So for a minimal viable product it went further than initially envisioned, but I’m glad it went further because the end result will allow a lot of people to streamline their domain sale efforts.

What does this mean for you?

Theme Features

No doubt about it there are various features available that would make this theme a welcome addition to any domainer’s tool belt.

Some of the features would be expected, like importing your domains in bulk via a .csv file or controlling textual elements for your landing pages in bulk, but a few of the theme’s features can be of great help.

To name a few …

Get Paid On Inquiries

Some people may find it interesting to use the possibility to charge a fee to be paid via PayPal for someone to be able to submit an inquiry on a domain.

While some may think this will greatly reduce the inquiries one will receive for a domain, it can also help weed out low quality prospect buyers that would only take up your time communicating back and forth.

Who needs tire kickers right?

This feature is best used on higher value domains, as it helps to pre-qualify the buyer, a serious prospect buyer would gladly pay a small fee in order to gain access to submit an inquiry.

Background Research – Know Your Prospect Buyer

Typically when someone receives an inquiry or offer on a domain one of the next steps would be to do a bit more research on the person making the inquiry or offer.

This would usually involve using Google to find anything that can be of use, what type of business this person is involved with, or a specific company this person works for.

Anything you can find that can help you form a decision on a price range you would be happy to sell your domain for.

Using ClearBit.com’s API you can run a search on the person behind the inquiry with the push of a button, depending on the online visibility of this person’s online profile, i.e. social accounts, directories, etc — It can yield a wealth of information to strengthen your negotiation efforts.

Want to know what information can be revealed?

Above you can see some of the information that can be revealed performing a profile check, example used above shows information obtained from the Clearbit founder’s name and email address that was submitted through a Make Offer form on a domain name set up with the Domain Sales Theme.

Undoubtedly a great time saver!

Video Display – Embed a Sales Video

Sometimes a video can really help drive home the value of a domain name, a very strong persuasion factor to initiate a dialogue or receive an opening offer.

Optionally you can have a video displayed for all your domains, or a specific group of domains, or just one single domain.

The videos can be hosted through YouTube.com or Wistia.com, for those who haven’t heard of Wistia yet, this is a really cool video hosting service sporting some strong analytics features.

Negotiation Messaging System

When you receive an offer or inquiry it will be logged in the dashboard area, the area that you see when you’re logged in as admin on your WordPress site.

All your domain messaging communication is stored and managed from a central location, allowing a very organized approach to handle inquiries and offers.

Think about this:

If you’re looking to have more control how you market your domains, wanting to save money on commissions on your domain sales, then wouldn’t you need a framework to empower you to take that course of action?

The Domain Sales Theme can help you achieve that goal.

Getting Started …

The Domain Sales Theme requires a cPanel hosting account and needs to be installed in the root directory, so if your primary domain of your hosting account is MyDomain.com then that will be where you would install WordPress and the Domain Sales Theme.

You can use a regular shared hosting account, but for importing your domains via a .csv file it’s recommended to use a VPS to ensure stable imports.

Smaller hosting plans are fine if you use the manual import and import a few domains at a time.

Need Help Getting Things Set Up?

If you need help getting things set up, for example if you don’t have experience with a VPS hosting account set up, or simply would like to have the theme installed with your purchase for you that’s no problem.

I’ll get in touch with you within 24 hours of your purchase to check with you if you would like to make use of the free installation set up service.