How to Sell Valuable Typo/Misspelled Domain Names!?

Category : Domain Names
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Responses : 3 Comments

 

Question:  I have a couple misspelled domains of extremely valuable one-word keyword domains. They’re each just one letter off and common misspellings. Haven’t had any luck contacting and educating owners of the main sites in that niche so that they see the light and buy them. What is your advice on selling valuable misspelled domains?

-Matthew

 

I received this question in my Anticareer mailbag and though it would make a good, albeit short, post and leave open some room for others who have gone through this to respond in the comments.  First Matthew, I have not sold any premium typo domains and I don’t own any so my thoughts are based on my opinions and not my experiences.  That being said, this is what I think…

You can talk to the end users until your face reaches a blueish purple tint and you may not make any headway about why they should buy your typo domain.  My advice is you need to give them facts and not give them reasoning or information.  It will be much easier to reach someone when there are factual numbers behind what you are saying.  If you have a valuable one word typo domain I would first track the traffic it is getting.  Is it 5 visits a day or 500 visits a day.  Hopefully the second one or it will be a harder sell.  Once you are able to establish unique visitors a day (and you track this for 2-3 months) you have begun to put together some concrete facts.  Next, I’d take a stroll to the Google Adwords Keywords tool (found here) and see how much advertisers are paying for this keyword (I believe you need to sign into your Google account, it can be a Gmail account) in order to see the CPC figures.  If people are paying $2 per click for the keyword and your typo is getting 500 visitors a day you are offering them a $1,000 per day VALUE.  See, you give them facts, but you sell the value.  I would then scan the first few pages of Google, Yahoo, and Bing and get the URLs of all the sites who are paying for ads for this keyword and the organic search results.  Grab the whois information and you have a contact list.  It’s all about reaching the right person.  If it is a big company and you are emailing their whois email it is probably hitting the inbox of the IT team and they are not the decision makers.  You’ll need to call the company and find out who is the head of business development and try to contact them.  Phone is best, email is second best.

You may currently be parking the domain, but another thing that could potentially drive a sale is to do this… depending on the niche, I would consider putting an email capture box on the landing page.  Come up with some sort of free giveaway (ebook or otherwise) related to the niche in return for them filling out the contact form.  If you get a list of 1,000 or 10,000 people related to this niche that is a very nice VALUE add that you can offer the end user.  You can frame it as they are getting a free list of potential buyers, and frame it as the people who are landing on this typo domain are interactive and great potential buyers.

Taking it a step further, again dependent upon the niche, you could build a minisite and sell the product.  If you are able to drive a decent volume of sales this would be another huge selling point you can make to the end user.

These are three factual data driven ideas I’d recommend.  If you don’t have the data, or the data is not very favorable and you need to try selling the typo based on a sales pitch I would use some of the talking points mentioned without putting numbers to them, rather put the idea in the end users head of the potential.

Buying a typo domain is not intuitive to most end users.  If you talk to a domainer they immediately understand the value proposition, but they have honed their skills in the domain name trade.  The end users will need to be shown how purchasing the domain will be accretive to their bottom line and the quickest way to get there is with numbers.  Good luck on selling the domains, feel free to list them in the comments section as you may get some bids from people on them, and if anyone has some tips drop a comment below and help Matthew out.

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Comments

  1. Thanks. I’ll check out the traffic and AdWords advertisers for starters.

     — Reply
  2. Matthew,

    what are the domains? How valuable is extremely valuable? I might know some people interested. Let me know. You can contact me from the website I list below.

    Thanks

     — Reply
  3. Good post. This is VERY good and valuable advice – as long as the domain is a generic keyword.

    If it’s a typo of a brand, then be careful as it could have a lot of value (risky, legal issues) or very little value, depending on who owns it and how it’s used.

     — Reply